Again sadly no launch for the Batman: AA site so my apologies for getting a little premature. I am assured by the guys at Eidos that it will be this week but I'm going to hold back from saying when now until it officially launches! But Gamespot.co.uk have recently sat down with writer Paul Dini to discuss his most recent involvement with Batman: Arkham Asylum and writing the game this is to be one of the highlights of the year.

GameSpot: Have you worked on any games in the past?

Paul Dini: I have. A long time ago, games were something that would come up infrequently, where I would wind up either cowriting on them or consulting, or writing parts of them. There was, way back when--like in the early '90s--I worked briefly on a Tiny Toons video game. And then, you know, [this was] when things were real primitive, left-to-right-type stuff. And there was a Sega Genesis game, (The Adventures of Batman & Robin), I believe. It was a Batman and Robin game that combined more traditional gameplay with animated elements. Where it would actually play like a part of the animated series. And we had extremely good animation on it. And it came on a disc. And you would go from a chase scenario to a cutscene with Batman and various villains, which would be fully animated. And I worked on that to a great extent, writing all the animated sequences and working on some of the actual gameplay.

Unfortunately, it came out kind of at the end, when one technology was kind of wrapping up and another one was starting off, so it didn't get wide distribution. I think I saw it in stores maybe once. I had the existing animation on a VHS tape for a long time, and it was nice stuff, but it never really got seen and never got exposure. I think the technology was still a year or two down the road to make it a real breakthrough game.

Since that time I really haven't done all that much in video games, other than play a lot of them. And then this opportunity came up and--through a friend of mine who was working at DC Comics at the time--and he thought I would be a good match to work with the team at Rocksteady.

GS: Tell us about the first few meetings you had with the Rocksteady team. How much of the story was fleshed out and how much were they looking for you to help with that?

PD: Well, there wasn't much going on as far as story went, other than just the idea [of] wouldn't it be great to use Arkham Asylum as a game location? Because that's a good chance to get Batman and all the villains together in one spot. It doesn't take him all over town; it keeps him confined to one large area. What I remember from the first few meetings was, there wasn't a lot of story in place. They had reenvisioned Arkham as more of like an Alcatraz-like island. Which I thought was very cool, because Arkham's location changes, you know, from medium to medium. Like, in the comics it's kind of off by itself in the country. And in the Christopher Nolan movies, it appears to be right downtown, kind of like in a crime-ridden part of the city. And I liked the idea of getting it out and away from Gotham proper.

The idea of making it either on an island or on a peninsula connected by a narrow bridge seemed really interesting to me. Because it does remove it a little bit and it also creates a threat. Like, what if [the villains] get off the island? What if they come into town and create havoc there? There were also places to go within the island that seemed to be very visually interesting and, from a game perspective, very challenging.

Arkham was sort of reenvisioned as this grand old manor built on an island that had become a sanitarium, then a hospital, then finally a madhouse. And within the confines of the estate grounds, there were gardens and beach areas and caves and everything--great things to explore. And then the mansion itself, which has been converted into this huge, huge hospital [with] elements of it [that] are kind of modern, even futuristic in some places. But it's also existing side by side with the classic Victorian madhouse and a bit of steampunk and a bit of retro from the '40s and everything. It's just great visually.

And when I went into the first meeting at Rocksteady, some of these conceptual pieces were up, and it just got me so excited to see this reimagining of Arkham. I was saying, "Oh, man, this place is just--it's great!" You know, it's so fun to wander around in here and you can create a story from every aspect of the Arkham locale.

To read the entire interview click here...

(Source - Gamespot.co.uk)