BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS Announced – Out October 25!

The Batman Arkham games have been some of this generations finest and most critically acclaimed games. It’s rare to see a franchise as beloved as Batman have such universal praise when taken to other formats but Rocksteady’s Arkham games are to video games what Nolan’s Batman is to movies. It’s exciting then to finally have an announcement of the next game in the series – Batman: Arkham Origins.

Game Informer released their latest cover which featured the new game, and brought us the first details. It will be out on October 25th if all goes to plan and will released on PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U. Rocksteady, the team behind the first two games will not be working on this game however. Instead, Warner Bros in-house studio in Montreal will be in charge.

They will use lots of the assets from Rocksteady’s game to keep a similar look and feel, while the new head for the project, Eric Holmes, has worked on other superhero games in the past, including The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and Prototype. The video below gives a more in depth look at the team behind the game and what they hope to achieve:

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In terms of synopsis Game Informer had this to say:

the game takes place years before both of the previous Arkham titles when a young, unrefined Batman encounters many supervillains for the first time. On our full cover image below, fans will recognize the assassin Deathstroke, who appears for the very first time in a core Arkham game.

In the video above, the team explain that “It’s such an amazing opportunity to be the first Arkham game actually set on the streets of Gotham City.” Presumably then they will be taking the Arkham City gameplay and expanding it over the whole of Gotham.

They mention how the game takes place on Christmas Eve, so whilst it’s quieter than a typical night in Gotham they still want to “add that layer of life and make it look like a functional place. Even though it’s Christmas Eve, even though it’s super cold, even though everyone’s at home with their families we still wanted to show it was a functional city and not a deserted wasteland.”

In addition to this, Game Informer also dropped the bomb that there would be a game called Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate that will hit the Vita and 3DS on the same day as the main game, October 25. It’s a completely separate experience that takes place after Arkham Origins.

The team working on it, Armature Studio, was founded by some of the guys behind the fantastic Metroid Prime trilogy so expect good things. It has been described as a 2.5D Metroid style exploration/action game, no word yet on if Batman will have morph ball functionality with his utility belt.

Source: Game Informer