14 DAY TRIAL // The fact that Batman: Arkham City is an open world game was a result of the story choices made for the game and not an arbitrary decision from the developers at Rocksteady.
Sefton Hill, who is the game director who worked on Batman: Arkham City, has stated, “When we started the game we didn’t sit down and say, ‘Let’s make an open world game’. We looked at what we be a fun game to make and a fun game to play. That’s what drove the open world decision.”
He added, “It’s more about what we think is a good fit, what will be fun and what gets the team inspired, rather than picking a genre for the sake of it. It was an awful lot of work – no doubt about that – there was a lot of late nights and a lot of weekend working, but we think it was all worth it. So that would never put us off a similar experience in the future.”
This means that in the future the franchise might get a more linear installment if that's what the Batman narrative requires but that even more open world features might be introduced if they are a good fit for the story.
In Arkham City the story creates a separate enclave in Gotham where criminals are taken after the Asylum is pretty much destroyed and Batman senses that there's a nefarious force at work behind the scenes.
The game is not fully open world as most buildings cannot be entered and the main character needs to follow certain checkpoints in his adventures.
The new Batman game has been very well received by the critics, with many outlets, including Softpedia, giving it close to perfect scores.
The gaming public also welcomed the return of the Dark Knight with more than 2 million copies sold and 4.6 million shipped during the first week.
A PC version is also planned for November 18.