After weeks of speculation and little hints being dropped here and there, we can now confirm that Batman: Arkham Knight is indeed the next Rocksteady game.
Gamestop has announced that the game’s release date is October 14, 2014 available for all major consoles.
The story takes place one year after the events of Arkham City and we can see from the trailer, as well as Gameinformer released pictures that The Batmobile will become a cornerstone of Batman: Arkham Knight. Game director Sefton Hill also says, “This is the natural end for the story. We really want to go out in style.”
What does this mean for the game you may ask yourself? Well it means that with the Batmobile being such a core element of the gameplay, the environment of the game should be double the size of previous games. More room to explore Gotham City will be a welcome addition, villains Two-Face, Harley Quinn, and the Penguin will be back from the previous games.
More details will be announced to see what plot line Batman: Arkham Knight will follow. A lot of speculation has been shown that perhaps the story will take after the famed Batman: Hush graphic novel. We will be keeping you updated when we find out more.
Here is all the info so far from the Game Informer article in this months issue:
-Last Batman game for Rocksteady, will work on something totally new next.
-There will be a brand new villain, something made by Rocksteady that they say will be the ultimate test for Batman
-Batmobile can be called at any moment with a button.
The city streets are much wider to allow for the batmobile. You will rocket jump off ramps and do all sorts of cool maneuvers.
-You can eject jump out of the batmobile right into a super fast glide straight through the glass of a building to knock out enemies. They said glass breaking will be a big new thing.
-New moves include being able to use all your gadgets during flight. You now have a counter throw where you counter a guy and throw him into another guy. A new quick ground takedown.
-A quick backflip where you then throw a batarang in an enemies face.
-For the predator sections you can now chain takedowns of up to four enemies. For instance pop out of a grate and take one guy, jump to the next and so on. You can now enter grates from a distance, he will automatically do a jump or roll to enter them.
-Riddler challenges seem to be car based. The first one has you enter a sort of Riddler race track where you have to activate walls and ramps, when you activate one another closes so as you drive you have to be constantly turning on and off these ramps as you navigate the course.
Batmobile fires missles and stun guns. It destroys anything it touches so if you bump into cars the cars go flying. It’s basically unstoppable.
-Story is that after Joker’s death all the criminals decided to work together and their plan comes together this night where they plan to kill batman. The article talks mostly about -Scarecrow, he scattered bombs throughout Gotham.
-Oracle will play a larger role, you get to visit her base and talk to her, tons of batman easter eggs included.
Kevin Conroy is Batman, all the previous voice actors are back.
-Gothom City is 5 times bigger than AC. Split into 3 areas. NO LOAD TIMES at all, entering buildings is seemless.
They spend a bunch of time talking about how detailed the models are, one character has more polygons than the environment of Asylum.
-Batman will start off with the old batsuit and upgrade at some point in the game.
-It says it is running on their modified Unreal engine.
– All quickfire gadgets can now be used during flight.
– Combat tweaks (note: Not enough time to go over these in detail. for example, you can throw by tilting left towards the opponent and hitting counter)
– did I mention the screenshots are gorgeous?
– Arkham Knight isn’t just the name of the game.. it’s also the name of the [new] villain.
– Fear Takedowns. ie, burst out of grate, action slows down allowing you to target another goon for another attack and so on. Can be used on groups up to 3 as long as they’re close enough together and no one has already spotted Batman.
– They seem to try to tackle the old school Arkham issue of “open door – black screen loading”
– The game looks gorgeous. Huge.
-“This is a single-player game. There is no multiplayer.”
– You can launch into a fast glide from the Batmobile just like the trailer.
