Batman: Arkham City offers around 40 hours gameplay

Players can expect around 40 hours of gameplay if planning on completing Warner’s upcoming Batman: Arkham City in its entirety, Rocksteady game director Sefton Hill has revealed.

“It takes over 25 hours to complete the main stories in Batman: Arkham City,” Hill told the Guardian.

Hill also revealed that the game features “around 15 hours of story that’s off the main path”.

He added: “It’s completely down to the player when and how they want to tackle this – there’s no right or wrong time. There’s no other medium that can offer this kind of flexible experience where the viewer gets to tailor the experience they want themselves.”

So that’s a total of approximately 40 hours if you want to see all the sequel has to offer, which differs to what marketing manager Dax Ginn had to say back in March, when he revealed Arkham City is up to 24 hours long.

“Our QA guys can straight-line it – so not doing any of the side missions and just sticking to the core narrative path – in about 8 hours,” Ginn said. “If you’re exploring and trying new things, obviously that adds a lot to the experience and the game time. I would say for a normal player who knows their action adventure games, between 20-24 hours.”

Batman: Arkham City is scheduled for release October 21 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.

25 hours to complete the main story sounds like a pretty chunky game, which gets even fatter if you fancy doing the side stories as well. It’s a significant increase over the first game, too. Would you rather the game was shorter, or are you of the opinion that the longer the game is, the better?