NYCC 2011: Batman: Arkham City Panel Rundown

New York Comic Con 2011 is full steam ahead, and earlier today brought the highly anticipated panel centered on Batman: Arkham City. For those who did not attend the panel itself (I can’t blame you, as the line for the panel grew to immense portions within minutes), here’s the quick rundown of what went on:

• The Panel was hosted by video game consultant (and former Newsweek writer) N’Gai Croal, with Sefton Hill (Rocksteady Studios Game Director), Nick Arundel (Audio Director), and Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez (he worked on a track, “Deranged“, which appears on the game’s soundtrack), as well as the voice of Batman himself, Kevin Conroy, as panelists.
• Some time was spent talking about behind-the-scenes inspirations for the game, and how much of a daunting task it was to try and step up over the critically-acclaimed predecessor, Batman: Arkham Asylum. In a nutshell, Rocksteady felt that the open environment of Arkham City was a natural evolution to what was offered in the original game, and this new level of freedom and exploration further enhanced the legendary detective skills of the dark knight.
• The Rocksteady team consists of only 60-100 staff members, which just goes to show that an uber-large development team isn’t needed to create a stellar game (to which N’Gai took a quick jab at Ubisoft Montreal).
• The game world in Arkham City is roughly five times the size of that found in Batman: Arkham Asylum. 
• Arkham City should clock in at around 30 hours of gameplay.
• Batman’s arsenal of moves has doubled, as well as the animations and overall amount of dialog found within the game.
• A new launch trailer for the game was shown, which can be seen further down the page.
• Lastly, Rocksteady wowed the audience with a live gameplay demo of the Xbox 360 version of the game. Needless to say, the footage was incredible to see in person. We will have the video available for viewing as soon as possible (please bear with us, as the video itself is quite large, and will take some time to render).

As mentioned before, here’s the new launch trailer for the game. Batman: Arkham City will be out on October 18 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and in early November for the PC!