Batman: Arkham Series

[Turo602]

Originally Posted by Leo656

STOP DOING THAT! Stop saying exactly what I'm saying but simpler. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
---------------------------
Of course Turo says in three sentences what I spent 15 minutes trying to say. F*ck this f*cking guy. Love you! Dick.

LMAO! Now you know how I feel when I'm reading through your long ass essays ready to make a point only to see you've already covered it on paragraph 4, line 3.

Also, Arkham Knight easily has the best gameplay in the series full stop. The leap Arkham City made over Arkham Asylum, Knight did to City. Like you said, gliding has never been better and the Batmobile feels great to control. But you guys are really understating just how much more fluid and expanded combat is, which already felt like it couldn't get any better in City, yet still did.

The game isn't that fresh to me anymore, so I'm sure you can go deeper on this than I can right now. But from what I remember, crowds of enemies are larger, Batman covers more ground, Batman can use melee weapons, there's fear takedowns, environmental takedowns, downed enemies can be attacked to keep your combo going, gadgets affect groups of enemies, you can charge the stun attack, and you can even call in the Batmobile to neutralize enemies. Then of course there's the dual free-flow segments where you can switch back and forth between Batman and another character and do tag team moves. It's just so much more responsive and quicker paced too.

It's honestly a real shame we haven't been given more of THIS Batman gameplay because it just absolutely sh*ts on the other titles in just about every way, yet it's the goddamn Batmobile that everyone talks about. They really dropped the ball not giving Origins a sequel using Arkham Knight's assets.

[Leo656]

Y'know, that's all true and well-stated. I forgot about some of that since due to being sick I haven't played it in a week due to illness, and some of those mechanics slipped my mind since I rarely used them but was notably Wow'ed that they included them.

I'm citing brain-fog due to being severely ill, that's my only excuse. You're 100% correct in that they added a lot of things to the combat but it all feels so natural to what was already there that it could have/should have been there all along. It still feels "the same" as the previous games but they significantly added a ton of little things that add up to Big Things for the combat.

I fumbled that. Not at my best right now, that's my only excuse.

[CyberCubed]

Anyone excited for the next game, Gotham Knights? It's technically not part of the Arkham series but it's the next big Batman game although Batman himself is not playable (for now). Funnily enough it fits right in with the story at the end of Arkham Knight where Batman pretends to "die" and blows up Wayne Manor. It's also covering the Court of Owls story next time:

You can play as Nightwing, Red Hood (Jason Todd), Time Drake and Batgirl:





Remember Arkham Knight came out way back in 2015 so we haven't had a new Batman game in 7 years. There's also rumors this game got delayed to 2023 so it'll be 8 years since the last game.

[Leo656]

Gameplay-wise, yeah. The "tag team" sections of Arkham Knight were some of my favorite parts of the game and I think I've mentioned before that an entire game where you could swap between Batman, Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman on the fly would be a dream come true for me, and this seems very much like the next best thing even though you probably won't be able to play as Batman except for paid DLC (there's no way they'd do this kind of game and not let you play as Batman at all, that'd be ridiculous).

And since I don't keep up as closely as some people do, it was initially a bit confusing to me about whether or not it was intended to be in-canon with the previous games - apparently this one is not, but somehow Suicide Squad is? That's... kinda stupid. For one thing, as Cubed mentioned it's already 99% in-line story-wise where Knight ended, I think the only major deviation is that in this game Gordon is supposed to be dead, too. They should have just made this the in-canon follow-up/direct sequel/whatever, and it feels like the only reason they did not is because there was probably internal disagreement about how the storyline should play out with regard to "what comes next" in-universe. For example, Arkham Knight (and City) clearly sets up Azrael taking over as the new Batman, and I'm guessing nobody wanted to deal with that directly (or they didn't think that far ahead, or something along those lines), so this came along as some kind of weird in-between compromise. But I mean, would it really have been so hard?

Furthermore, doesn't look like Suicide Squad, despite being "in-canon" with Arkham, is gonna deal with any of the Azrael stuff either, at least as far as we know. So it's pretty much just "in-canon with the Arkham series" so they can sell more copies of the Suicide Squad game to people who won't play any DC games that aren't explicitly labelled as such. That's what it feels like. I know the series always teased an eventual Squad/Task Force X but they also teased a completely different roster of characters for it, almost none of whom are gonna be playable in the upcoming game.

Gotham Knights had to have been the direct sequel on-paper at some point. You have the entire cast of secondary characters from Knight as the protagonists, the ending is almost perfectly in-line with where things were left in the previous game, and even the titles have a strong linking thread ("Arkham Knight" - "Gotham Knights", that can't just be accident or coincidence) to suggest that they're connected.

They say they're not and it's not the direct sequel, but my BS detector says that at some point it definitely was. I'm aware that there was a lot of internal disagreement over what the next true game in the series should be and all of this reeks of compromise among people who simply couldn't agree on what to do. As long as the games are good it won't matter a ton, but it's annoying.

[Turo602]

I'm looking forward to Gotham Knights simply because I've always wanted a co-op Batman game, but I still don't see this as a substitute for a Batman game since Batman won't be playable and the gameplay is deviating from the traditional Arkham game structure.

As excited as I am for Gotham Knights, reworking the Batman gameplay for co-op is tricky and could have serious shortcomings if not executed correctly, which is my biggest worry about this game. I also find it strange that the game is strictly 2 players, despite 4 characters being advertised which raises more questions about how co-op works and how this will affect the story.

As for the lack of continuity with the Arkham games, I blame Arkham Knight for that. This project did originally start as a future Batman game starring Damian Wayne as Batman, which I believe was called Arkham Insurgency or something, so it was definitely in continuity with the Arkham games and they were clearly struggling to write themselves out of Arkham Knight's ending by having a new Batman.

I honestly don't blame them for going this route though. In a way, they're rewriting Arkham Knight's ending without actually retconning it, so that it can feel like it's picking up from the last Batman game everyone played, but without the restrictions created from Arkham Knight's ending since it's only Bruce Wayne who died in Gotham Knight and not Batman. We also know Bruce Wayne isn't faking his death as a result of the world knowing Batman's identity, so it's likely Bruce's "death" here is the result of the Court of Owls.

What I do find strange is Suicide Squad being in continuity with the Arkham games for absolutely no reason, especially when they're obviously trying to keep synergy with the Suicide Squad films. Not to mention, I hear Batman won't even be in it seeing as the goal here is to "kill the Justice League" and well, Batman is already "dead" and working solo under new circumstances. The most they'll get out of this is merely referencing the fact that Bruce Wayne is Batman and Joker is dead, which is not really necessary or big enough a reason to keep it in continuity. I'm also sure part of the reason he'll be absent from this game is due to the very likelihood that we'll be fighting him in Gotham Knights already.

Also, isn't it kinda weird how Arkham Origins initially teased this game, yet that team is doing Gotham Knights, a sorta kinda sequel but not really continuation of Arkham Knight, and Rocksteady is doing Suicide Squad? You'd think Rocksteady would continue Batman and WB Montreal could finish what they started in Origins.

[Leo656]

Yeah, it's a bit of a clusterf*ck. Both games should be good but holy hell, the "continuity" angle is totally botched.

The drop-in/drop-out gameplay is intriguing for my wife and I, since she likes the idea of playing co-op games in theory but it never really works well in practice because I tend to play games in huge 8-12 hour chunks and she does not, so it just never really works out. The idea that I could get to a cool part of the game though and then she can just jump in for that little bit, mess around a while, then stop whenever she wants without it hurting anything is something she got really excited for when I told her about it. So that's cool.

[Leo656]

So okay, I've been too lazy to really sit down and put my full thoughts down, and it's been a few weeks since I beat it for the second time so I'm not as sharp as I was then, but suffice to say, I really loved Arkham Knight and in a lot of ways it really feels like the most complete package. The whole series was great, but gameplay-wise this one is easily the best.

There's really nothing I DIDN'T like, other than there is a LOT of Batmobile and almost no actual Boss Fights. And I actually loved the Batmobile stuff, for the most part, it's kinda just how at the very end when Deathstroke shows up and you have to go around and blow up more mines and stuff AGAIN after you've already done all that in the main game... that much feels like padding. Thankfully there's not a TON of it, and it's at the very end so it's whatever, but the one really annoying thing is how the mines for this section are in hard-to-find spots. Otherwise, it's no big deal. I'm more cranky about the lack of Boss fights; the entire series was lousy with this, but almost every "Boss Fight" in this game is a Batmobile Tank Battle. You ever even get a proper 1-on-1 with Jason, just Stealth missions where you sneak up to his perch and punch him. To be fair, though, I almost didn't notice until I beat the game how few Boss fights there are, because there wasn't a moment of the game where I wasn't having fun. It was more a, "Hmmm, y'know..." after the fact kinda thing.

The Riddler stuff, as usual, was "eh", but at least there was a LOT less of it, compared to the other games. The races weren't very hard at all once you get the pattern down. Driving on walls sucks, but once you learn not to try and accelerate or drift it's doable. I agree with those who say that few of these are actually "Riddles" and that it overall feels like less effort was put into this than in the other games, but the Riddler stuff was always my least-favorite part, anyway, so I don't mind it being scaled back.

Same for the scaled-back Stealth sections. They almost eliminated them entirely compared to the rest of the series, and while I can understand why some people would be upset by that, much as I appreciate the Stealth sections they always slowed the flow of the game down and just plain weren't as fun as the action/combat sections. I'm glad they're still in the game but I'm completely fine with them being used much more sparingly. The game flows better, now; it feels much less like two different games stapled together, as you move between environments. Everything feels much more organically-structured.

Combat and just the gameplay in general is easily the best of the series, with many more options at your disposal. Using gadgets while gliding down onto enemies, all the different Environment Takedowns like smashing guys into spotlights or electrical panels, picking up weapons that are lying around, more countering options... there's just so much more you can do, to the point where while it still has the same basic feel it's almost like a brand new game altogether, in some ways. Stuff you didn't even know you were missing, until you get to do it in this game, and it's like "Hey, yeah, it really should have ALWAYS been like this!"

Even in the Stealth sections, the little extra stuff they let you do changes the entire experience. I LOVED setting traps for bad guys like booby-trapping the Weapons crates and using the Voice Synthesizer to send them off to get knocked out, all that kinda stuff. That Voice Synthesizer itself gives you SO many more options for setting up traps and takedowns; the Stealth sections don't all just come down to hiding in grates or on gargoyles and waiting for guys to get near you, anymore, the entire thing is much more dynamic and you have a lot more control over the situation. You feel much more empowered in this game than in any of the others, and I love that.

I've always loved the Side Missions in this series, and this game didn't disappoint. I loved the Rogues Gallery chosen and how they were used, and I loved how they even stuck some guys you wouldn't necessarily expect in there, like Professor Pyg and Deacon Blackfire. It was neat how the board at GCPD kept track of your mission progress by showing you how much room was left in the cells and all that. I loved how GCPD was sort of the "hub" in general, and you could interact with all the bad guys you'd caught, cops and firefighters you'd saved, check out the gadgets in the Evidence rooms, all that stuff. Very dynamic! I did miss having an actual Batcave, though.

Some of my very favorite stuff, was how much of the game revolved around Batman's relationship with his sidekicks/partners. Something that I was outspokenly bothered by in the earlier games was how it was almost like Robin, Nightwing, etc. didn't even exist, but this game more than makes up for it. All the "tag team" missions with Batman and Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing, the relationships and dialog between them, it was all so PERFECT. Being able to swap between them in combat and do "Tag Team Finishers" was fantastic, it's everything I ever wanted in a Batman game and it was SO great to finally get it. It felt like they were making up for lost time, in a sense.

I get some peoples' complaints about the Batmobile, but frankly, I liked it a lot. There's more of it than I'd expect but it was all fun, for me. I loved the tank battles, the bigger the better. They were chaotic, for sure, but they were a blast. I always get a kick out of Hacking the drones and turning them against the other tanks. The only thing that bothered me about the Batmobile, is that you can't use most of the alternate skins in the main games' missions since they had no weapons' function. That was some bullsh*t, and I feel like if they had just a little more time they could have fixed that.

I really liked how the story came together; yeah, anyone who knows anything about Batman could see the "twist" coming before they even started the damn game, but I liked how they put it together. The flashback scenes with Joker torturing Jason were suitably unnerving. The game feels like it rips off a lot from "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight Rises", but for me that just ties in with the entire series' general aesthetic of being a "remix" of some of the best parts of the Batman mythos. The stuff with Azrael was pretty neat and leans into the comics' storyline (even if it's the FAKE Azrael and not Jean-Paul, that annoyed me); it's too bad we probably won't get a proper follow-up to tie that part up. If you do all the Riddler stuff and get the "real" ending, you see how Azrael has taken up the mantle of the Bat but it seems like we won't get to see "the next chapter" anytime soon, and that's a bummer.

The only thing I didn't get or care for in the story, was having Barbara and Tim be the ones in love and not Barbara and Dick. That made little sense and was poorly explained. It's alluded to in some of the DLC that Dick and Barbara still had been together in the past, but it's never really explained why she's now with Tim, of all people, and that just felt very weird. Just like, "Let's do it different, just because." They should have just had it be Babs and Dick. That annoyed me, but it's whatever.

As always, the Challenge Maps are VERY addicting, and there's SO many of them, since you're encouraged to do each one multiple times. Having Missions tailored to each playable character - Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Arkham Knight, Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Azrael and Batgirl - is nice, and getting to play each mission with each character is fun and adds a ton of replay value. Likewise, all the different Batmobile Races and getting to do each one with each different Batmobile is a blast; you very quickly notice how each one handles differently, and that it's not just a new skin but an altogether different car with different handling, very nice that they put so much work into that. Like the "Arkham Asylum" Batmobile has the fastest acceleration but the most slippery handling, almost feeling "too fast", the Batman '66 car has good speed but doesn't turn well or avoid obstacles easily since it's like a big rectangular box, the Tumbler goes around tight corners incredibly well since it comes to a narrow point in the front with those smaller front wheels... you quickly get a feel for each one and how it handles, and it makes you play all the races with a different strategy each time, so it never feels redundant. I loved it! I played the game for weeks between the Story and Challenge stuff, and I still only completed about half of the stuff to do in Challenge Mode. I really look forward to going back and completing it.

All the skins are great, as usual. I just wish they'd kept in ALL the ones from previous games, as well. This game has the overall best selection, but I missed the Animated Series skins as well as a few others. I also missed having Deathstroke and Bruce Wayne being playable characters in Challenge Mode. I know you can't have everything, but since Arkham Knight feels so much like "The Total Package" it's a shame they didn't just go whole-hog and keep every single thing the other games had.

All the DLC missions are great, just a bit short. Harley sadly kinda sucks, having the least amount of combat options and gadgets. It's a shame you finally get to play as her and she ends up being the "worst" playable character. Like, the Challenge missions where you need to get a high Combo multiplier to succeed, it's nearly impossible with her since she has almost no gadgets and her Combo chain breaks so easily; conversely, Batgirl is practically Godlike and I can get higher Combos with her than almost anyone. Jason also is kind of weak, since he also has few gadgets and using his guns leaves you open for attack, but he's good sometimes.

(Cont.)

[Leo656]

All in all, it's not a "perfect" game but I do feel like it's the most complete game in the series with the most bang for the buck all the way around. You get EVERYTHING, it's the ultimate "Batman Simulator". All it really needed were more/better Boss Fights, and a Batcave. Then it would be "perfect" as far as I'm concerned. I never wasn't having an absolute blast, even if the story was entirely predictable. I don't need twists and turns, I just need Fun. And this one delivered everything I could have asked for. I beat it twice back-to-back, on the regular and "I Am The Knight" or whatever mode, and had a blast both times. I LOVED this game.

What a great series (except for Origins: Blackgate, f*ck that piece of sh*t). All in all, I spent about 4+ months playing the games in story order, starting with Origins in January, beating each game twice on varying difficulty, and it was some of the most fun I've ever had in gaming. There's still a ton of Challenge Mode stuff I didn't do in Origins and Knight, so I have something to go back to. It's funny how some people act like Origins "doesn't count", because if you play Knight and pay attention there are a TON of callbacks to Origins; you can tell they were in development at the same time because there's a lot of synergy and connective tissue between them. I enjoyed that.

They're all great, fun games; Asylum is just "the worst" by default since it was first and thus so stripped-down compared to the rest. It's just SO linear and there's NOTHING to do outside the main game except get Riddler Trophies, and the entire game's story feels like it would be a Side Mission in any of the other games. It's not that it's a bad game by any means, it's a ton of fun for what it is, it just feels almost like a demo compared to the others. When you play them in story order with Origins first, and then Asylum, it REALLY jumps out at you just how small the game actually is, and how much they advanced as they went along.

If you haven't played them in a while, or have never played them all in storyline order, I definitely recommend doing so because it definitely reframes the experience. If you've never played them at all, it might be best to start with Asylum because Origins is structured in a way where you're likely to get your ass kicked easily since it sort of expects/demands that you've already experienced Asylum and City to get the hang of things.

A++ for the entire series. Except Origins: Blackgate, which is awful. Skip that one.

[Turo602]

Glad you enjoyed Arkham Knight as much as I did. It really did feel like a complete package. Not a perfect one, but much more than any other game in the series. The GCPD acting as a hub of sorts just created so much more immersion into the Batman experience that I don't think gets talked about enough, and driving the villains and turning them in to the GCPD was such a great touch and yet another good use of the Batmobile.

And as you said, the story was predictable and the Arkham Knight stuff was kinda dumb, but the way the story was told and presented was leagues ahead of any of the others. Whenever I see people try to tear into this game, the story is always something they criticize, yet they purposely don't highlight how well it's presented for a Batman game. Just like the Christopher Nolan films gradually build up and just pile so much sh*t on Batman's shoulders, Arkham Knight takes you from moment to moment with so much impact and weight that all that's missing is that incredible Hans Zimmer score as you're kicking ass.

And now that you mention it, the predator segments were a lot more seamlessly integrated into the gameplay than before. But I feel it having taken more of a backseat is the result of the open world and Batmobile already offering so much variety into the mix that they no longer needed to rely on the predator stuff to break up the flow as much. But even so, still the best it's ever been in the series. I swear, people on the internet just like to sh*t on this game because it's the cool thing to do even though a lot of their criticisms don't really hold up.

Arkham City is great, but it has this kind of annoying reputation now that it can never be topped, sort of like how casual gamers always insisted there were no great Spider-Man games after Spider-Man 2 for a long time. Arkham Origins is a perfectly fine game and Arkham Knight was fantastic, yet people act like they're dark spots in the Arkham franchise.

[Leo656]

Yeah, I agree. City WAS great, but so were Origins and Knight. Origins gets ripped for being "just more of the same", but in truth it was a more refined experience than City AND had more/better Boss Fights. It also had some great side missions and the only "true" Bane content in the entire franchise.

Every time I hear anyone talk about Knight online, they always make sure to piss on the Batmobile content, to the point where I was expecting it to be just godawful, but... it's NOT? Like, the worst I can say is, "There's a lot of it." But it handles great and it feels like something that "should have always been there", in a sense. And frankly, for me it wasn't "too much" since I tended to enjoy gliding around the city more than driving unless I "had" to use the car, and so I never got sick of it. A lot of the game still gives you the choice as to how you want to get around, and with the revised gliding it's almost as fast as the car, anyway. So whenever I got tired of driving, I'd just glide. Simple.

But past that and "the story sucks", which I disagree with, I don't see people make very substantive points about why Arkham Knight is "bad". Both Origins and Knight, the "worst" thing I can say about them is simply that they don't absolutely leap ten miles forward the way it went from Arkham Asylum to Arkham City. That was like going from black-and-white to color, and since then the improvements, while noticeable, have been more incremental. But for me, that's perfectly fine. Sometimes I think people just expect/demand too much. After everything I've read, I was SHOCKED at how much I loved Origins and Knight. There's a LOT about both of them I liked better than City, and I loved City from the first time I played it.

I already knew the ending, since the game's several years old already and I love me some Spoilers. But because of that, I got pretty emotional near the end, after Bruce was unmasked and Scarecrow beaten, when you're just walking around the GCPD taking to everyone and getting ready to do the last few side missions and activate the Knightfall Protocol. After playing the entire saga from Origins onward, there was just such an emotional weight to it, like I'd taken Bruce through all the "big moments" of his Batman career, and now I was walking him through the end of it all. Powerful stuff. It brought me back to how I got the exact same feelings a few years ago when I did my Metal Gear series runthrough.

Seriously; I'm walking around the GCPD at the very end, after putting Deathstroke away... Gotham is saved, every bad guy is in jail, there's nothing left to do, and Oracle's like, "So... what are you going to do now?" And my wife's really good at reading my body language, so she's like, "...Are you okay?" And I'm just like, "Siiiiiiiigh..."

I WANT moments like that. I dig it SO much, when a great game or movie or whatever can shake me up like that. And I'm so glad I played the entire series in storyline order before getting to Knight for the first time, because it probably would have hit altogether differently.

So yeah, great game, great series. The only "disappointment" (aside from Origins: Blackgate being great for the opening 10 minutes and then a huge piece of sh*t after that) was that Asylum is SO much smaller than I'd remembered. It's still a great game, it's just... it really is almost like it could be a side mission, compared to the rest of the series, and there's just so many things missing from it that you get used to having/doing in the other games. But I mean, it was still a great first step, a literal game-changer. It's not that game's fault that everything they either forgot or couldn't do Then, they managed to do to great effect later. It just seemed so much bigger, in my nostalgic memory. To run through it A-to-Z twice in three days was... well, it was a lot of fun, but also really eye-opening just how far things came after that one.

The good in that, though, was that it made me notice and appreciate ALL the different things the later games improved upon and perfected. It all has its place and its purpose. Just kinda makes me snicker, looking back to my first time playing Asylum and how I was so sure, "Man, they'll NEVER top THIS!" But I'm so very glad I was wrong. They did better each time, for sure, even if the "jumps" forward after City were more like "hops".

One day in the not-so-distant future I plan on checking out "Dark Tomorrow" for the first time just to experience the complete opposite end of the Batman spectrum. Oddly enough, from what I understand that game originally wanted to do a ton of stuff that the Arkham series ended up doing, they just didn't have the money, technology and development team to actually pull it off. I'm aware it's apparently godawful, but I got it for 5 bucks over a decade ago so no matter how bad it is I won't feel the sting too badly.

[Andrew NDB]

"City" honestly does rank as one of my favorite video game experiences. Ranked on many categories. Mainly: I've played many great games where I'll dip in for a day or two, jump out, come back in a month or two, and eventually beat it in a year. "City," I was riveted the whole way, glued to it for the work week it took me to beat it, and can't say a single bad thing about anything in the whole game. Pioneering experience. Every bit of the story, every reveal, I was hook line and sinker the whole way. And they got all of the characters right in it, absolutely. Jumping and gliding across rooftops, rappelling like that, these were things I dreamed about in the original Asylum game and here they were realized, they work, and work well.

If you think about it, the Arkham trilogy (yes, excluding Origin) kind of feels like the Nolan trilogy in a way. Begins is to Asylum in that it's fairly lean, tells a focused story and it's out. Dark Knight is to City in that the scope is broadened and most people seem to consider it the best of the bunch (I don't, on Dark Knight, but that's just me). Dark Knight Rises is to Arkham Knight in that there's a bunch of stuff added into it that make it certainly "less lean" and a little bit more all over the map.

[Leo656]

I can't say anything bad at all about City, only that Origins and Knight did a lot of things a whole lot better. No game in the series ever "regressed" even a little, they each took the ball from the last game and ran with it, just getting more and more refined each time out.

Actually, the ONE thing I can say negatively about City was the RIDICULOUS amount of Riddler Trophy stuff. Origins still had a bit too much of it, but thankfully not AS much, and for Knight it was scaled WAY back and the puzzles were nowhere near as obtuse and nonsensical as some of the ones in City.

So yeah, there's that. City had WAY too much Riddler Sh*t, too many of the puzzles were nonsense, and I'm glad the two games after that dialed it down. That's the only "negative" I can think of. And not everybody collects Riddler Trophies anyway, I just make it a point to 100% the stuff I play as much as I possibly can.

City will forever be one of the best sequels in gaming history, without a doubt. The jump from Asylum to City was SO incredible, it's a big reason why Origins and Knight aren't as fondly remembered in the grand scheme of it all; the improvements from City to Origins and from Origins to Knight were very real, just more subtle in most instances. Whereas the jump from Asylum to City was HUGE. It's hard to think of too many second games, from ANY series, that were such an incredible leap over the first game in every single way.

Like, I'm trying to think of another game series where Part 2 was SO much better than Part 1, and right now I kinda can't. City might be THE best "Game Number 2" any series ever had, as far as taking the concept of the original and multiplying it by a thousand, improving every single bit of it along the way.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

the Arkham trilogy (yes, excluding Origin)

I think it's very strange to exclude Origins. Arkham Knight calls back to Origins constantly, so it's very clear that you are supposed to have played that game. They purposely put in tons of references and callbacks big and small. Small stuff like the Evidence Locker being full of the gadgets of the enemies you busted in Origins, and big stuff like Deathstroke and Firefly talking about "Ten years ago...", and more.

Origins is 100% considered an important part of the saga by the games themselves, so I don't rightly see why they'd be excluded for any reason whatsoever. Different studio? So What? Different voice actors? Again, Who Cares? If it was supposed to be ignored, Knight would have ignored it, instead of packing the game full of constant references to it.

Origins also had the best Boss Fights in the entire series by a huge margin, and the only real Bane. If people insist on ignoring it, I'm not their Dad, but it's a poor choice on their end.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Actually, the ONE thing I can say negatively about City was the RIDICULOUS amount of Riddler Trophy stuff.

For me, don't care. If I see some I'll f*** with them and try to beat them. But if I can't or don't, I'm not tripping. Back to the story. It's like me with Red Dead Redemption. I don't need to hunt every legendary animal... I'll beat the story and maybe do a few cool bonus quests, then I'm good.

Like, I'm trying to think of another game series where Part 2 was SO much better than Part 1, and right now I kinda can't.

Sounds like a thing that's thread worthy.

I think it's very strange to exclude Origins.

Well, I'm not. But it isn't a part of the Rocksteady trilogy (or the literal trilogy you can buy right now for either X-Box or PS). I'm actually playing it on PS5 in the PSNow or whatever option I'm paying for every month. Though I got to be honest, it's difficult to get excited about hopping back into it every time I think about doing so. But I'm early on. And now Obi-Wan inspires me to play this Fallen Order thing.

And of course I'm not saying it doesn't count. It definitely does. And I like that it even slightly does a little bit of damage control on Bane. Because oh boy, those Rocksteady guys got him dead wrong.

[Turo602]

I don't know, isn't it kinda a thing how sequels are usually really incredible in video games? Off the top of my head, Street Fighter II, Sonic 2, Resident Evil 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Spider-Man 2, Assassin's Creed II, Uncharted 2, Borderlands 2, and Red Dead Redemption II are all pretty iconic sequels that just doubled down on what made their original great and just completely refined and reshaped their respective franchises.

[Leo656]

Fair point. I've only played some of those; the ones I've played didn't quite feel AS "Whoa!" to me the first time I played them, as the first time playing City did after Asylum.

Maybe the jump from Street Fighter to Street Fighter II is as large. But that's mostly owing to the fact that the original Street Fighter was garbage, and the jump from "This Is Worthless" to ANYTHING would seem huge.

But yeah, those are all good examples, they belong in the conversation.

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

And I like that it even slightly does a little bit of damage control on Bane. Because oh boy, those Rocksteady guys got him dead wrong.

At least Origins gives it all SOME context by having him be completely and irrecoverably wrecked on Titan or whatever by the time we get to Asylum. I wasn't a fan of how "off-brand" he was later on, either (although his side mission in City was very cute). But for as wrong as they did him in Asylum, he was damn near perfect in Origins. He was low-key one of the best parts of the whole game.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Anyone excited for the next game, Gotham Knights? It's technically not part of the Arkham series

Are we SURE it isn't part of it? Like, a spinoff?

[LeotheLateBloomer]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Are we SURE it isn't part of it? Like, a spinoff?

We're sure. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is canon to the Arkham series. It's Rocksteady's next game they're working on.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by LeotheLateBloomer

We're sure. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is canon to the Arkham series. It's Rocksteady's next game they're working on.

But I mean... WB Games Montreal made Arkham Origins and that's pretty readily considered canon to the Arkham games, isn't it? This is from them.

[Leo656]

Gotham Knights should have been, but they've said it's officially not. Has nothing to do with the studio, they've just stated that story-wise this new game is its own canon unrelated to the Arkham games.

It's kinda dumb that it's not, because it has the entire cast of secondary playable characters from Arkham Knight, and it picks up with Batman being dead, so it would fit right in there. But I'm guessing they want to stay away from doing mainline Bat-family stuff until they inevitably do a full-blown Arkham follow-up, whenever that will be. They probably want to keep things wide open for whatever they decide to eventually do, and having this game be canon to that universe would be boxing them into a corner storyline-wise. They probably don't want the canon of a spin-off game to tie them down to anything they might have to retcon or dance around later on, is what I figure.

So they just fudge a few details, Batman is dead for entirely different reasons than in Arkham Knight - and supposedly actually "dead dead", this time, instead of "Clearly faked his death to let the heat die off" as in Knight - and the fact that it's the entire playable cast from the last game ends up being just a coincidence. Kinda dumb, and I'd rather have it be Arkham Canon, but I sort of get why they decided to do it that way. They can get away with the Suicide Squad game being "canon" to the Arkham series because it'll probably only be very loosely tied in via Harley and a few lines of dialog, anyway.

On one hand, it's kinda neat that they're doing an "in-canon" Suicide Squad game, since the series was teasing that since the beginning, but it's also kinda dumb because the team in the game has nothing to do with the team Waller was trying to recruit and establish in the earlier games. Like it's cool but it's weird.

[Andrew NDB]

Hmf. Weird. Maybe this began as an Arkham Knight sequel/spinoff and then as development went on they just threw in the towel on that. Sort of like TMNTA.

Also, what's with all of these projects with Batman being dead all of a sudden? He can't just be "gone," or maybe set it during Knightfall when he's got a broken back? Seems pretty creatively void.