Batman: Arkham Knight Lets You Visit Bruce Wayne's Penthouse

Batman: Arkham Knight will let players explore several new areas throughout Gotham City. One of these locations is Bruce Wayne's swanky penthouse.

"Areas like the penthouse at the top of Wayne Tower -- which is Bruce Wayne’s private office -- that was something that we feel is a space that hasn’t been deeply explored, so that we could design the location of where the Bat Pod goes, for his change of clothes -- from his suit into the Bat Suit," Rocksteady Studios producer Dax Ginn told AusGamers.

"We put a massive bar in there, because he’s always entertaining. So little things like that, that fit the way that we’ve interpreted Bruce Wayne. It’s awesome for us to just let loose and really come up with a creative space that we feel is true to the Arkham experience, but also true to Batman."

Players' time as Bruce Wayne without the costume has been very limited in the past. Arkham City had a brief Bruce Wayne segment in the beginning. That was actually one of my favorite scenes too. Watching criminals unexpectedly get their asses kicked by a trust fund kid like Bruce never gets old.

The reason we haven't seen more of Bruce in Arkham Asylum and Arkham City is partly because of the settings of those games. They put Batman in the middle of an insane asylum and a walled-off section of Gotham. While he's known for being a resourceful guy, it's not like he installed emergency penthouses in those locations.

The lack of Bruce Wayne in the games did disappoint me, though. Bruce's attempts to balance his normal life with his secret crime-fighting crusade are an important part of the character. Letting us see him without the costume from time to time is an important reminder to us that he's a vulnerable human being, too. I think giving the players more "Bruce time" will result in a much stronger story for Arkham Knight.

Ginn suggests Batman: Arkham Knight will delve into Batman/Bruce's personal relationships with allies like Commissioner Gordon and his daughter Barbara (a.k.a. Oracle).

"Those characters have been part of the Batman Universe for so long, but we, in the telling of this part of the story, wanted to ask ourselves: what happens when Batman goes to war? What happens when the people that he loves start to pay the price for the decisions that he makes about his war on crime?"

Rocksteady Studios said that this is the "finale to the Arkham series." We can't take anything for granted, then. They may choose to kill off some very important characters to wrap up their story. It's great to know that if things get too heavy, though, we can always kill some time at the penthouse bar.

The Microsoft Store recently indicated that Batman: Arkham Knight would launch in late February. They've recently scrubbed that information from their website, though.