Batman: Arkham Knight - 8 Essential Things It Must Fix From City

8. The Empty Open-World

When people hear the name Arkham City without playing the game they will probably picture the tropes that come with an open-world game: pedestrians roaming the streets and going about their lives, traffic going by, planes flying overhead and trains taking legions of commuters to their presumably miserable, mind-numbing jobs. But what was actually in the game was a city that had been evacuated. As a result Batman only had a few cops and a seemingly endless number of generic thugs for company. The city felt barren, lifeless and didn't seem like a place that was worth saving. Rocksteady's confirmed that pedestrians will be conspicuously absent from Arkham Knight as well. It may end up being a smart design choice, as speeding around in a Batmobile in a populated city will make it damn difficult not to break Batman's no killing rule. What they can do however, is add depth to the NPCs that have been left behind. There were a few that were present in Arkham City, but they were mostly people in need of getting saved from a group of slap-happy goons. If Rocksteady added variety to the NPCs troubles and gave them personalities of their own it could do a lot to sell Gotham as a real place.