- 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.
-No more pre-rendered cinematics everything is done in engine
-The larger riots can have up to 50 people flipping cars and looting stores.
Characters
-Things such as Gordon's trench coat and Batman's cape now have Apex cloth physics. They react realistically to changes in wind and movement
-When it rains rains bead of water run down Batman's suit tracing every groove
-The wrinkles on Gordon's face crinkle as he talks
The City
-The city is as detailed as ever with realistic moving clouds with the moon shining through
-Halloween characters and balloons litter the street adding a creepy vibe
-Neon signs of the various shops shine brightly around the city
-The skyline has helicopters and blimps flying through it
-Steam puffs out of the sewers in a realistic way
Few more things:
- You can now use the linear launcher on anything to create ziplines. This is done in mid flight so you can quickly land where you want.
- All enemies now have the ability to grapple Batman, not just big guys.
- Roads wont have many vehicles, just some thug cars and cop cruisers
- There can be enemy riots, up to 50 enemies on screen at once.
- More Riddler type challenges than just racing.
Some more on the story and the demo GI played. Don't read if you dont want spoilers
[*]Starts off with the evacuation of Gotham cause Scarecrow has put fear toxin bombs all over[*]Each villain is doing their own mission to cause chaos and spread Batman thin.[*]Two-Face and Pengiun are shooting cops in the streets.[*]Batman sees the batsignal and meets Gordon at the roof, fills him in on the scarecrow issue and Gordon gets a call from Barbara saying she is out of the city.[*]Batman goes off to find scarecrow thugs and contacts Barbara who is of course still in the city helping him out.[*]He helps some police when an armored vehicle comes through the streets blowing up police cars, batman hops into the batmobile and takes down the vehicle. Out of the wreckage a scarecrow thug tries to throw fear toxin at batman but he catches it and gets the info he wants.[*]He takes a detour to find a riddler thug, you know the drill, this leads him into an underground race track, lab thing where Riddler shows up and says he will be testing you all night long.[*]He beats the race track, Riddler says he will use the data he learned to make much harder tracks later.[*]He next visits the clock tower oracle is in, it has a statue head that you pull back like Adam West's switch, no red button, its a scanner instead. This reveals the hidden room. She is analyzing the toxin from the thug. It has a radiation she can track, Batman needs to reach an antennae in the Falcone shipping yard.[*]He beats up some goons and puts the tracker on the antennae. As he walks out he is being shot at buy a guy in a militaristic Batsuit flying through the air at him. The batsuit has a big A on it. He knocks down Batman, stomps on him and says "you aren't going anywhere". He points his gun at Batman's head and the screen fades to black and you hear a gunshot. End of demo.
- Arkham Knight is built on a "juiced up" version of the a custom Unreal Engine to make use of the Xbox One and PS4.
- By not being cross-gen they've been able to push what the machines can do
- Rocksteady describe Arkham Knight as "a real, genuine next-gen game"
- There is no multiplayer in Arkham Knight. Rocksteady is focused on "making the best single-player experience it can" and doesn't feel it needs multiplayer.
- Game Informer says Rocksteady isn't saying what's next but "it's most definitely not Batman related"
- The finale has been in mind since the development of Arkham City
- Rocksteady is emphasising the detail is more important than the scale of the world. They don't want to create the biggest open-world, they want to create the richest, densest and most vibrant
- Batmobile is designed to be "the best car in any game ever", it takes up around 160mb of memory in game and will just about fit in an Xbox 360 (if that was the whole game). There are hundreds of thousands of polygons, as well as textures and shaders used on it
The developer that made Arkham a household name is back. Rocksteady Studios' Arkham Asylum innovated with the freeflow combat system and stalking gameplay in 2009, and the team blew it all out to an open world in 2011's Arkham City. Rocksteady is hoping to raise the bar even higher on what will be its final Arkham game. Set after the events of Arkham City, Batman: Arkham Knight may just end the Dark Knight's journey.
As you've probably guessed from the cover imagery, the Batmobile is finally a core element of the gameplay. An entirely new area of Gotham City, far larger than Arkham City, has much wider streets to accommodate the new driving gameplay that is designed to integrate smoothly with Batman's gliding and grappling traversal. Batman chases down super villains Scarecrow, Penguin, Two-Face, Harley Quinn, and more.
