14 DAY TRIAL // The Batmobile in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight game will be able to help players when exploring the new and enlarged Gotham City but it can't be used, for example, to run over enemies, as that would contradict Batman's no-kill policy.
Batman: Arkham Knight was revealed at the beginning of the year as the next iteration in the series made by Rocksteady and promises to introduce quite a lot of new things, from a fresh villain called the Arkham Knight, to a drivable Batmobile that can be used to explore the much bigger version of Gotham City.
After sharing quite a few details about not wanting to make the driving the Batmobile feel like a racing game, Rocksteady's Dax Ginn has confirmed to Kotaku that the team wanted to make the unique vehicle help players in the exploration of the city, not just a means of getting from point A to point B.
"The integration that you saw between the functionality of the Batmobile and the abilities of Batman himself was really important to us, and we developed them early on. So [we have] the ejection—being able to use the speed of the Batmobile and translate that into Batman's movement and then calling the Batmobile back in—kind of splitting them up and then reuniting them in a seamless way," he said.
"The challenges around the city are laid out so that if you need to move along a flat plane, obviously the Batmobile is going to be the best way to do that, but there's a lot of gameplay that is set in the vertical plane, so you are encouraged by the nature of the city to leave the Batmobile. But you never need to feel like, 'Oh I need to remember where it is.'"
One thing that won't be possible while driving the Batmobile is to run over thugs and potentially kill them, as that goes against the no-kill policy of Batman, according to Ginn.
"Batman's no-kill policy is pretty non-negotiable whether he's driving or not. The Batmobile is loaded up with a taser system, so, if any thugs come at the Batmobile when it's parked up, it will just taser them automatically and throw them away," Ginn said.
"And you would have seen it in our previous games that if there is a situation where the player would be able to lethally interact with someone, the game kind of reminds you that, 'Hey, look, you're Batman here, this is not just something you want to try and undermine. You need to be the Batman.' There are systems we have that encourage the player to take this seriously and behave the way Batman would."
Batman: Arkham Knight is set to debut later this year for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One platforms.