So once again we'll be playing as Batman in a Gotham City that has been evacuated/it's christmas/everyone is on vacation.

No civilians! Bad guys only!

Of course there are great gameplay/narrative reasons for this but it got me wondering if we'll ever see a Gotham a la GTA with civilians in it.

Are you bummed? Happy? Don't care? How would you deal with civilians in a Batman game?

Having seen what a civilian's worth in past open world super hero games like Spiderman 2 and inFamous, I just can't bring myself to care one way or the other. Sure, on the good play through a lot of the compliments thrown Delsin's way are pretty hilarious but otherwise the crowds in those games just exist for XP or to look up at you from the streets. I just don't know what a civilian matters to Batman other than as a hostage, and with the addition of the Batmobile it would be a little odd to have to worry about mowing down bystanders or whatever.

I never really like that. I want civilians walking around a city or the game feels a lot smaller. It just makes a city feel more alive and believable.

Not sure I'd care too much. There was a quote from one of the Rocksteady guys about including the Batmobile where he said "It wouldn't be much fun if you were driving around Gotham trying to avoid pedestrians" or something like that, which sounds really reasonable. Unless the driving was on rails, you could potentially spend a lot of time dodging around people, which doesn't sound fun for the type of game they're making.

Maybe in the future there could be an option to attempt a mission with or without civilians in the area. Something where you have to choose between spending time evacuating civilians from a location or not. If you evacuate them, you'll know everyone left is a bad guy, but doing the evac also means the bad guys will have more barricades/traps/armor/etc. to make your life more difficult.

Pretty sure it's because everyone gets evacuated for one reason or another, so at least it makes a bit more sense than the last few games? Anyway, I'm fine without them in the city. If they were there, it would be extra processing power that could instead be spent on making things look nicer or having bigger groups of enemies in a fight. Besides, Batman feels a lot more badass knowing that he's the only guy other than criminals in the entire city.

I expected as much. It's one of those completely transparent gameplay contrivances that we accept because they make the game work. It'll be fun seeing what dumb reason they make up to explain it, though.

You know.... the more I think about this, the more I like how Arkham City had political Prisoners as an "idea" of citizens..... but yeah, it's ridiculious and stupid.

What the hell is the point of crime fighting when there's nobody around to see you do and and talk about how awesome you are?

Yeah, totally. I do hope there's some equivalent to that in AK, every now and then it's nice to rescue someone/interact with a human you don't just pummel into dust.

Did you ever play Driver?

In those games (or at least the first two) all the civilians were just master dodgers. They'd juke and dive out of the way and were pretty much impossible to hit. It was hilarious of course so maybe not great for a dark Batman game, but, who knows, maybe that could work.

Way too many people to rescue in Spiderman 2. It got to the point where I resented people for needing to be rescued, which, now that I write that out, seems like an interesting perspective into a life of fighting crime.

I wonder what stupid reason will keep everyone inside this time. I mean I get that the civilians running around are kind of pointless but:

Scarecrow is planning some seriou shit so the city got evacuated. Makes sense, but depending on how they use that in-game, it could seem just as flimsy as Origins' excuse.

@the_nubster: Flimsy? C'mon duder only criminals go out in the snow.

@geraltitude: to be honest, this is really a path finding problem. And Arkham City was modest at best, but it was polished enough to not have just AI wandering off an edge and falling into water.

I wonder if we'll ever get to a point as a community where we don't immediately fixate on negative/lacking aspects of every game that comes out. I mean, I agree it's strange, but I really don't think it's that big of a deal. Especially if you're a big fan of these games

@the_nubster said:

Eh, Origins had a good excuse. It's Christmas Eve. The only people out on Christmas Eve are shit lords and assholes up to no good.

What's the point of discussing a game if you're just going to ignore the negative aspects. I don't think anyone here is saying that the lack of civilians is going to make the game terrible, but it's certainly disappointing and worth discussing.

Fair enough.

In GTA you don't play as Batman.

+1 Batman Arkham Knight.

(Batman Arkham Knight will probably be fun. +2 Batman Arkham Knight)

guys, i'm batman.

It's never bothered me, I would actually think it would seem stranger to have civilians all around side by side with all the criminals. Also, I just can't see Batman running down the street with a bunch of civilians around.

The players are the civilians. We aren't actually Batman (well, most of us aren't) after all, we just play as him in the game.

Boom. The fourth wall has been vaporized. Welcome to next gen.

Don't care. I don't feel like there's anything to be gained by adding civilians. If this were, let's say, a Superman game, adding civilians would make much more sense. He tends to operate in the public eye on a much larger scale against deadlier enemies, smashing through buildings and fighting in the streets and shit like that. On top of that, unlike Gotham, Metropolis is actually a nice city that people seem to enjoy living in. When shit goes down, chances are it'll happen around civilians so the chaos of civilians running and screaming all over the place would provide a nice, frantic ambiance as Superman tries to defeat the bad guy while protecting everyone in sight at the same time.

Batman, and most of his enemies for that matter, tends to operate in secret on a much, much smaller scale. He usually throws down in alleys, abandoned buildings, and other places away from the general public. Even if he did have to fight in public around civilians, Batman iw the type to lead the threat to the most isolated area possible simply because he can't really protect large groups of innocents like Superman and other could. Even if the city wasn't being evacuated in the game, I can't imagine there would be much time spent fighting around civilians and aside from cheap, boring side-missions and having people scream "look, it's Batman!" while you drive around, I don't see how having civilians just walking around would add anything meaningful to the game.

I dont care. Personally I am an asshole in games, and would be most entertained beating them to death, and or running them over with the bat mobile. I definitely wouldnt want random save this person missions that you stumble upon. Those always feel generic as hell, and get old fast. Unless they can find a good reason for having a town full of people I dont see the need for it, and feel saving a story driven person to be more meaningful.

I don't care. Obviously it's a little weird, like it happens so often, but really it doesn't bother me much.

There's no real reason to have civilians in the game, other than to make the city feel alive (which they can get past with narrative reasons). I can guarantee interaction with them would be limited if rocksteady decided to include them

Wow, offensive much? Way to insinuate people like me don't go out any other day of the year. Us shit lords have social lives, too!

@the_nubster: Wasn't the excuse the same as Knights? The city was under curfew because of the assassin's causing chaos to draw Batman out? It's always been pretty flimsy anyway, but since the Batmobile is a "wrecking ball" and you seem to be encouraged to smash the place up I can see why they removed civvies.

I didn't insinuate you had no social life? I said no respectable member of society would be outside on Christmas Eve. Especially at 2 AM.

BREAKING NEWS: Gotham's Dark Knight catches mysterious bearded man breaking and entering a civilian home through the chimney.

BREAKING BREAKING NEWS: Batman beat the shit out of Santa Claus, you guys.

It isn't a big deal and I understand why they do it, though it does always elicit a chuckle from me when I hear their latest reasoning for why it's a ghost town.

@oldirtybearon: Sarcasm doesn't play well over the internet, I've re-learned. I was calling myself an asshole shit lord, I'm not actually offended by anything you said.

@wampa1: Origins just had a blizzard and a curfew, knight is straight-up citizens leaving the city.

I just finished Second Son and I don't think they added much to the game. In fact I think it detracted from the game when I would accidentally kill a civilian or two but everyone kept treating me like the best person ever. Having something like that happen in a Batman game would practically ruin it.

Batman's about murdering mortally wounding fools, just wouldn't be right if they were civilians.

While it could be cool I don't actually care one way or the other about it.

I'm of the ilk that thinks these games are better when they aren't open world to begin with.

Who would want to live in that city anyways? Property values must suck with all the crime.

You really don't want to be the guy who points out to Batman that his parents shouldn't have been in that part of town, at that time of night.

If they want to maintain the combat density the series has become known for then it wouldn't make sense to have civilians populating the world as well.

@markwahlberg: They didn't go to the Opera/Cinema/Ballet on Christmas Eve though. I've read and seen a ton of Batman origin stories and I don't think any of them had the pivotal "night" occur on Christmas Eve.

Although the arkham games have an "open world" aspect to them, I wouldn't necessarily consider them traditionally that kind of game. The open ended nature of the traversal is really just a mask for the linear progression. Granted, a city full of people might make it seem more alive (and open world), but in the context of what these games are I don't think they'd add much. I'm sure accounting for tons of civilian A.I. would only complicate the structure of the game itself. At least they do provide a narrative explanation, no matter how flimsy, for the lack of people.

Bummed

I don't really care - it's a playground for Batman to beat up baddies. I'm not much of a Batman nerd, but I can't recall many times in comics/movies/games that he's ever in a civilian environment. He's always in the shadows targeting bad dudes, not conversing with the everyman.

It would have to really suck to live in Gotham. Wonder what the insurance rates are like there.

I'm sure it'll be a great game, but that is still very disappointing to hear. I mean, I guess you can't let the player run over a bunch of people as the Batman........but why not???

I don't care as long as we still have a great story. Also the fact that we can ride in the batmobile is cool enough.

I cant see civilians doing anything but detract from the tone and gameplay.

This seems like one of those things that people would think would be a good idea and make sense for some reason, but actually it's a terrible idea. For them to spend the time and money to implement it would be wasteful. If they did implement it and actually try and make it more than a lame cosmetic thing, they would have to build systems around it and it would just become a completely different (probably worse) game by nature.

Seems reasonable, If I lived in Gotham I would never leave the house.

It made sense in both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City to not have any civilians but when they open up the entire Gotham City and there's not a single civilian running about just seems ridiculous in terms of creating a believable world.

Personally I could see the complexities of civillian AI as a potentially game-changing mechanic if done right, and a means to revive an otherwise stale game series. I mean, with each new game console I feel the same way about putting resources into game mechanics beyond just how pretty you can render a scene at all costs, but we never see the fruits of the potential even on the theoretically unlimited PC platform.

Kind of disappointing. Being immersed in the setting is a big part of open world games, and being in what was virtually a ghost town put me out of the game constantly in Origins.

At least in City they had a "reasonable" explanation for that...

Then again, given the focus in the batmobile, and the way to drives through everything, it is no surprise that they decided to go for an empty town...

I would prefer very sparse civilians. Like you might see at 11pm and alter on a weeknight. that would make sense to me and minimize the disruption of gameplay, while still occasionally forcing the player to consider their safety.