Batman Enemy Within: The Telltale Series
Episodes: 1-5
Season two was an exciting opportunity to expand on features that worked well in season one and give the player unique choices with combat.
Year: 2017
Role: UI Designer
Tech: Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator, Telltale Tool, After Effects
Platforms: PS4/XBOX One/PC/iOS/Android/Mac
New Gameplay Features
Quicktime Labels are a way to provide player choice in the middle of an action sequence. The challenges with the design were text legibility and translating across all platforms such as PC/Touch. Below are the initial concept pitches to the final execution in game and some of the clever ways we were able to give the player choices in action.
Sequential Linking and Linking redesign
In season one, we introduced a linking system that improved the features and flow; for season two, we added a new type of linking: sequential. We improved the linking system by making the flow smoother and instead of constantly breaking connections, we streamlined it so you never have a bad connection. For mobile, instead of having to tap a link, then choose link, tap another link, then confirm the link, we streamlined it to use the UI to let you know when the link is active and when you’ve successfully made a link. This cut the tapping action from four taps to two taps.
Bat Computer Animations
The bat computer animations from season 1 set a high standard for season 2. Instead of creating new animations from scratch each episode, we created animating “do-dats,” which were a set of animations a UI artist could use throughout the season with storytelling moments to help add extra animations without taking any of the artist’s time or effort away from animating the main story.
Riddler Screens:
I had the fun task of doing the Riddler Screens and they were inspired on some neo green hacking with patterns and old school TVs. I created a lot of flipbooks to utilize the glitching animation effects to the best ability.
Bat Bruce Choice 2.0:
Similar to Season One we wanted to provide the player with an option to play as Bruce or Batman. We learned a lot from the first implementation and decided to simplify it so it’s a binary dialog choice but spruce it up with some nice graphics and visuals. Because we simplified it we were able to transition Batman/Bruce while he was walking to get a very cool effect.
