Where Did It All Go Wrong With Batman: Arkham?

2. A Baffling Change Of Direction

As things currently stand, Batman: Arkham Knight is one of the best received games this side of 2013. It looks and plays unlike any other action title (Batman himself possesses more polygons than the entire island of Arkham!), is bursting with content, and finally gave players the opportunity to roam around Gotham - or, at least a part of Gotham - in the Batmobile. The stage was set, truly, for a masterful conclusion to one of the most beloved trilogies of the decade.

But while there are countless reasons to laud Arkham Knight, including its interesting Return of the Joker/Death in the Family hybrid retelling of Jason Todd's return, the story was bad. Most of the women featured, including Barbara Gordon and Poison Ivy, are chucked in the fridge right off the bat, and the misdirection deployed in the title's marketing came back with a vengeance as the second act commenced.

Throughout AK's pre-release, Rocksteady maintained that the eponymous Arkham Knight - a brand new threat Batman was set to face alongside Scarecrow - was a brand new creation; not Jason Todd, and most certainly not Joker. So, when it transpired that the character in question was the second Boy Wonder, there was something of an anticlimax to the revelation. Not only that, but after reiterating for months that Joker was truly gone (and, to be fair, he was) - going so far as to have the player cremate his corpse during the opening act - it's soon revealed that Bats is infected with some Joker blood, and that he has his own little Myxlplyx-esque version of the Clown Prince to keep him company throughout the story.

The pay off was worth it, but these narrative decisions were only exacerbated further by the fact that many of City's dangling threads were dealt with in an unsatisfying way - the worst culprit being Hush, who only stars in one mission and is subsequently locked away in the GCPD for the rest of the story's duration.

Factor in a tank-like Batmobile, an ending that peddled every Bat-cliche going, another evacuated locale and a backlash surrounding the game's post-release content, and Rocksteady's departure from the Bat-brand was far from the fairytale ending fans had initially hoped.