Batman: Arkham Assylum boasts a bigger city

In what can only be described as ‘duh’ news, Rocksteady has revealed in the latest issue of OPM that it’s upcoming title Batman: Arkham City is five times larger than Arkham Asylum. Of course, anybody with any form of common sense could figure out that an entire city based around the Batman universe is slated to be much bigger than a mental institute. However, Rocksteady was sure to note that Arkham City is not going to be a sandbox title, so don’t think you’re going to get to free roam with Batman just yet.

Speaking with OPM, Rocksteady boss Sefton Hill, had the following to say:

“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 said. “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.”

The buck doesn’t stop there though, as not only as the game world been dramatically increased, but Batman’s abilities have received an enhancement as well. After all, with the new collection of bad guys and bosses, he’s going to need all the offensive fire power he can muster — he’s only one guy…unless a cat shows up to help.

“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.”

As the information for this release grows, so does the anticipation. Perhaps these changes are enough to propel the Dark Knight into Game of the Year excellence.