By far the most frustrating aspect of the Batman: Arkham games was that, when they ventured into open-world territory, the environments never felt lived in. Arkham Origins came up with a phoney excuse to evacuate the populace with a haphazard blizzard, Arkham Knight followed the same routine with another evacuation call, and well, it just wasn't particularly convincing.
With Insomniac having laid down the gauntlet with their stunning recreation of New York for their PS4 exclusive Spider-Man title, there really isn't an excuse for Rocksteady not to at least attempt to make Metropolis feel like a living, breathing city. Ditching the Die Hard-style 'all in one night' premise would be a good move in this case, and in making sure Metropolis feels distinctly different to Gotham, it has to feel beautiful, intimidating and operatic all in once.
It's not an impossible task, and while an alien invasion could form the basis for yet another evacuation, one would hope that the game dares to be bigger, and meets Insomniac's open-world with a considered reply - one packed with all the detail, Easter Eggs and intricacies that made Arkham Asylum and City's environments so compelling to begin with.
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.
