14 DAY TRIAL // Batman: Arkham City includes quite a few Batman villains, which has driven some players to believe that the roles they play will be limited, but a representative at developer Rocksteady says that the decision to make the game open world is what lead to larger cast of characters.
Talking to Joystiq, Dax Ginn, who is the marketing manager working at Rocksteady, has stated, “It’s not always fun being the righteous arm of justice, so we wanted to explore what it was like to be a criminal within Arkham City, as well. Catwoman became a great option to explore that. We kind of look around at other games, and it’s obvious that some players like breaking the rules.”
The executive added that the team made the decision to make sure that the player felt constantly under threat while exploring the open world space of Arkham City and that drove the decision to make the Joker, who was the main antagonist in the first game, just one of the villains that the Batman would face, alongside a cast including Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face and even Catwoman.
Ginn added, “The decision behind bringing in more Batman characters was driven by the call we made early on to make Batman: Arkham City an open-world game. Arkham Asylum is very tense, very claustrophobic, so you didn’t need any more than to put Batman and Joker in that pressure cooker and just let them go at it.”
Arkham City will see the inmates of the well known asylum moved to a walled off quarter of the city and Batman will try to work out the sinister motives behind this move.
Players will be able to play Batman: Arkham City on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 on October 18 in the United States and three days later in Europe.
A PC version of the game is also planned for launch during November.