Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League
Batman Museum
As a Designer on Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League one of my areas of ownership was the Batman Museum.
This section is very bespoke compared to the rest of the game.
The intent of this section was to invoke a feeling of fear and anxiety from the player and to be a reverse representation of the Predator sections from the Arkham games.
The area has a linear progression on the first visit where the player is being hunted by Batman.
I incorporated various Jump scares, as well as well known Batman takedowns and gadgets from the Arkham series.
A bespoke dialogue system was created to facilitate the squad reactions to what was happening in the environment.
Various animation sequences are implemented to enhance the feeling of an interactive Museum exhibit.
Once the main gameplay section has been completed, and power has been restored, the player is free to explore the Museum.
I implemented reactive dialogue and added easter eggs from the Arkham series to be discovered by inquisitive players.
A full playthrough of the section can be seen below.
Video Credit: Batman Arkham Videos
Director Design Brief
To create this mission I was given a Design brief from Direction.
The Brief was as follows:
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Batman Museum Experience – Be the Batman!
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The Batman Museum is a collection of Batman themed vignettes from key moments in the history of Batman.
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The exhibition itself is an installation set in an exhibition hall. It is not a permanent fixture of the city, but an installation that is intended to be in place for several months (like a gallery hosting a exhibition of an artist).
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The Batman Museum is setup like an audio, visual experience recreating what it must have been like to be at key points in Batman’s history. It’s not the highest budget experience.
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Each room will feature a diorama recreating a core story beat from the three Arkham games.
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The player should have the experience of being a thug in a Predator section from the Arkham franchise.
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Batman will be hunting the player and they should feel tense and a sense of fear.
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The rooms and Batman's actions should feel familiar to anyone who has played the previous Arkham games.
Design Contribution
The first stage of the process was to white box the area for gamplay. To do this I created rooms that were relevant for the story element from the Arkham games we were recreating. The corridor in Arkham Asylum for example.
After the white box was complete I worked with both the environment art and concept art teams to ensure the art direction was correct.
I continued to work with environment art and the lighting teams to ensure the feeling of the space and the gameplay elements were all catered for.
Next I added prototype animations for all of the exhibits in the Museum. These were made in sequencer and then passed on to an Animator. I was in constant contact with the Animator to ensure the sequences followed the Narrative requirements.
I also created all of the jump scare animations for the various Easter eggs and environmental storytelling. These were largely untouched by the Animator as they were fairly basic.
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We then began work on the gameplay elements. For this I worked extremely closely with one of our gameplay programmers.
This involved determining the types of takedowns we wanted Batman to perform as well as any other secondary gadgets we wanted him to use, to emphasise Batman's presence.
Once these we agreed upon we worked to get these in to the most optimal positions to enhance the player's experience.
This was achieved mainly with the use of trigger volumes activated via the level blueprint using various blueprint functions. We also created a bespoke mission manager to ascertain the time between takedowns and player position, among other things.
A lot of work was also done to ensure the characters where taken down in a semi specific order. We did this to ensure Harley was the last character standing for the cinematic sequence that ends the gameplay section.
Once the gameplay was solidified the next step was to work with the audio, script and VFX teams to add life to the section.
Dialogue was implemented via volumes and also I created, with the gameplay programmer, a bespoke dialogue system to handle the characters reactions to Batman in the environment. This was a mix of timers and dialogue containers. This helped give a slight randomness to the dialogue but still kept it relevant to the situation.
Once the main gameplay section has been completed, the player is free to explore the museum.
I added dialogue triggers to the exhibits and worked with the script team to have bespoke dialogue for certain characters when they interacted with specific exhibits.
All of these aspects went through numerous iterations to ensure the Narrative and Gameplay were perfectly balanced.