So this is it, this is the way Rocksteady departs the Arkham Saga. Or is it? This cryptic message was left at the end of the company's last Arkham Insider video last week, but irrespective of this, the studio has had a rather arduous year to deal with, at least in respect to all things Batman. Having captained the success of two Batman games and managing to surpass critical expectations on both of them as well, capping off their own Arkham Trilogy was never going to be a journey devoid of its own problems. As we have seen previously, Arkham Knight has both managed to impress and falter in the face of insurmountable fan expectation, and though Rocksteady have endeavoured to make their finale to the Arkham saga as good as it can be, Knight will ultimately go down as a release marred by its divisive nature. Indeed, the title's Season Pass (itself a target of community frustration) comprised a part of what led to Knight's support wavering, and as the Season of Infamy draws it to a disappointing if not admirable close, one can only question what legacy the game will leave behind on the franchise as a whole. The DLC still suffers from awkward narrative decisions, an obnoxious insistence on fetch quests and needless backtracking, yet benefits from a renewed focus on the relationship between Mr Freeze and his comatose wife, Nora, and an impressive if not underutilised premise building upon unanswered questions from Arkham City's climax regarding the League of Assassins. This does not alleviate the sense of irritation surrounding Arkham Knight, however. Nor does it rectify the mistakes that caused fans to become so disillusioned with the saga as a whole following its release either. What it does do is quite neatly encapsulate both the merits and negatives of Rocksteady's tenure as the harbingers of Batman's resurgence in the video game medium, and shows that while their writers may not have found a voice for The Caped Crusader, they certainly possess an understanding of his rogues. Inevitably, spoilers follow.
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.
