Batman: Arkham City To Swoop Down For Release In October

Batman: Arkham City takes place in a sealed-off section of Gotham City that the inmates of Arkham Asylum are allowed to call home, the catch being that they aren’t allowed to leave its premises. Unfortunately, having a whole bunch of Batman’s criminal gallery all locked in the same cage doesn’t bode well for any of them, so Batman has to step in to intervene.

Arkham City (the locale) is around five times the size of Arkham Asylum from Batman: Arkham Asylum, according to developer, Rocksteady Studios, who say that the game is somewhere in between linear and a “sandbox.” While you’ll play through Arkham City’s story and missions in a specific order, going off-track will allow you to discover character-driven sidequests, such as answering a phone call from Zsasz or coming across an informant who has more information to reveal.

“If you’re just flying around the streets looking for a fight, you’ll pick up bits of information that have been designed to be communicated in an ambient fashion at that particular stage in the game,” says Dax Ginn, marketing game manager at Rocksteady. “There is a vast amount of conversational dialogue that has been a serious job to write and record, but we finally finished it last Wednesday.”

Rocksteady have also added the ability to spend more time in the air, rather than on the ground, in Batman: Arkham City. Like in Arkham Asylum, you’ll be able to use Batman’s cape to glide across distances, but this time, you can also use his grapple in mid-air to latch on to buildings or passing helicopters to give yourself another lift.

Batman: Arkham City also finally has a release date, and yes, it’s still coming this fall. Warner Bros. are releasing the game on October 18th in the U.S., October 21st in Europe, and October 19th in Australia on the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Leading up to the game’s release, DC and Warner Bros. are releasing a six-issue miniseries comic that cover the events between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. You can find out more in this post.