Retailing at a price of £32.99, (almost equal to Knight's retail price at launch) Rocksteady's 'discounted' platform for Knight's post-release content was never going to have a rosy reception, even if all the content had been flawless. It's a matter of fact that gamers everywhere are just fed up with having to fork out even more money to support their hobby, and though there are a few genuine cases where DLC has been met with open arms from the community, asking players to invest their faith in a Season Pass is never going to end well. Ignoring fan outcries and grievances up until recently has made Arkham Knight a game unable to please so many. Even though challenge maps have reverted back to their much-adored Arkham City selves, having to sit through multiple smug Arkham Insider videos has just made Knight's aftermath evermore vexing. Though almost certainly not the intended consequence, rallies of marketing excitement have instead given the impression that the London-based devs are just dismissive of concerns levelled against the finale and season pass content as a whole, much to the dismay of fans who invested through pre-orders and day one purchases. Did anyone really secure a pass with the sole promise of Batmobile race tracks and the repackaging of locations from the main game? I'd posit not that many, even if I'm currently going crazy for the 1960s Batmobile tracks released the other week. (They even have the show's soundtrack, how cool is that?) These exceptions aside, this apparent Season Pass of Infamy has managed to encapsulate quite remarkably the gaming community's frustrations with the industry's current business models; it's turned excitement into disappointment, optimism into pessimism, and reduced authors like myself to view this practice with only the basest of cynicism. When all is said and done it isn't hard to see why people (those on PC in particular) find it increasingly more difficult to get excited for DLC in the medium - in Arkham's case, it may have even tainted the franchise for a long time to come. Are you just as disappointed with Arkham Knight's Season Pass? Or do you think the best is yet to come? Be sure to let us know in the comments below!
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.
