Batman: Arkham Asylum

• 1. Introduction

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  Batman: Arkham Asylum, the 2009 game from Rocksteady Studios, once kept a single developer busy for two years on one garment, Batman's cape. Eidos president Ian Livingstone said the job involved more than 700 animations and sound effects, all so the cloth would move believably. A little-known British studio had been handed a famous license, and it treated every detail as a problem to solve. Why did the team lock its hero inside a hospital for the criminally insane instead of letting him roam all of Gotham City? Which villains were written out before release, and which voices from the animated series came back to perform the survivors? And how did a licensed superhero game earn a place in reviewers' mouths as the "greatest comic book game of all time"?

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• 2. Island Prison

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  A hero in an open city can call for backup, retreat to the Batcave or simply walk away from a fight. Rocksteady chose Arkham Asylum as its setting partly to deny him all three options. The asylum trapped the player among several enemies at once, and it also gave the designers a natural home for many of Batman's foes.

  Hints of Alcatraz prison run through Rocksteady's version of Arkham, which is an entire island rather than the single large mansion common in the comics. Early designs had shown a huge estate joined to mainland Gotham City by a bridge. The final island is made of multiple buildings, which allowed greater variety and more to explore. Each building received its own architectural style, so that every location felt believable and carried a history.

  The medical building borrowed from Victorian architecture, and its metalwork was meant to stir horror. The intensive treatment unit has a Gothic, industrial look. The catacombs beneath the facility drew on early twentieth-century brickwork and Victorian industry, and they were meant to feel oppressive. The maximum security area was retrofitted like a bunker to feel claustrophobic, while the Arkham mansion shows a High Gothic style. Designers also worked crooked lines into trees and drainpipes wherever they could. In total, the team built 40 rooms, 34 corridors, three exterior areas and three hallucination areas induced by the Scarecrow.

  The artist Jim Lee shaped the look of Batman, who is drawn as a strong, muscular fighter able to believably survive extreme combat. About thirteen concept designs came before the final appearance. His black and dark gray costume follows modern versions, with military influences and an industrial feel.

  Alan Moore's 1988 graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke influenced the design of the Joker. Artists steered clear of film versions of the character, partly because the developers held the rights only to the original Batman license. Harley Quinn changed far more. Her black and red full-body outfit and jester's hat gave way to a costume that mixed elements of a nurse's outfit and a schoolgirl's uniform. WildStorm, the comic publisher founded by Lee, produced concept art for the game.

  Browns and monochrome tones could have delivered the dark, moody atmosphere the team wanted. The developers also wanted the vibrant palette of a comic book, so they lit the world with saturated colors. Lighting doubled as a guide, marking points of interest and pulling players down otherwise dull corridors.

  The person who would fill these buildings with a story was Paul Dini, a writer best known for Batman: The Animated Series and Detective Comics.

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• 3. The Joker's Plan

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  Around late 2007, DC Comics approached Paul Dini about writing a story for an original Batman video game. Dini found the idea intriguing, since few Batman games were built on an original idea and most were adapted from film or television. DC asked how he would approach a new Batman film or graphic novel designed for gameplay. After he met the Rocksteady team, everyone agreed that his ideas matched what the studio wanted to achieve.

  Story and game grew together, and the limits of the mechanics forced the story to be built around them. The core aim was a game engaging enough to hold players for 8-10 hours, especially those uninterested in Batman media. Rocksteady stepped in to guide Dini whenever they thought he was writing too much story or character motivation.

  The finished tale begins when the Joker assaults Gotham City Hall and Batman catches him. He is taken to Arkham Asylum, which is temporarily housing many members of his gang after a fire at Blackgate Prison. Batman suspects the Joker allowed himself to be captured and follows him inside. Harley Quinn then takes over the security systems, and a corrupt guard named Frank Boles helps the Joker kidnap Commissioner Gordon. Bombs hidden around Gotham City keep outsiders away, because the Joker threatens to detonate them if anyone approaches Arkham.

  The Scarecrow's fear toxin sends Batman into hallucinations while he tracks Quinn and rescues Gordon. The Joker next points Batman toward the captured Bane, who has been experimented on by asylum doctor Penelope Young. Batman defeats Bane by ramming him into the ocean with the Batmobile.

  Doctor Young had been developing Titan, a more powerful version of the Venom drug that gives Bane his strength. She hoped it would help patients survive harsher therapies. She then learned that the Joker had been secretly funding her research to create an army of indestructible, savage superhuman monsters. Her refusal to hand over the formula is what drew him back to the asylum. Batman destroys her formula and rescues her from Victor Zsasz, but a bomb kills her and the Joker steals the finished batches.

  Harley Quinn lets slip that the Arkham Botanical Gardens hold a Titan production facility. There Batman learns that Titan is made from genetically modified plants. Poison Ivy tells him the spores needed for an antidote grow only in Killer Croc's lair in a sewer. The Joker injects Ivy with Titan, and giant mutant plants begin to ravage the island. In the sewers, Croc attacks the Scarecrow and drags him underwater. Batman recovers the spores and subdues Croc, but he can synthesize only one dose of antidote before Ivy's plants breach the Batcave and wreck his equipment. He returns to the gardens and defeats her.

  The Joker announces that his party is ready, and Batman goes to the visitor center to confront him. The Joker tries to shoot Gordon with a Titan-filled dart, but Batman leaps in front of it and takes the shot. Upset when Batman resists the change, the Joker overdoses on Titan and mutates into a monster. He stages a fight on the building's roof in front of news helicopters. Batman refuses to transform, uses the antidote on himself and defeats the Joker and his henchmen. Those affected by Titan begin to revert, and police retake the asylum. Batman then overhears a report of a crime led by Two-Face and flies back to Gotham City in the Batwing.

  A final scene shows a crate of Titan formula floating in the ocean near the asylum, and a hand rises from the water to grab it.

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• 4. Familiar Voices

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  Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin had already played Batman, the Joker and Harley Quinn in the DC Animated Universe. The developers decided early in production to bring all three back, and they were the same performers who worked on Dini's Batman: The Animated Series. The balance of lines was lopsided. Hamill recorded thousands of lines of dialogue, while Conroy had relatively few by comparison.

  Hamill made a deliberate choice after he saw the character models of the Joker's Arkham Asylum appearance. He decided to play the Joker as dark and gritty while keeping a clownish and playful nature.

  The rest of the cast filled out a crowded asylum. Kimberly Brooks voices Oracle, who feeds Batman intelligence from afar, and Tom Kane voices Commissioner Gordon. Kane also plays the warden Quincy Sharp. Fred Tatasciore performs the enraged Bane, Danny Jacobs plays the serial killer Victor Zsasz, and Steve Blum gives voice to the monstrous Killer Croc. Tasia Valenza plays the plant-controlling Poison Ivy and also Martha Wayne, while Conroy doubles as Thomas Wayne. Dino Andrade voices the Scarecrow, and Duane R Shepard, Sr plays the guard Aaron Cash.

  The Riddler, played by Wally Wingert, never appears physically in the game. He communicates with Batman instead and sets him riddles around the island. Clayface turns up in cameo, shape-shifting into other characters as he tries to trick the player into releasing him. Several figures are mentioned but never seen, among them the Penguin, Jack Ryder, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, Catwoman and the asylum's founder Amadeus Arkham.

  Although the game references plot events from both the animated series and the Batman comics, its story does not directly follow any single tale or depiction of the character.

  Some characters appear only as props. The body of Ra's al Ghul lies in the asylum's morgue, and the Ventriloquist's dummy, Scarface, shows up several times through the story.

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• 5. Fists and Shadows

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  Three buttons drive the "Freeflow" combat system: attack, stun and counter. Batman glides from one enemy to the next, chaining blows until every opponent is unconscious. The longer a combo runs, the faster and more agile he becomes, and special moves such as a throw, a grapple and an instant takedown become available. Experience points, awarded for high combos, varied moves and avoiding damage, pay for new gadgets, combat moves and health upgrades.

  Warning icons appear over enemies about to attack, signaling that the strike can be countered. Knife-wielding thugs must be stunned before they can be hit, others must be struck from behind, and gunmen can badly wound Batman. When Batman takes out their allies, the remaining enemies grow fearful and change their patrol routes, so the player must adapt. Whatever damage he takes in a fight, his health is fully restored when the battle ends.

  Stone gargoyles perched high above many areas give Batman a place to hide. From a gargoyle he can glide down on an enemy or hang upside down to snatch a nearby thug and leave him tethered there. He can also strike from floor grates, wait around corners, stun foes from afar with batarangs, or use explosive gel to knock enemies off their feet. Some sections require stealth outright, because alerting the Joker's henchmen means failing the objective.

  "Detective Vision" tints the world blue and shows the number of enemies in an area, along with how aware they are of Batman. It also highlights destructible walls and removable grates, and it lets the player follow footprints, investigate odors and solve puzzles.

  Batman's gadgets include the batarang, which can stun enemies or trigger remote devices, and a remote-controlled version that can be steered after it is thrown. A sonic batarang attracts enemies wearing monitoring collars or knocks a nearby one unconscious. The line launcher spans horizontal gaps, the Batclaw grabs distant objects such as vent covers, and the Cryptographic Sequencer overrides security panels. Some areas stay closed until Batman owns the right tool.

  The Riddler hacks Batman's communication system to challenge him, and the island holds 240 collectable items. They include Riddler trophies, chattering Joker teeth, interview tapes with some of Arkham's inmates, and cryptic messages left by Amadeus Arkham about the facility's sinister past. Some riddles require finding a place linked to the answer and scanning it with Detective Vision. Rewards include experience points, character biographies, in-game statues and challenge maps that test the player's skill at combat and stealth, with performance ranked online against other players.

  On the PlayStation 3, optional downloadable challenge maps let the player take control of the Joker. He carries a handgun, exploding chattering teeth and x-ray glasses that show opponents through walls, and he must face the asylum guards and Commissioner Gordon.

  The Windows version adds nVidia's PhysX software, which makes smoke and fog swirl around Batman as he moves, whereas with PhysX switched off the fog does not appear at all.

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• 6. Influences and Omissions

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  Eidos obtained the rights to make a Batman game in spring 2007, then approached Rocksteady after seeing the studio's prototype. By May 2007 the team was developing the concept, and full production began in September. The project took approximately 21 months, starting with 40 people and growing to around 60. The game was built on Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 and was first announced in August 2008.

  Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth was one inspiration for the design, alongside Batman stories by Neal Adams and Frank Miller. Producer Nathan Burlow credited the 2007 game BioShock for its narrative and atmosphere. Director Sefton Hill pointed to The Legend of Zelda and Metroid as the source of gadgets and abilities that combine in different ways.

  The design team isolated the components they felt made Batman and then exaggerated them. Ideas that contradicted those traits were dropped. Batman's refusal to kill his enemies was strictly enforced, which made it harder to give players complete freedom without crossing that line.

  Combat was among the biggest challenges, and the system went through three iterations. Rocksteady first developed it as a full rhythm action game. It was later set in 2D, with colored circles crashing into each other during fights, and the final system grew out of that 2D model. The team wanted a simple control scheme to reflect how easily Batman performs his moves.

  Mr. Freeze was cut because he does not hold a personal grudge against Batman, unlike the Riddler, who is obsessed with proving his superiority. He also would not care about the other villains' plans. Poison Ivy was to grow a garden maze with the Mad Hatter hosting a tea party at its center, but the team decided this would not suit the game's tone. The Batmobile and Batwing were considered as playable vehicles. Building unique controls and gameplay segments would have taken too much time and compromised quality, so the vehicles appear in the story but cannot be driven or flown.

  About seven months before development finished, Rocksteady began conceiving a sequel, which became Batman: Arkham City. The team developed story and setting ideas so the narratives could connect. Ron Fish and Nick Arundel, who composed the score for Arkham Asylum, also wrote the music for that sequel.

  A secret room in the asylum warden's office held hints, blueprints and concept art for the next game. It stayed hidden for six months after release, until Rocksteady revealed it.

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• 7. Release and Sales

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  Players on the PlayStation 3 could try a demo from the 6th of August 2009, and Xbox 360 and Windows players followed a day later. The full game reached North America for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on the 25th of August 2009, and Europe and Australia on the 28th. The Windows version arrived in North America on the 15th of September and in Europe and Australia on the 18th. The PlayStation 3 version unlocked a Batcave-themed virtual apartment on PlayStation Home, and the retailer GameStop ran a contest that put one winner in the game as an Arkham inmate.

  In April 2009, Rocksteady announced that the Joker would be a playable downloadable character, exclusive to the PlayStation 3 and Mac OS X. The Insane Night challenge pack followed on the 17th of September 2009, and the Prey in the Darkness pack on the 23rd of September. In North America, Prey in the Darkness appeared only on the PlayStation 3 and Mac OS X.

  On Windows, the developers added an anti-duplication measure that disables Batman's glide ability and causes other bugs, so that copied games cannot get past a certain point. It was not the first such countermeasure, but it drew media coverage as a novel one. A Wii version from Red Fly Studios was cancelled during development.

  A Collector's Edition packed in a 14 inch replica batarang, a behind-the-scenes DVD and a leather-bound 48-page book about Arkham's inmates. A Game of the Year edition followed on the 26th of March 2010 in Europe and the 11th of May in North America. It added support for 3D on ordinary televisions with anaglyph glasses. Feral Interactive's Mac OS X version arrived on the 3rd of November 2011.

  Nearly two million copies sold worldwide in the first three weeks, and the total reached 2.5 million by the end of September 2009. According to NPD Group, about 593,000 units sold in North America during the five tracked days after the 25th of August launch. By December 2009 the PlayStation 3 version had outsold the Xbox 360 version by approximately 10,000 units, even though multi-platform games typically sold better on the Xbox 360 at the time. The Joker's playable role was cited as a possible reason. By October 2011, the game had sold 4.3 million copies worldwide.

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• 8. Acclaim and Aftermath

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  Metacritic scored the Xbox 360 version 92 out of 100, and the PlayStation 3 and Windows versions 91. An average of 91.67 earned the game the Guinness World Record for "Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever" until Arkham City surpassed it. Edge called it "by some distance the best superhero game of modern times", and Eurogamer's Dan Whitehead went further with "the best superhero game bar none". Reviewers praised the combat for letting players look graceful without learning complex combinations, and they admired the variety of stealth options.

  Boss fights drew the sharpest criticism, with many reviewers calling them the game's biggest failing. Critics found them tedious and repetitive, built on one-hit deaths and attack patterns that anticlimactically followed big build-ups. The final fight with the Joker was singled out as vapid, and the Killer Croc battle as boring and overly long. The Scarecrow sequences were the exception. Reviewers almost unanimously called them some of the game's best moments for subverting expectations, and compared them to the Psycho Mantis fight in 1998's Metal Gear Solid.

  Hamill's cackling Joker earned consistent praise for its inflection and timing. 1UP.com's Thierry Nguyen said that Dini and Hamill's Joker was the best depiction of the character outside The Killing Joke and Heath Ledger's version in the 2008 film The Dark Knight.

  At the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards, Rocksteady won Studio of the Year. The game won Game Design, Adapted Story and Character Performance for Hamill at the 13th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. It also took Best Game and Gameplay at the 6th British Academy Video Games Awards, and Best Game Design at the 10th Game Developers Choice Awards. On Metacritic it tied God of War Collection and Forza Motorsport 3 as the fourth-highest-rated game of 2009, and The A.V. Club placed it first on its list of the year's top games. Later rankings kept it high. In 2019 The Guardian put it 34th among the 50 best videogames of the 21st century, and in 2023 Digital Trends placed it 21st on its list of the 50 best videogames of all time.

  Arkham City arrived in October 2011 and closed the island prison. Its mayor Quincy Sharp shuts down Arkham Asylum and Blackgate prison and turns part of the city's slums into an open air prison. The Joker is dying from his use of Titan. Dini wrote a six-issue comic, also titled Batman: Arkham City, with art by Carlos D'Anda, and its first issue came out on the 11th of May 2011. Batman: Arkham Origins, not made by Rocksteady, followed in October 2013 with a story set before the original. Batman: Arkham Knight, released on the 23rd of June 2015, concluded the series.

  Virtuos released the remastered Return to Arkham collection on the 18th of October 2016 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Turn Me Up brought Arkham Trilogy to the Nintendo Switch on the 1st of December 2023.

  Grant Morrison said the game inspired the Batman Incorporated comic book. In their words: "When I played that game, it was the first time in my life where I actually felt what it is like to be Batman... We are now the heroes, and we can look through their eyes."

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