Batman: Arkham VR

Batman: Arkham VR was developed by Rocksteady Studios as a virtual reality title for PlayStation VR following the release of Batman: Arkham Knight in 2015. The project began as informal experimentation with PlayStation VR development kits and grew into a standalone, first-person detective game built around the series' "Be the Batman" philosophy. It was Rocksteady's first game made in Unreal Engine 4. It launched alongside the PlayStation VR headset in October 2016, and a PC version for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift followed in April 2017.

Origins

Early experimentation

According to game director Sefton Hill, the project grew out of VR experiments by members of Rocksteady's engine team, who began working with a pair of VR development kits toward the end of Arkham Knight's development.

In a June 2016 interview, Hill placed the start of the studio's VR work slightly later, saying that Rocksteady obtained PlayStation VR development kits after finishing Arkham Knight, while it was working on the game's downloadable content, and that the team initially had no plan to make anything from them. In the same interview, given at E3 2016, Hill estimated that the studio had been doing VR design for about nine or ten months in total.

Hill stated that Rocksteady approached Sony for the development kits because several senior programmers at the studio were interested in VR. At around the same time, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment was interested in VR but unsure what to do with it, and asked Rocksteady what it could produce. Hill described the project as beginning as an experiment rather than a tech demo, which then grew organically into a full game as more people at the studio played it.

Return to Batman

Rocksteady had previously stated that Arkham Knight would be its final Batman game. Hill acknowledged that he had made that statement himself, and said it had been true at the time. He explained that the studio returned to the character because VR offered a way to tell a different kind of Batman story with characters the team already knew well, rather than making another Batman game simply because it could.

The PlayStation Blog post announcing the game likewise attributed the change of plans to the arrival of the PlayStation VR development kits. Hill later called the game a passion project, made because the team wanted to push itself and experiment with new technology.

Design

Design philosophy

Hill said the team did not set out to recreate an existing Arkham game with a headset attached. Instead, it began by asking what worked well in VR and how that could be used to tell a different kind of Batman story. He noted that core mechanics of the series, such as free-flowing combat and predator gameplay, did not translate well to an experience in which the player has limited physical space to move, while the sense of presence and direct physical interaction with the environment opened up new possibilities.

When the project moved into full production, the team aimed to stay faithful to the established feel and setting of the Arkham games. Hill said the team settled on a psychological mystery because it treated Batman's mind as his most powerful weapon, and placing players inside that mind felt like the most intimate way to experience his world.

The announcement blog post described the game as a murder mystery in the style of classic Batman comics, and highlighted the opportunity to let players explore locations such as Wayne Manor and the Batcave, which it said fans had been requesting.

Comfort and movement

Because the game was a PlayStation VR launch title and likely to be many players' first VR experience, Hill said Rocksteady considered it a responsibility to make it comfortable to play. Comfort was one of the project's initial goals.

Hill identified movement as one of the biggest areas of trial and error. Early attempts to move the player through environments using an analog stick caused motion sickness when combined with the player's own physical movement, and sidestepping was found to be particularly bad. As a result, a number of initial ideas were abandoned early. The game was designed primarily to be played standing, with seated play also supported.

Hill said that VR sensitivity varied widely across the studio, with some staff unaffected and others reacting badly to VR demos for days. The team used the most sensitive staff members as a benchmark, ensuring they could play the entire game comfortably without diluting the experience.

Guiding the player

Hill noted that, unlike in Rocksteady's third-person games, VR gives the player complete control over the camera, so the designers could not directly control where the player looked. The team had to develop new techniques to draw attention to where action was taking place, and spent considerable time arranging environments to subtly guide players. Hill also stated that, because most VR players use headphones, binaural sound design was used to direct attention and build atmosphere.

Suit-up sequence

The player putting on the cowl during the suit-up sequence in the Batcave.

Hill singled out the suit-up sequence as a key moment. He contrasted it with the suit-up scenes in Batman: Arkham City and Arkham Knight, which used a cinematic camera for roughly 20 seconds, and described the Arkham VR version as approximately eight minutes of gameplay.

Story and emotional impact

The Nightwing crime scene, which Hill cited as an example of the game's emotional impact.

Hill said the team found that the emotional impact of events was stronger in VR, which led it to invest heavily in the story and characters. He described the story as following a serial killer through Gotham City, and cited the Nightwing crime scene as an example of content that, while mechanically constructed by the team, produced genuine emotional reactions in players.

Hill stated that the game was shown to Geoff Johns and Jim Lee of DC during development, and that both reacted strongly, in very different ways.

Technology

Batman: Arkham VR was Rocksteady's first game made in Unreal Engine 4. Hill explained that the studio's previous games used Unreal Engine 3 and later its own heavily modified version of it, and that the project was used deliberately as a way to transition to the newer engine.

Audio

Rocksteady lead sound designer Andy Riley said that the most significant change for audio was that the player was no longer a detached observer but physically inside the game world. Sound emitters had to be positioned very precisely, to the point that the sound effects for larger objects were split into separate elements placed across the object to give them a more believable width.

For background ambience, the studio's established workflow recorded the base layer in four-channel surround. Riley found that down-mixing these recordings to binaural lost much of their width and immersion, so the team tested a number of stereo microphone arrays, recording with five or six arrays simultaneously across two Sound Devices recorders so they could be compared on headphones. The team eventually adopted an adapted Jecklin disk array custom-built by senior sound designer Andrew Quinn.

Riley also noted that the team's sound design workflow still relied on video captures of the game used as a guide in Pro Tools, but that elements which looked minor in a flat capture were often prominent in the headset, leading to more iteration than usual. He added that mixing was difficult because operating complex middleware while inside a virtual world was close to impossible.

Announcement and release

A still from the announcement teaser shown at Sony's E3 2016 press conference.

Batman: Arkham VR was announced during Sony's press conference at E3 2016 as a PlayStation VR exclusive scheduled for October 2016.

It won the Game Critics Awards' first Best VR Game award following the show, and was listed at an MSRP of $19.99. The game was released as a launch title for PlayStation VR in October 2016.

PC version

A still from the PC announcement trailer released in April 2017.

On April 3, 2017, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Entertainment announced that the game would be released for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift on April 25, 2017. The PC version supported Oculus Touch and Vive motion controllers, as well as the DualShock 4, Xbox One Controller and Steam Controller.

The PC version launched on both SteamVR and Oculus Home on the scheduled date. Hill, credited as Rocksteady's creative director in the PC announcement, said the studio was pleased that PC players could now play the game.

Awards

Batman: Arkham VR was nominated for British Game and Game Innovation at the 2017 British Academy Games Awards.

At the 2017 Develop Awards, it won in the newly introduced Visual Design and Sound Design categories.

Notes

• Sources disagree on the exact PlayStation VR release date. Hill's E3 2016 statements and Gematsu give October 13, 2016, the launch date of the PlayStation VR headset, while some later sources give October 11, 2016.
• Hill's account of when the VR experiments began differs slightly between interviews. In 2016 he placed it after Arkham Knight shipped, during work on its downloadable content; in 2017 he placed it toward the end of Arkham Knight's development.
• At least one contemporary report lists the second Develop Award as Music Design rather than Sound Design. MCV/Develop, which organizes the awards, lists Visual Design and Sound Design.
• Hill is credited as game director in the June 2016 announcement and as creative director in the April 2017 PC announcement.

Gallery

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  PlayStation VR cover art
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  PC key art
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  Still from the E3 2016 announcement teaser
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  The Batcave
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  The suit-up sequence
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  The Nightwing crime scene
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  Still from the PC announcement trailer