The first details for Batman: A Telltale Series have been revealed at SXSW — shining some light on the direction the game will be taking, and some familiar faces that’ll be popping up in the adventure.
Set in a modern day Gotham with art inspired from over 75 years of Batman comics, players will make choices which shape the city they face as Bruce by day and Batman by night. The series won’t be tied to any other existing Batman media.
Following the livestream, The Telltale Blog shared the series’ premise as follows:
Batman is the perfect character for the studio to explore in a Telltale series, giving the team the opportunity to dive deeper into the mind of the man behind the mask. Each night, Bruce Wayne chooses to change Gotham for the better. The team wants to explore what the consequences are of the player’s actions when decisions made as Bruce have a critical impact on his nightly crusade as Batman, and vice versa. Certain key situations will give the player the decision to approach a scene as Bruce or Batman, with consequences for both sides.
Although members of the “Bat-Family” have been shelved to shift the story focus toward Bruce and Batman, secondary characters such as Alfred Pennyworth, Vicki Vale, James Gordon, and Renee Montoya are set to appear over the course of the series. There will also be certain characters who will share deeply personal connections to Bruce’s private life, and choices players make will lead those characters “toward corruption or redemption”.
Telltale neglected to show off any villains that might be featured, opting to wait closer to the series’ debut.
While the developers decided to show no in-game media at this time, they said the series will have non-photorealistic “living comic book art” direction. Aiming for a Summer 2016 release window, the game will boast a M (Mature 17+) rating as many of Telltale’s story based titles have before it, as they are aiming for a cinematic approach akin to an R-rated film.
