Batman: Arkham Knight closes the door on Rocksteady’s run with the series, and it does not close it quietly. The 2015 action-adventure game, published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation 4, PC and Xbox One, sets Batman against Scarecrow, a citywide evacuation and the masked villain of the title. It is the fourth main installment in the Arkham series, a direct sequel to Arkham City and the successor to Arkham Origins. Nine months after the Joker’s death, Gotham has never felt safer, which is exactly the problem.
Trailer, via Batman Arkham Videos.
Scarecrow empties a city of six million
The setup is the strongest thing Arkham Knight has. On Halloween night, Scarecrow threatens Gotham with a new strain of fear toxin and bombs planted across the city. Six million civilians are evacuated. Only criminals stay behind, and Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham City Police Department are outnumbered.
That is a clean premise for a Batman story: one man, one island chain, no bystanders to save. Scarecrow plots to unite Gotham’s criminals — Penguin, Riddler, Two-Face, Harley Quinn — to finally destroy Batman. The Arkham Knight, a militarized version of Batman wearing the “A” of Arkham Asylum on his chest, helps him do it.
Rocksteady built the Knight with DC Comics CCO Geoff Johns and DC co-publisher Jim Lee. He is the game’s new idea, and he is the one the story leans on hardest.
A Gotham five times the size of Arkham City
Arkham Knight’s open world is roughly five times the scale of the Arkham City prison, split into three islands: Bleake, Founders and Miagani. Bleake has the shorter buildings, the disheveled blocks and the abandoned docks. Chinatown runs neon. There is an industrial shipping yard.
The player can go anywhere from the start. Gliding is faster and longer than before, with steeper dives and higher climbs, and Batman can throw batarangs or fire the line-launcher mid-flight. The grapnel gun now switches his direction in a glide and fires twice in the air, chaining grapples together.
The old tools return: grapnel gun, line launcher, batarangs, the countering system, Detective Vision, the Remote Hacking Device. The Disruptor becomes a rifle that disables or detonates enemy weapons and drone turrets, boobytraps weapon crates and tags vehicles. The remote batarang gains a scanner.
New is the Voice Synthesizer, which imitates Harley Quinn or the Arkham Knight to steer thugs into traps. Freeflow combat still chains strikes, counters and dodges, and the enemies have answers — shields, shock batons, and guns that hurt.
Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill and a full cast
The voice cast is the series’ deepest. Kevin Conroy is Batman. Mark Hamill returns as the Joker, who appears as a hallucination. John Noble is Scarecrow. Troy Baker plays both Two-Face and the Arkham Knight. Nolan North is the Penguin, Wally Wingert the Riddler, Tara Strong Harley Quinn, Tasia Valenza Poison Ivy.
Around Batman: Robin (Matthew Mercer), Nightwing (Scott Porter), Catwoman (Grey DeLisle), Barbara Gordon (Ashley Greene) as Oracle, James Gordon (Jonathan Banks), Alfred Pennyworth (Martin Jarvis) and Lucius Fox (Dave Fennoy). Azrael (Khary Payton) wants to replace Batman as Gotham’s protector.
The villain roster runs deep:
- Firefly (Crispin Freeman), the pyromaniac
- Man-Bat (Loren Lester), the beast
- Deathstroke (Mark Rolston), the veteran assassin
- Professor Pyg, the serial killer
Sefton Hill, Ian Ball and Martin Lancaster wrote the game, drawing on the long-running comic mythos rather than any single book.
The Arkham Knight and the hallucinated Joker
The Arkham Knight is the game’s best bet. A villain who is Batman’s equal in training and equipment, wearing the asylum’s own logo, gives the story a mirror it can hold up. The hallucinated Joker gives it something stranger — a Batman who cannot stop talking to the man he killed. That thread is the best writing Rocksteady has done, and it is the reason the campaign holds.
The side content is generous and uneven. Riddler challenges, Two-Face’s bank heists, Penguin’s weapons operation, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn’s revenge — the game lets you leave the main story and come back. Some of it earns the detour. Some of it is filler wearing a cape.
What matters is that Rocksteady understood the assignment was an ending. The city is emptier than any Gotham the series has built, the allies are all present, and the villains are all assembled for one last night. The scale is bigger, but the closing is what lands.
The score
Batman: Arkham Knight is the most complete Batman game Rocksteady made and the least tidy one. The open world occasionally mistakes size for purpose. None of that outweighs Conroy’s Batman, Hamill’s Joker, or a Gotham emptied of everyone but criminals and one man in a cape.
It is a sequel that knows it is a finale, and it plays like one.
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