Rocksteady: "fascinating twists" once planned for Batman: Arkham City, including new gameplay and locations

Batman: Arkham City originally took far more liberties with the Arkham Asylum formula, offering "a whole other area of gameplay and different locations to explore", but Rocksteady cut or "reconfigured" these features during development in order to give the player more control.

"There are always big ideas that you have when you start a project and that you fall in love with almost instantly, that you think are going to define whatever it is you're working on whether it's a novel or a comic book or a movie or a video game," commented writer Paul Dini during a roundtable interview.

"And I'd say that with Arkham City there were some story elements that I came to the table with, and that Rocksteady also presented that we thought were just perfect and they were really going to shake up Batman's world and it was going to lead to this whole other area of gameplay and different locations to explore, and we wound up using very little of it, simply because the game itself took us in other directions."

Even in its cutback form, Arkham City is a major advance on Arkham Asylum, giving players free roam of an entire supervillain-infested district rather than a single facility. The Dark Knight's moves and abilities have been upgraded to suit - you can glide longer distances by using the grapple line to boost height, for instance. The combat system has also been padded out, with diving takedowns and the capacity to grab thrown objects and toss them back.

"I can't really go into detail about what was discarded or what those elements were because some of them are incorporated," Dini added. "Some did get reconfigured and reincorporated into the game, and we just don't want to touch on that yet, but you know, you have to leave yourself open for adapting to different scenarios as they come up, because there are just the demands of what the game is, and what the game can do and what the gamers expect, and there also comes a point where you realise 'Well this is a fascinating twist on Batman's world but now we're writing a movie, we're not doing a game'.

"The player is going to have elements handed to him that he's not going to be able to control or like. We never wanted the gamer to get to a point where he's sitting there like 'Why am I trying to play this game, why don't I just rent it and watch it as a video, or a DVD?'. So a lot of that had to be reconfigured when we first started Arkham City, so we went back to the drawing board in a few ways in a few cases."

One of the new features Rocksteady has kept is a playable role for Catwoman, who offers a "real contrasting emotional experience". The developer also "looked at" Kinect functionality, and considered giving players control of villain characters.

"Because I would say where we were going with it originally was something much more Batman exploring different aspects of the city rather than him in a situation where he has to fight through it and accomplish goals, and that is the primary goal when you're playing a game like this - you can't have the gamer be passive. I think what we were heading for was something very interesting but it would have put the gamer in a more passive role, and you can't be in that. Not in a Batman game."