Batman Begins Designer Diary #1

Currently scheduled for release alongside the movie of the same name next month, Batman Begins is an action game that's been designed from the ground up to appeal to ardent Batman fans, as well as to gamers. This is not an easy task by any means, but it's a challenge lead producer Reid Schneider and his teams at Electronic Arts and Eurocom appear to have relished.

Being the Bat

By Reid Schneider
Lead Producer, Electronic Arts

When we began the Batman Begins game project, we knew we had a huge responsibility. In fact, that may be the understatement of the year. There have been many weaker incarnations of the Batman character in the game space. We all felt that failure to deliver a product that captured the true feeling of "being the bat" was just not an option for us.

When we started the game's development, we went through a similar exercise that Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, the film's director and writer, went through. We spent days going through the Frank Miller graphic novels, the Year One series, and, finally, the Hush books.

Since these were the titles that were held in such high regard by the fans, we needed to understand and appreciate them if we were going to be successful in building a game that did justice to the character. Having a core understanding of the themes presented in these works is an absolute requirement to building a game experience that meets expectations from the fans.

Very shortly after this, we began to receive all the concept art, production design, and scripts/notes from the film. Warner Bros. did a great job in getting us these materials so we could closely match the movie. Once we had these in hand, we started drafting on the key game concepts we felt had to be part of the game. After many hours of brainstorming, we came up with the following key ideas that needed to be part of the title:

1. Fear-based gameplay: Allow the player to use fear as a weapon. The fear theme was highly prevalent in the script, and it would be an absolute necessity to set the game apart from other titles.
2. Stealth action focus: The game needed to focus on strategy and detective work, and not be a brawler. Batman is the world's greatest detective, and though he's not afraid to fight, we needed to create a more cerebral experience.
3. Batman moments: We needed to create moments that really made the player feel like the Dark Knight. One of the best examples of this is the grapple attack in the game. The player can maneuver himself over an enemy and then grapple down to take him out from above.
4. The Batmobile: Allow the player to tear up the streets of Gotham in the ultimate ride.

We began working with Eurocom soon after we had the game's core concepts drafted. After some initial moments of panic and "How the hell are we going to build this?", the team embraced these ideas, and we began an awesome collaboration. (On our side, we expected this reaction...as our goal was to integrate fear as a central gameplay mechanic, which nobody has tried before.) I don't think anyone could have estimated how large a challenge it would be to build fear-based gameplay. The whole team (Eurocom and EA) was simply not going to accept failure, by any means, and we realized the responsibility we had to the fans to deliver on their expectations. The team at Eurocom really stepped up and was able to create systems and gameplay mechanics that hit the mark.

Once EA and Eurocom began working together, we knew we needed a full-time scriptwriter. This person would not only have to write great dialogue, but he or she would also have to direct voice-over sessions and understand the complexities of writing for game narrative. For this job, we chose J.T. Petty, whom I had previously worked with on the Splinter Cell series.

J.T. has an incredible talent for writing consistently fresh and edgy game dialogue. Once J.T. joined the project, he was instrumental in crafting the game's story arc, while at the same time refining our design. Some of the coolest moments in the game come from his ideas about what would be exciting for "fear moments." J.T. would round out an already impressive group of people whose members had experience with or on Crytek, Maxis, Marvel, Chronicles of Riddick, Bond: Everything or Nothing, The Lord of the Rings, Sphinx, Bond: NightFire, and Harry Potter.

While I am generally the one who's been doing the interviews and promoting the product, I cannot stress enough that this game was a collaboration between many people. And they are the ones who deserve credit for this project. This game is the result of more than 100 people working tirelessly to both complete the title and make it great. They are the ones who made Batman Begins the game it is today.

Next time, I'll talk a little bit about how the team came together to deliver gameplay starring Batman, which can only be considered as "modern-day ninja."