The following contains major spoilers forBatman: Arkham Knight,Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,Batman: Arkham Shadow, and the overarching throughline of the Arkhamverse.
10 years ago,Batman: Arkham Knightcould have—and maybe should have—been a bookend to theArkhamgames and their Arkhamverse canon. It’s hard to deny how much effort went into providing a semblance of closure inBatman: Arkham Knightand, despite leaving a foot wedged in the doorway, it is likely the cleanest and most satisfying conclusion the Arkhamverse could have ever received. As it would turn out,Batman: Arkham Knightis now a mere entry in the overall franchise, and not a wholly favorable one at that.
10 years later,Batman: Arkham Knightis arguably the black sheep of the series (excludingSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which belongs in the Arkhamverse timeline but is, for all intents and purposes, not anArkhamgame) with design and story choices made that are equal parts commendable and divisive. Moreover, with rumors that Rocksteady might be backpedaling and returning to theArkhamseries proper,Batman: Arkham Knightretroactively lacks the conviction that originally upheld it as a daring end toRocksteady’sArkhamtrilogy.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Visuals Have Hardly Aged a Day
Batman: Arkham Knightmay be a decade old, but its graphics and visuals manage to surpass many current-gen games due to its immaculate fidelity in a richly detailed open-world Gotham City with spectacular lighting doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Unfortunately,Batman: Arkham Knighthad a disappointing launch on PCand is prone to graphics- and memory-related crashes, at least with interactive smoke/fog enabled, to this day.
Plus, in its goal to be hyperrealistic,Batman: Arkham Knightsacrifices a lot of the charm that the previousArkhamgames’ more stylistic and graphic novel-esque art direction had. Of course, whether oneArkhamgame looks better than another is subjective.
Games in the Arkhamverse franchise, in order of where they appear in the chronological timeline, include:
Batman: Arkham Knight’s GCPD is an Immersive Hub
Batman: Arkham Knight’s GCPDis arguably the best feature in the whole game. The GCPD encompasses an interactive hub with a ton of NPCs (whose dialogue is dynamic and responsive to in-game events), an evidence lockup (which stores rogues’ gallery memorabilia with interesting lore detailed by Aaron Cash), and percentage-based criminal holding cells (with enemy faction mobs and their respective super-villains on display).
The holding cells in particular are spectacular as, for the most part, players get to apprehend Most Wanted villains, personally escort them to the GCPD in the Batmobile, and then speak to them whenever they please once they’re behind bars. This has always been an incredibly gratifying loop inBatman: Arkham Knight, and no superhero game recycling that concept in the last 10 years is a missed opportunity.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Batmobile Remains Its Most Polarizing Feature
There are a plethora of reasons to adore or dislikeBatman: Arkham Knight, but one of its core, unshakable pillars may have a considerable effect on how players perceive Rocksteady’s thirdArkhamentry: the Batmobile.Batman: Arkham Knight’s Batmobileis almost as dynamic as Batman himself with the following features playing huge roles in gameplay:
To this day, the Batmobile is incomparably the wildest swing that’s been taken regarding gameplay in anArkhamgame. Its prominence will obviously be a sour note for anyone who dislikes it, butBatman: Arkham Knight’s investment and dedication toward the Batmobile are appropriate. For better or for worse, it’s unlikely that anyfutureBatmangamewill have a driveable vehicle on par with it, and the Batmobile is perhaps what most uniquely distinguishesBatman: Arkham Knightfrom a bird’s-eye-view a decade later.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Combat and Predator Stealth are Series Apexes
While evenBatman: Arkham Asylum’s freeflow combat signatureis engaging,Batman: Arkham Knightis a culmination of six years of combat made incredibly efficient and fluid with the added advantage of abundant environmental interactions. Nearly every combat stage is littered with blue-highlighted items or hazards for players to abuse, leaning heavily on improvisation while relying on the freeflow backbone of carefully timed counters.
However, the truer and more novel upgrade bestowed onto combat isBatman: Arkham Knight’s Dual Play mechanic, allowing for Batman and his Bat-family companions to fight alongside one another when paired together in scripted sequences. As for predator encounters, a large suite of gadgets is married well to Fear Takedowns, a new mechanic that lets players swiftly and stylishly take out several enemies at once.
The Batmobile andBatman: Arkham Knight’s gameplay in general may belong to a bygone era, yetCamouflaj’s Meta Quest 3-exclusiveBatman: Arkham Shadowupholds theArkhamformula faithfully and demonstrates its timeliness.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Plot Twist is No Less Disappointing
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Arkham Knight revealbanks on Jason Todd’s ambiguous-at-best existence in the Arkhamverse, and that still feels lackluster 10 years later due to a lack of worldbuilding preceding it. The Arkhamverse hasn’t always had airtight lore, to be fair, but excluding the fact that Jason was around in the continuity at all beforehand, seemingly in an intentional effort to conceal the Arkham Knight’s identity, ensures that it is impossible to have realistically guessed that it could be him (prior to Batman’s hallucinatory ‘flashbacks’), and that takes the fun out of such a reveal since it’s an unsolvable mystery with an otherwise predictable conclusion.
It’s an unsolvable mystery for Batman, too, as he believed Jason was dead, but the reveal tries to surprise the player more so than Batman and succeeds unfairly. TheArkhamverse’s most recent outing,Batman: Arkham Shadow, demonstrates how ample clues left for the player can nonetheless make for a satisfying reveal: Bruce Wayne’s parents’ murderer, Joe Chill, is met and befriended in Blackgate and all the breadcrumbs necessary are laid for players to determine who he is long before Harvey Dent reveals Joe’s identity to Batman. This way, while some players may have deduced who Joe truly is for themselves, it’s no less exciting waiting in anticipation to see what Bruce’s response will be when he finds out.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Season of Infamy DLCspresent some of the game’s best story beats as they endeavor to provide meaningful closure to some of the Arkhamverse’s most iconic and prolific villains.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s Open World is Stunning, But Paced Oddly
Batman: Arkham Knightis concerned with being a superb open-world game, and that results in its pacing prioritizing the main campaign, made evident by players not being able to take the Batmobile to each island district until they have been unlocked via story progression. The game seems determined to delay players’ Most Wanted side mission progression until at least when the Arkham Knight is taken out of the picture, enabling Slade Wilson’s Deathstroke to supplant him as the militia’s commander, and ideally when players have beaten Scarecrow and are encouraged to pursueBatman: Arkham Knight’s Knightfall Protocol ending.
Plus, Riddler’s trophies can’t all be collected in one fell swoop since the game continuously populates Gotham City with more as the story progresses. The journey to solve Riddler’s riddles and collect green question mark trophies is long and not without a degree of monotony due to scattered destructibles, such as the crests players must destroy throughout Gotham City and the Scarecrow bug containers players must yank with the Batclaw throughout Stagg’s airships.
Riddler’s Most Wanted side quest sees players enduring a series of obstacle courses, racecourses, and challenges to free Catwoman from the Pinkney Orphanage. Players can free Catwoman before Edward Nigma secures himself within the floor and tasks Batman with completing all ofBatman: Arkham Knight’s 243 riddles, but it’s no less arduous actually trying to achieve all 243 riddles today.
The conundrum artist at least boasts a terrific boss fight with him in a giant mech, making it the most significant and rewarding Riddler collect-a-thon to date. 10 years later, though, not having infinite NG+ playthroughs is still something that severely plagues theArkhamgames and makes repeating Riddler’s scavenger hunts a soulless chore.
In every way thatBatman: Arkham Knightfought to bring forth closure to its resolute conclusion,Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguefought to justify its existence via retcons and a narrative unraveling. For instance, Bruce’s choice to return to the public as Batman and join the Justice League was necessary if he was ever going to be a Justice League affiliate, thus tarnishing how bold of a choice it was for Bruce to relinquish the Batman persona in the first place, as if it was a frivolous afterthought.
The only silver lining ofSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s story, now that its post-launch seasonal content is officially complete, is that Batman is back in the picture—and not dead, as the base game’s campaign would lead players to believe. Still,Batman: Arkham Knighthad every right to be a definitive ending to the Arkhamverse’s timeline.
Batman: Arkham Knightretroactively lacks the conviction that originally upheld it as a daring end to Rocksteady’sArkhamtrilogy.
And, while it would’ve been equally sad to never have the potential for more games in the series onward,Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueis now proof of why that may have been for the best. Only time will tell ifanother Arkhamverse orArkhamgameattempts to succeedSuicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguein the timeline’s chronology, butBatman: Arkham Knighthas been undermined and doesn’t hold the same narrative weight it once did, despite nonetheless being a fantastic sequel toBatman: Arkham AsylumandBatman: Arkham Citywith remarkable gameplay strides.
