Batman: Arkham City a "huge technical challenge," 80% will be set on streets of Gotham

Batman Arkham City Thumb

Rocksteady say that 80% of Arkham City will be set in the streets of Gotham. The other 20% will take place in interiors tied to certain missions, but for the most part, players will have a large amount of freedom to explore from the very start of the game.

Rocksteady told PSM3 that creating Gotham has been a "huge technical challenge," but the increased team size has helped them to pull it off. There are 97 people working on Arkham City, compared to 65 on the first game.

Rocksteady have previously said that Arkham City will be five times larger than Arkham Asylum, but the team say that doesn't mean the game will feel more empty.

"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.

"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."

Batman: Arkham City is due out on October 18. For more, check out the latest Arkham City screens and the in-game trailer .

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.