Most of you have been dazzled by Paul Dini’s work in Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and more. Although Dini is a relative newcomer in the videogame world, most gamers were thrilled by his writing in Batman: Arkham Asylum. Early reviews indicate that he’s better than ever in Batman: Arkham City. Dini recently discussed the differences between writing for animation and writing for a game. He told Gamasutra:
It’s like writing the same movie about 12 times, you know? For every variation. You go down and the character has a certain goal to accomplish — like he’s got to get to this room and then there’s a certain boss along the way, and he’s got to go through the other guys. But every loop has to be written, and scripted, and accounted for.
So I find myself looking for variations of thug dialogue a lot, like “What’s that?” “It’s the Bat!” “The Bat, he’s here!” It’s like, how do you say the same thing over and over again? Because every movement — “We got him!” “He got away!” — has to be done over and over again.
As you’d expect, I’m a total Dini mark. The guy is just frickin’ awesome. He owns in the animation and comic-book worlds. His videogame writing is also super good; perhaps one day he’ll be as captivating as the bloke that wrote SmackDown vs. Raw 2011. *joke*
What did you think of Dini’s writing in Arkham Asylum? I know that some of you are picking up Arkham City tonight. When you have a chance, kindly leave your first impressions of the story.
