One year has passed after the events of Arkham City, and Gotham is clearing itself up. After the death of Joker, the city has begun to stabilize, and the people have begun to hope that they are finally free of the evil villains. Hah! Think again, people!

So it seems Batman’s struggle is not over, and all he got was a small yet well-deserved rest, while his enemies are trying to gain power in Gotham. This time its Scarecrow who think it’s his right to rule the criminal underworld, and threatens Gotham with a deadly biological attack, forcing the authorities to evacuate the city. This is how Arkham Knight begins.

Apocalypse here and now

In the prologue the citizens are hysterically leaving the city, some using school buses. They leave in huge chaos and panic, while only a few cops remain who think they can keep the peace. One of them gets shot up close, and in the intro we can see Two-Face, Penguin. According to the narrator Gotham has become “the city of the underworld”

Then the camera pans to show the streets: burning cars cough their black smokes, bandits roam the city.
Then Superman suddenly shows up subdues everyone in a few seconds and solves the game.
Finally we see a huge building, where our main hero Batman looks upon the city silently… it reminds us of the Nolan trilogy’s , but what makes this scene more spectacular is the scope of the city, which will be explorable  without any limits.

 “It’s the car, right? Chicks love the car”

The Batmobile is simple the focus of Arkham Knight. At first glance it is similar to Nolan’s “Tumbler”, since it has giant wheels, and rhino like look. In reality it is more like the ride we saw in Arkham Asylum but we could not use it back then. Rocksteady decided to create their own vehicle, and not pick and choose from the old Batman movies.

Besides that the Batmobile is really stylish, it’s almost indestructible. We can drive through the hardest concrete walls, the vehicle will not lose speed. It’s like a real tank, and fast / stylish, and it can take quick turns, while some of its parts are constantly in motion. It’s more like a beast than a machine.

The icing on the cake is that the Batmobile can be upgrade, just like Batman. Rocksteady has not revealed too much about this feature as of yet, and will reveal more in the near future.

Without a new Batsuit there is no new Batman game

The only old thing that is still in this series is the voice actor for Batman aka Kevin Conroy, but Batman’s suit has once again changed, and its style is like the Batmobile. This is not a coincidence  as the developers wish to tie in the bond between the two.

“The Batsuit was a great opportunity to mend Batman and the Batmobile sort of together” – said Dax Ginn, Rocksteady’s manager. “Man and Human’s connection, and building that type of synergy was important, so that’s why we linked the esthetics of the suit to the Batmobile, both in design and in gameplay”.

The game’s first trailer shows a scene where Batman signals for his car that glides down from atop a building. When the vehicle is speeding towards him, it seems he’ll get hit, but in the last second he jumps directly into the vehicle’s driving seat. Of course this a trailer, but you’ll be able to enter the Batmobile in a similar fashion. We can summon this vehicle just like a horse (á la Assassin’s Creed II), in any time at any place, even while gliding in the air, to drop down into the seat.

Gotham City: an entire city without walls

Although I think Arkham City was the best part of the series, I have to admit that the true “open world” experience was not there. Technically we were able to go anywhere within the city districts, but most of the times we were limited to the main story’s district, and because of Arkham’s structured lay out.

I don’t think it was only me who wanted to explore the entire city, destroy Arkham’s walls, but there was no option to do that back then. Now the entire city is open to us, with its neon lights, Chinese districts, or the Falcone family’s docks.

Besides the openness the city is more organic, than Arkham City or Origins, where we saw a lot interesting scenery, but the connecting locations were just boring. Due to the Batmobile the street level became more important, as we’ll be driving all over the place, instead of gliding to everywhere as in Arkham City.

Too much talk? Want to know the numbers? Well Arkham Knight is 20 times larger than Arkham Asylum’s world. Is that big enough?

Who is the Knight? Well you don’t know? (We don’t know either)

The Arkham Knight at first sounds like should be Batman, but he is an entirely new character, who we know nothing of, only that he has a more futuristic batsuit, and has no cape. According to Ginn, DC Comics and Rocksteady developed his character, but if this means that they created a special new character, or just an old character in the suit (the Joker? Maybe he lives). Is not known. What can be heard when he speaks via a voice modulator is “Tonight it will end”.

On to the fight with Batman

I think even the most Batman skeptic gamers can agree upon that the combat in the Arkham series was really great. While nothing new seems to be added in terms of the mechanics, new moves, abilities, and environmental kills are provided. One new attack is the “Fear Takedown” in which we can chain attacks together thus knocking out multiple enemies at once. The combat is more dynamic and faster than ever. As always be yourself, unless you can be Batman. Because in that case be Batman.

-BadSector-