Rocksteady has revealed that the Caped Crusader will be spending a whopping 80 percent of his crime-busting antics in the forthcoming Batman: Arkham City on the streets.
Chatting with PSM3 (via CVG), marketing game manager Dax Ginn revealed that the team have crafted a sprawling game world packed to the rafters with content , though promised the game’s plot still remains an important factor.
"Interiors are locked to specific missions, but 80% of the game takes place on the streets," commented Ginn.
"This means you can begin the game and just start exploring," he explained, before moving to assure readers that the story won’t take a nose dive as a result of having more freedom. "Plot is really important to us," he said.
"Our objective was not to make a bigger game world just for the sake of it. We want to fill it with content, and there’s no better world than Batman’s universe to take inspiration from.”
Elsewhere, Ginn revealed that the cobbling together such a massive world resulted in Rocksteady having to take on more staff, and as such Arkham City boasts a considerably larger work force than its predecessor.
"We have 97 people on the team, compared to 65 on the first game. Because we’ve decided to make such a large world we had to bring in more artists, animators and so on. It’s been a pretty huge technical and creative undertaking for the team,” said Ginn.
Batman: Arkham City is pencilled in for release in October 2011 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.