Conroy Returns in Batman: Arkham Knight, Sequel Features New Villain

The not-so secret surprise announcement of the day just keeps getting more interesting. The first details of Game Informer's exclusive coverage on Batman: Arkham Knight have been loosed to the wild, and they paint a picture of an interesting sequel to say the least.

While Game Informer won't be divulging any proper details until later this week, the digital version of the monthly magazine went out to subscribers today. The interested fans over on NeoGAF have been collating all the pertinent details that haven't yet been divulged by trailers or press releases.

First, the title of this final game isn't just clever; it's also closely tied to the villain of the story. Arkham Knight will be a "new" antagonist created by Rocksteady to be the "ultimate test" for Batman. There are no images of the character available in full, but he reportedly is represented in silhouette in the magazine. While his identity remains secret, we know at least one Bat-villain could be filling those shoes.

More interesting however are the observations about Arkham Knight's size. Gotham City will be five times as large as it was in Arkham City. It will be split into three distinct sections, and there will be no load times, even when moving indoors. Streets will be wider to allow the Batmobile room to maneuver, and there are jumps scattered throughout the city, too. Additionally, just like in the trailer, Batman can leap out of the Batmobile and instantly start gliding around the city. Rocksteady has also improved the gliding speed and duration to account for the larger city. Just for scale's sake, the entire polygon count for Arkham Asylum is the equivalent of one character model in Arkham Knight. Now that's detail.

Batman will be able to use all his quick-fire gadgets while gliding this time around, and there will be new takedowns included, too. Rocksteady also is including some transitional attacks from outdoors to indoors, and seems to really be excited about all the window shattering action involved. The Batmobile can also fire missile and has stun guns, and appears to be quite unstoppable on the city streets. The early report also claimed Riddler Challenges will be tied to the Batmobile through street racing-type events.

The biggest news however is that Kevin Conroy will indeed be returning to voice Bruce/Batman. The article alludes to other classic voice cast members returning as well, but since Mark Hamill has supposedly retired, it's unlikely he'd come back if the Joker were to somehow have survived dying at the end of Arkham City. Oracle will also have a bigger role, and players will actually interact with Babs more. Arkham Knight will however be a single-player game, and won't include multiplayer... at least on the story side. It's not clear yet if there will be multiplayer separate from the core campaign.

All-in-all, it's sounding like Batman: Arkham Knight could deliver. Now we just have to wait until October to find out. Arkham Knight is due on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on Oct. 14.