Finally, we’re getting details on Batman: Arkham City, succeeding the praised title released in 2009, Batman: Arkham Asylum. The Official Playstation Magazine UK got a chance to speak with Sefton Hill of Rocksteady Studios, revealing some details concerning the highly anticipated title.

• Bigger and Better — According to Arkham City’s director, the game-world will be over five times as large as that of Arkham Asylum.  Additionally, Batman will be capable of doing new abilities, and wielding new weapons and gadgets.  There are said to be twice as many combat abilities and moves, which, if you’re family with Arkham Asylum, is saying something.
• Starting where you left off — Unlike with most games, Arkham City won’t require you to earn back all of the weapons and gadgets you spent your time earning in the last game.  There is no guarantee that you’ll start off with everything you had before, but rest assured you won’t spend your time unlocking things you already did before.  You may be given some new gadgets to begin with, as well:

“…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.”

• No Slacking Off — If you’re a bit skeptical that Arkham City will live up to its predecessor, never fear.  Rocksteady Studios has hired tons of helping hands that were not there when Arkham Asylum was under way.  They are undoubtedly putting a lot of effort into this game, unlike some developers.

“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”

“Firstly, Rocksteady made the decision to build a custom, dedicated mocap wing to the studio. The new mocap studio has everything that we need for great capture and has space for a full armoury of weapons, crash mats and a load of other props. We also overhauled the entire motion capture pipeline so that we can grab even more of the subtle movement of our actors.”

The game still has a long way to go before it is released next year.  It is always a pleasant sight when developers are working hard to live up to their customer expectations.  Many developers, after releasing a successful title, put less into the sequel because they know people will buy it anyway.  Luckily for us gamers, that doesn’t seem to be the case with Rocksteady Studios.

You can find the original article here.