Arkham City’s Robin is Tim Drake, available as a playable character to those who pre-order from Best Buy.

There’s a new article up on Game Informer that includes some MAJOR SPOILERS so If you don’t want to know anything about the new Arkham City game, stop reading now.

There’s heaps of new information in the new article, including revelation that Hugo Strange will be in the sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum. In the Arkham Universe, this is the first time Batman has encountered Hugo Strange, which leaves plenty of possibilities plot-wise.

Also discussed are new additions to the combat system (including taunts, a “beat-down” attack and multi-counters); as well as some information on the roles of Two Face, Catwoman, Harley and Hugo Strange.

It’s a long, multi-page article, that also includes some in depth descriptions of the earlier parts of the plot, complete with dialogue, so don’t say I didn’t warn you about the SPOILERS.

Don’t know about you, but I am majorly pumped for this game.

Some new Batman: Arkham City Screenshots were released by Warner Bros. earlier today, with some concept art and a Harley Quinn render.

See more images here

Given the dramatic impact that the Scarecrow hallucination sequences had in the first game (and their popularity) I think Rocksteady would be crazy not to include Dr. Crane in the sequel. Quoted on the Computer and Video Games website, Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill:

Arkham City game director Sefton Hill was reluctant to talk directly about whether the sequel to Arkham Asylum would feature similar Fear Toxin induced hallucinations, but hinted towards more to come with an always teasing, “stay tuned”.

“This is a really tough question to answer,” he told PSM3 when asked whether Dr. Crane would return in Arkham City.

“So I hope you don’t mind if I duck it by saying that we totally understand how popular the Scarecrow sequences were and that we also really enjoyed creating them.”

Sounds like it’s highly likely.

Some new information from Joystiq:

In the latest issue of the UK’s PSM3 magazine, Batman: Arkham City director Sefton Hill outlined an upgrade to Batman’s “Detective Mode” designed to help him extract information. Batman will now be able to scan a criminal database to find likely informants among henchmen, and then interrogate them to get what he needs — like extra Riddler clues.

“The Riddler continues to taunt the Dark Knight with mind-bending puzzles and exploration challenges,” Hill said, “but the location of his biggest secrets are known only to him and people he’s told. Rather than unlocking their locations using maps, Batman will be able to scan a gang of thugs to find a potential informant.”

Comics Alliance has an article by the very funny Chris Sims which has some very interesting facts on Rocksteady’s unreleased Batman: Arkham City.

Wheels or not, Batman can essentially fly this time round. He has a new gadget called a Grapple Boost, which pulls him up and launches him into the air, and can be combined with a new dive which pulls into high-speed, street level flight.

He also now has a second zip line which he can shoot out while using the first: think classic Spider Man.

Chris then makes some interesting observations about the original Arkham Asylum and brings up one of my main issues with it (the convenient placement of gargoyles throughout the facility):

I haven’t seen it in practice, but the fact that Batman can use his grappling hook to boost himself into the air gives me the idea that while they could still play a role as “perch points,” you probably won’t need a gargoyle every time you want to use the grappling hook. Although, oddly enough, the everpresent Arkham gargoyles would actually make more sense in the outside areas of a walled-off portion of the city than they did decorating the treatment wards of a mental hospital. Seriously, no wonder nobody ever got cured there.

There’s more detail in the article, including some more on Catwoman, over at Comics Alliance.

There’s some interesting facts and speculation that IGN has gleaned from an article in Game Informer about the upcoming Batman: Arkham City. If you’re keen to avoid any POSSIBLE SPOILERS I would suggest not reading further. There’s no major plot points, but I know some are quite particular about not knowing anything about it beforehand.

From IGN:

…we know Arkham City’s story sees Quincy Sharp, Arkham’s warden in the first game, now entrenched as mayor of Gotham City. With the former Arkham complex in ruins thanks to the Joker, Sharp converts a large portion of Gotham’s slums into a new facility run by Dr. Hugo Strange.

Strange has only one rule for its legion of insane patients: don’t escape. This leaves dangerous villains like Joker and Two-Face free to battle it out…

Once Catwoman becomes part of the equation, things become complicated. IGN guess that much like the comics, it will be unclear where her loyalties lie.

ArkhamCity.co.uk have an Interview with Sefton Hill of Rocksteady games, all about the upcoming Batman: Arkham City. There’s some interesting revelations in the interview. I’ve already posted about the increase in game area:

It is this attention to detail that gives our games the deep and intense atmosphere that so many players have found so compelling, and so we have had to seriously scale up our art team in order to bring the same level of detail to Arkham City, which is about 4-5 times bigger than Arkham Asylum.

Now there’s some more revelations about Batman’s gadgets, and the number of animations used for Batman’s actions:

In terms of gameplay, we knew very early on that just scaling up Batman’s abilities and gadgets wasn’t going to work as he is fundamentally facing a new game world and totally different range of enemies in this game, so we took his move set from Batman: Arkham Asylum and built from there.

Looking at the raw amount of animations in this sequel, Batman’s moves have doubled in number and we also wanted to create an authentic sense of continuity from the end of Batman: Arkham Asylum, so the player will begin Batman: Arkham City with many of the same core gadgets that they unlocked in the first game.

The complete interview can be found on ArkhamCity.co.uk.

I stumbled across a great interview with Mark Hamill recently, where he talks a little about the upcoming Batman: Arkham City. The interview is from May, and doesn’t really reveal a whole lot of new information. What I loved about it was Mark explaining his protectiveness of The Animated Series’ Joker role. He talks about when they were to employ another actor to do the voices for the talking Joker toys and other “minor” roles:

“They said, ‘Well, we can’t pay you what you expect, we can only pay a scale.’ I said, ‘Look, I’d rather not let anyone else sleep in my sleeping bag.’ I would do all those things for scale. I even did the voices on the Australian Batman rollercoaster ride, I’m totally into it.”

It’s disappointing that Mr. Hamill has said he won’t be portraying the Joker after Arkham City, though I can understand his desire to walk away from the role on a high note. In my opinion, Hamill’s Joker is equally iconic as Ledger’s or Nicholson’s.

Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill spoke to Official Playstation Magazine UK recently about Batman: Arkham City.

“Gamers who played Batman: Arkham Asylum will know how dedicated we are as a studio to injecting an incredible amount of detail into every environment we build. It is this attention to detail that gives our games the deep and intense atmosphere that so many players have found so compelling, and so we have had to seriously scale up our art team in order to bring the same level of detail to Arkham City.”

Hill also talks about the Rocksteady’s decision to “build a custom, dedicated mocap wing to the studio.”