Batman: Arkham City Out in October, New Details Revealed

After dropping quite a lot of information about Batman: Arkham City, its developer, Rocksteady Studios, has now revealed the release date of the new title that will feature the famous comic book character.

Batman: Arkham City will be the sequel to the surprisingly popular Batman: Arkham Asylum, and see the famous Dark Knight try to survive in a special area of Gotham city overrun by criminals and ruled over by one of his arch enemies, Dr. Hugo Strange.

Rocksteady Studios, the developer of the new game, has finally revealed the actual release date of the title, which will be arriving on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on October 18, in North America, and October 21, in Europe.

More details were also revealed about the setting and the story of the whole game.

According to the developer, Arkham City's map will be five times bigger than in Asylum, and is completely open to the player, who can choose which districts to explore, with the help of Batman's gliding cape and trusty Batclaw.

“Our attitude towards pacing is to throw everything at the player straight away and let them decide how and when they want to navigate those options. Telling a story in Arkham Asylum was very easy because it was a very linear experience. Arkham City isn’t a sandbox game but it’s not completely linear either – it’s somewhere in-between,” said Dax Ginn, marketing game manager at Rocksteady.

There will be a core set of missions, but the player can ultimately decide how to pursue them or engage in side missions.

Many of the mechanics from Arkham Asylum are present in the new game, including combat or Detective Mode, which, although praised by many, was criticized because it prevented players from seeing the beautiful visuals of the first game.

Dax revealed that this was one of the few criticisms received by Arkham Asylum, but the team couldn't remove it because Batman is, ultimately, the world's greatest detective.

“Our thinking was more about why people responded to it in that way. Gamers wanted it to be more of a tool, just like the Bat Claw is a tool. We hadn’t balanced it right so it felt more like an exploit than a tool, because it gave you so much information. That’s our understanding of the criticisms and our response has been to balance that information better.”

Expect more and more details about Batman: Arkham City to appear in the following months, before its release in October, but, until then, check out the three new screenshots below.