Batman: Arkham 2017: 10 Ways To Make The Perfect Damian Wayne Game

8. Make Gotham Feel 'Liveable'

Batman arkham knight
Rocksteady

The open worlds of the Arkham series were praised for their intricate detail and, quite rightly, criticised for their relative lack of meaningful inhabitants.

The environments were beautifully stylised of course, but, in the case of Origins and Knight, they also happened to feel dead. Each successive excuse Montreal and Rocksteady provided for the city's convenient evacuation failed to account for the sheer desolate nature of their interpretation of Gotham, giving players the ability to 'Be the Batman', but not quite.

In this instance, looking towards Marvel isn't a bad idea; Spider-Man 2 continues to set the benchmark for all other open-world titles to follow it, having been the first to truly nail the limitless feeling of crime fighting in an immense, metropolitan area. It wasn't perfect, sure, but it felt genuine. And while the Arkham series has yet to fail in that regard, it does lack the oomph of a population to make players fully submit to the fantasy of being the world's greatest detective.

So yes, a living, breathing city is essential this time around. That is, unless they can mount a convincing alternative for the absence of a civilian populace. Truth be told, I'd much rather they did away with the open world aspect altogether and return to the semi-linear nature of Arkham Asylum. The series completely owns the aesthetics of the mythos, so a streamlined approach to world-building could act as a boon to Montreal's efforts.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.