"What's taking so long?"

There’s some speculation that Batman: Arkham Knight will deploy in January, but whether veteran voice actor Kevin Conroy is correct or not, British developer Rocksteady Studios doesn’t seem prepared to let the PlayStation 4 sequel loose until its finished properly. Speaking with Eurogamer.net, lead animator Zafer Coban explained that the outfit is working hard to stuff every inch of the release’s open world with things to do.

“We're so concerned about bringing out the final instalment and making sure that it fits the bill in terms of the quality range that we've been delivering with the last two games,” he said, conveniently overlooking last year’s Warner Bros Montreal created Batman: Arkham Origins. “Our attention to detail is pinnacle. So, we've had to do that for our last instalment and make sure that it works across the whole board.”

The game’s sandbox is five times larger than Batman: Arkham City, which allows it to accommodate the Dark Knight’s latest toy: the Batmobile. Fortunately, the studio enjoys challenging itself with these new mechanics and systems. “One of the big pinnacle pillars of Rocksteady is ambition, and to move things forward, and innovation,” Coban continued. “Like when we did the first game with the combat system, our goal is to keep doing that for every project. So even though we've got that strong foundation, we wanted to push that forward even more in the final instalment.”

He concluded: "The attention to detail has to be there in every corner. There's a lot of brains being racked, a lot of sweat on tables, people typing away trying to finish the game off. We're quite excited, and we just can't wait to finish it." Judging by the first gameplay footage shown at E3 2014 last week, that excitement is not misplaced either. Still, don’t take too long with the game, guys – we’re not sure that our body could stomach another major delay.

[source eurogamer.net]