OFFICIAL Batman : Arkham City THREAD

Game Info

Developer : Rocksteady Studios

Publisher : Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment

Platform : PlayStation 3 / Xbox 360 / Windows PC

Release Dates : Fall 2011

Genre : Action Adventure

Mode : Single-Player / Multi-Player

Batman: Arkham City is the upcoming sequel to famed action-adventure stealth video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, based on DC Comics' Batman for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It is being developed by Rocksteady Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics. The game was officially announced during the beginning of the 2009 Spike Video Game Awards.





Story

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The story for Arkham City takes place one year after the events of Arkham Asylum. Quincy Sharp, former warden of Arkham Asylum, has taken credit for stopping the Joker, and used that notoriety to become mayor of Gotham City. As neither Arkham nor Blackgate Prison are in any condition to hold inmates, Sharp buys out a large section of Gotham's slums and arms the perimeter with mercenaries from a group called Tyger in order to create "Arkham City". The prisoners are brought into Arkham City and given free rein, told only to not attempt escape. To oversee the city, Sharp uses psychiatrist Hugo Strange who appears to have his own secret plans for the city. Batman maintains a vigil over the city, worried that the situation may get out of hand.Part of the setup for "Arkham City" was contained in plans in a hidden room in Sharp's office in Arkham Asylum.

The events of the game are set in motion when Two-Face, seeking to gain status among the inmates and other villains outside the city, devises a plan to publicly execute Catwoman. Batman decides for both the safety of Gotham and of his past romance with Catwoman that he must stop the execution by entering Arkham City himself.

A teaser trailer was released, and featured a battered Joker, apparently still recovering from his wounds in the first game, being nursed by Harley Quinn, while Gotham descends into chaos. The sequel was confirmed by famed Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy to be "really, really dark". While relating the game's dark nature to the animated movie Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, Conroy also said, "It involves a lot of the villains and it goes to that area - it's that dark."

Gameplay

Arkham City, like its predecessor, is an action video game that incorporates elements of stealth and predator tactics. The player plays as Batman, making his way around Gotham City to complete mission objectives. In addition to the primary mission, the game will introduce secondary missions which will feature a number of key characters and their stories within the city. The player can opt to move silently, avoiding inmates and other enemies using a combination of gadgets and to sneak up on his enemies to take them down silently, using new tactics to surprise the enemy. At other times, Batman may be forced to fight through inmates using an improved version of the combat system from Arkham Asylum, allowing for multiple simultaneous counters, reactions to thrown objects, and the use of all of Batman's gadgets within combat. Movement about the city is made difficult due to the formation of gangs and territory between rival villains, such as Two-Face and the Joker, that causes in-fighting that Batman needs to avoid.

All of the gadgets previously obtained in the first game will be present at the start of Arkham City, some possessing improved or new abilities. At least two additional gadgets have been revealed: smoke bombs which Batman can use to sneak away in confusion, and a broadcast tracer device to locate signals and track them to their sources. The game incorporates more puzzle elements; the use of Batman's "Detective Mode", which highlights elements such as enemy skeletons and clues on-screen, is used to perform forensic analysis at crime scenes, such as tracing the origin of a sniper round. The player also has access to a criminal database that tracks the major villains across the city that is used within Detective Mode and the forensic puzzles. However, Rocksteady's art director David Hugo stated that the use of Detective Mode will be changed to an "augmented reality mode", as they found players had completed Arkham Asylum using Detective Mode all of the time. Challenges from the Riddler will also be present, but it will require additional effort to locate these, such as through interrogation of men loyal to the Riddler.


Confirmed Characters

Batman / Bruce Wayne

The Joker

Harley Quinn

Catwoman

Two-Face

The Riddler

Mr. Freeze

Talia al Ghul

Victor Zsasz

Alfred Pennyworth

Hugo Strange


Videos

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Screenshots


















OPM UK Confirm Vehicles in Arkham City ?

1st we get a huge surprise with Rocksteady including Multiplayer in Batman: Arkham City and now we seem to be getting what a lot of fans were demanding in the original; vehicle based gameplay. "So there in then" this is the remark the Official Playstation Magazine gave after Rocksteady claim that vehicles in Arkham City are "something they will cover at a later date"

It's been argued here and on many other fan sites that getting to finally control the Batmobile will bring down the atmosphere and style everyone loved so much in the original. But with Rocksteady already confirming that Arkham City is five times the size of the original game there is plenty of room for areas to be designed purely for vehicle combat.

Obviously this is still a shady PR response and no one knows exactly what we will be taking control of but it's looking even more likely we wont be on foot for the entire duration in Arkham City.



4 / 5 Times Bigger Then Before

Rocksteady boss Sefton Hill has told the latest issue of Official Playstation Magazine UK that Batman: Arkham City is "four or five times" bigger than its predecessor, Batman: Arkham Asylum. He's also said that Batman has double the number of moves he had in the first game.
"Without a doubt, the hardest part of moving the game setting from the confines of the asylum into the urban sprawl of Arkham City was simply building the environment," he told the magazine.

"Our objective in this game is not to make the biggest game we can, but to make the best game possible. Gamers who played Batman: Arkham Asylum will know how dedicated we are as a studio to injecting an incredible amount of detail into every environment we build.

"It is this attention to detail that gives our games the deep and intense atmosphere that so many players have found so compelling, and so we have had to seriously scale up our art team in order to bring the same level of detail to Arkham City, which is about 4-5 times bigger than Arkham Asylum."

Batman will have all the moves he had from Arkham Asylum, plus a bunch of additional new moves, it seems. Hill says that the studio understands that "just scaling up" Batman's abilities wouldn't cut it for a sequel.

"In terms of gameplay, we knew very early on that just scaling up Batman's abilities and gadgets wasn't going to work as he is fundamentally facing a new game world and totally different range of enemies in this game, so we took his move set from Batman: Arkham Asylum and built from there," added Hill.

"Looking at the raw amount of animations in this sequel, Batman's moves have doubled in number and we also wanted to create an authentic sense of continuity from the end of Batman: Arkham Asylum, so the player will begin Batman: Arkham City with many of the same core gadgets that they unlocked in the first game.

"Batman's cutting-edge technology is a significant part of the game, so gamers can expect to see a range of totally new gadgets, as well as evolved new features built into those tools that they already enjoyed in Batman: Arkham Asylum."

The game's out in fall 2011. OPM UK's story on the game is a fourteen-page long cover, if anybody in the UK wants to pick it up.


Catwoman Details