14 DAY TRIAL // Batman: Arkham City is one of the biggest video game launches of the fall and players who are getting ready to play the game should take into account the amount of work, especially when it comes to voice acting, that has gone into the game.
Kevin Conroy, who is the actor voicing The Dark Knight both The Animated Series and in the Arkham games, told Destructoid that, “It is such a different experience in recording a game than recording a show. You’re alone in a booth for 4 hour blocks, and you have to be true to the character, without any of the other actors bouncing off you. It’s so much harder.”
He added, “You’re working in a vacuum, so you have to be your own reality check, you own motivator. You’re doing variations on a line, giving four or five emotional readings, and then you’re doing 20 different lines depending on which way the game is being played. It’s all disjointed — you don’t know how it’s going to be put together.”
Some video game developers have tried to replicate the way voice acting is done for animated series, bringing in the whole cast of characters to work together, but for most of the video games the amount of lines is so big that there's no option but to record characters separately and then linked them together in the editing process.
The new Batman video game will allow players to explore a whole area of Gotham that has been populated with criminals and gamers will meet characters like Nightwing, Robin, Catworman, the Riddler, the Joker, Two Face and Penguin.
Publisher Warner Bros. has confirmed that the game will use an Online Pass system for the sections where Catwoman can be controlled, with second hand buyers needing to hand over 10 dollars for access.
Arkham City arrives this week in both Europe and North America.