Irrational influenced by Arkham Asylum

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 8 July, 2011

Levine inspired by Batman's structure.

Irrational Games is drawing influence from Rocksteady's superb action game Batman: Arkham Asylum as it creates BioShock Infinite.

"We were very much inspired by watching games like Arkham Asylum," creator Ken Levine told Eurogamer for a new BioShock Infinite preview.

"One of the things that's great about Arkham Asylum is that it's similarly structured to BioShock in some ways but also one of their great innovations is when you come back through an area they establish an entirely different narrative.

"I think we're very much inspired by that. In BioShock 1 we just had respawning when you came back through an area, so I think when we put you back through an area we want to do it in a way that feels different and meaningful."

Levine said Irrational is yet to determine how BioShock Infinite will replicate the sense of "completing" sections of 2007 game BioShock, in which players spent hours uncovering all of the voice recordings and killing enemies.

"It's an interesting question," Levine said. "I don't know if we have exactly determined 100 per cent what our plan for that is. I think it's probably just because it's what we've done before in System Shock and then BioShock.

"But that said we will probably follow a similar structure to BioShock 1 in terms of clearing the levels."

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (8) Latest comment 11 months ago

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  • jablonski #1 11 months ago

    ""We were very much inspired by watching games like Arkham Asylum," creator Ken Levine told Eurogamer for a new BioShock Infinite preview."

    Yes, I know.
    I read it 2 inches to the left of this news headline

  • menage #2 11 months ago

    Biggest complaint for me with BS2 was that they dropped going back to previous levels to open up stuff. But Batman basically has a Metroid light setup (they could have gone a bit further with it), so they probably should look there as well for the real deal.

  • riceNpea #3 11 months ago

    looking forward to the combat in Bioshock then as it was great fun in Arkham

  • CaptainQuint #4 11 months ago

    And Arkham Asylum's level design was inspired by Metroid Prime.

    Before that, Zelda.

  • Vixremento #5 11 months ago

    As long as they don't use it as an excuse to cop out on creating new areas I'm cool with it (I'd hate to have to back track through an area many times unless I was being OCD and hunting riddle-like collectables) . Plus, using Arkham Asylum for some inspiration can only be a good thing!

  • Lunastra78 #6 11 months ago

    Bioshock and Arkham Asylum...

    Two almost perfect games apart from ridiculously lame final bosses.

  • The-Jack-Burton #7 11 months ago

    I got tired of going back and replaying the same area for the third and fourth time.

  • braydee89 #8 11 months ago

    In other news. how about THAT 14 minute demo huh?