Batman: Arkham City... more stealthy Dark Knight action - Page 2

Arleen Sorkin pretty much owns the role of Harley Quinn -- well, she did. Sorkin, who helped create the character in the early 90s on Batman: The Animated Series, won't be voicing Harley in this fall's Batman: Arkham City (despite carrying on the role in the first game). Instead, veteran voice actor Tara Strong will take her first stab at Harley.

Strong has been doing cartoon and video game voice overs since the late 80s. Some of her roles include X-23 in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Rikku in Kingdom Hearts 2 and Sheegor in Psychonauts. She also voiced The Huntress in the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series.

A brief Q&A with Strong has been posted on the official Arkham City site, in which she says she wants to "honor" Harley's established voice -- but until we actually hear her rendition, we can't help but morn the loss of Sorkin.

We've already known for some time that Catwoman will be playing a major role in Batman: Akham City, but that role is much bigger than we originally thought.

Batman: Arkham Asylum was such a huge hit, that Rocksteady has incredible pressure to pull out all the stops to make sure they follow that up with a sequel that's bigger, better, and battier than ever before. They've chosen to make it 5 times bigger than the original, with 40 hours of gameplay, and included a huge roster of characters.

Batman has been known to associate with Catwoman as well, and while her exact plot role in Arkham City remains undefined, we now know we'll be able to play as her throughout the game. Unlike the playable challenge portions of the Joker in Arkham City though, she'll have upgradeable armor and abilities, and her missions will be involved in the story line of the game. Catwoman and Batman have an interweaving relationship throughout the game, which involves manipulation and deceit from the feline thief, while she uses Arkham City's situations to her advantage. She will be a completely unique character built with her own full move set, which involves new traversal moves for the cape lacking character to get around with, like a ceiling climb and parkour skills. She has her own unique way of kicking enemies faces in too, while also using her trusty whip, and a set of bolas to incapacitate enemies at a distance. Don't worry that Batman will have a diminished role in all of this either, since Catwoman's missions will be playable as approachable side missions, and her entire narrative is only about 10% of the game.

It's also been noted that as Batman fights his way through the city he'll encounter more intelligent enemies which attack simultaneously, requiring more complicated countering within battle. The detective mode is being rebalanced as well, so that once enough information is gathered using it, players will want to turn it off for the normal visual cues around them. More information on this, and some shots of Catwoman in action are available at GameSpot, but be sure to stick around here too, since we'll be sure to learn all we can when Batman: Arkham Asylum is shown at E3 this coming week.