14 DAY TRIAL // Batman: Arkham City will have a map five times bigger than its predecessor, Arkham Asylum, as Rocksteady Studios, the company behind it, revealed just how many new opportunities will be delivered to players.
Batman: Arkham Asylum impressed a lot of gamers back in 2009, but while it had a pretty big open environment, set on Arkham Island, it was largely uninhabited, making travel through it a bit of a chore.
In the upcoming Arkham City, things will change for the better, at least according to the director of the title, Sefton Hill.
"The footprint of Arkham City is about five times bigger than Arkham Island," said Hill to GameSpot.
"In Batman: Arkham Asylum, we really focused our effort on creating an intense, pressure-cooker atmosphere by locking Batman in the madhouse and allowing The Joker to turn up the heat. In Arkham City, we want to take that attitude to the next level, so we created an experience in which gamers will have a huge amount of navigational freedom, but they will also feel the extreme pressure of the challenges that they face."
The world will be completely open, and gamers will be able to go anywhere they please.
"Players will be able to go anywhere at any time, but we have made sure that players will always have a very clear idea of where they are needed most if they want to just stick to the core narrative path of the game," Hill added.
There will also be plenty of things to do in this open world, so people won't get bored.
"Explore the streets of Arkham City, and you will find many side missions, secrets, and street brawls, so players won't find it difficult to get into some trouble if that's what they are looking for," Hill concluded.
Batman: Arkham City is shaping up to be a great successor to the surprising Arkham Asylum, which burst onto the scene two years ago and showed just how great comic book-based games can be, if the developers know how to make the character and story work.
The game is set to appear around the end of the year, for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.