The Penguin May Waddle His Way Into Batman: Arkham City

Fun fact: I don't subscribe to the Australian newspaper The Sun Herald. Part of this might have something to with me living in America. I mean, it's not from lack of trying, mind you. It's just sort of impractical to get Aussie newspapers delivered to your home in the USA.

Therefore, I feel thoroughly excused for not having seen a reported interview with Rocksteady developer Dax Ginn featured in the Herald's Sunday edition. However, someone over at the Batman: Arkham City fansite, ArkhamCity.co.uk, did see the interview first-hand, and transcribed Ginn's quotes regarding an as-yet unannounced villain for their upcoming sequel. Thank heaven for the "World-Wide" part of World-Wide Web, right?

According to the transcription, one of Batman's most high-falutin' villains, The Penguin, will be featured prominently in Arkham City's storyline. Some had assumed this would be the case, as early trailers for the game showed the rotund scoundrel's club, the Iceberg Lounge, as a location within the game. But now Ginn has apparently detailed precisely how Oswald Cobblepot will be portrayed within the game, and the newspaper even printed a first image of his in-game visage, which you can see below. == TEASER ==

The way that Penguin has always been portrayed is as quite an aristocratic, well-spoken gentleman who's got these twisted delusions of grandeur. So we've made him a really horrible, nasty piece of work--but still with the delusion of grandeur. He dresses well, but in a poor taste, and we've made him this brutish, brutal guy but also key into [a] collection fascination that he's had through out the years.

Though he doesn't have Danny DeVito's weird, mutated, barfy fish-bird-man thing going on, nor is he as preeminently terrifying as Tested's Will Smith in penguin form, at least that image does make him look reasonably gnarled. Plus, he's got that all-important monocle. Take that, monocleless Will Smith.

Elsewhere in the interview, Ginn laid out how Penguin's gang faction will factor into the game's action:

Penguin's faction is much more about the collection that he has within his museum of all sorts of things but one of those things he collects is heavily artillery. So when you come up against his thugs in the street they are all going to have seriously heavy weapons and that develops throughout the game as well.

Sadly, there is no word yet on the different types of weaponized umbrellas he may use over the course of the game, but we'll be sure to keep you posted if anything pops up on the news wire, since that's probably a pretty big deal to Penguin-heads everywhere.

Lastly, the Herald also dropped a few bits of info regarding Catwoman, and her general attitude in the game:

The attitude of this Selena Kyle is closer to that of the late, great Eartha Kitt from the cult '60s TV show: strong, confident, sexy and independent. Comic book nerds will notice Arkham City's Catwoman appears to have been designed in the style of Adam Hughes' covers from the third Catwoman series, a feature Rocksteady hoped people would spot.

Sorry, Julie Newmar fans. Someday, your time will come.