How long have you been working on this project? I’m personally a huge fan of the Arkham franchise, so it just seemed like a really good fit. We made three of them, so it was a great fit and we were huge fans. They had come to us with this opportunity that they were looking to make a 2.5D-style Arkham game that was in the Metroidvania flavor and they thought we’d be a good pairing to it, since we were really familiar with that style of game. We broke out from Nintendo, started our own thing five years ago, and we had established a relationship with Warner Bros. I was the game director of the Metroid Prime Series, Todd was the art director, and Jack was the tech director. Mark Pacini: We were established five years ago by some ex Retro employees – myself, Todd Keller and Jack Mathews. Who are you, and what brought you to this Batman project?
We talked with game director Mark Pacini to learn more about the upcoming game, as well as his studio’s ties to one of the most acclaimed Nintendo game series of all time.
While you may not be familiar with Armature, you likely know them from their previous studio job many of Armature’s developers were the team leads behind the original Metroid Prime games from Retro Studios. Designed by the team at Armature, Blackgate is a 2.5D Metroid-style game coming to Vita and 3DS that sends the Dark Knight swooping through the corridors of the infamous Gotham prison. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate serves as an accompaniment to the console game from Warner Bros.
We’re spending all month shining the spotlight on Batman: Arkham Origins, but this month also brought word of another game in the Arkham fiction.