Sounds like the newest Batman game, Arkham Knight, won’t just ship without a last-gen version ; it also won’t include multiplayer. However, it will feature longtime Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy, reprising his role as Batman.
The latest Game Informer has got all sorts of tidbits of information about the game, which will feature the Scarecrow as a primary antagonist and a drivable Batmobile, bringing with it a Gotham big enough to handle a drivable Batmobile. And unlike last year’s Batman: Arkham Origins, Arkham Knight will return to the series’ singleplayer-only roots.
Speaking with Game Informer, Arkham Knight game director Sefton Hill said that they had always planned the game as singleplayer only, and have been so focused on single-player that they wouldn’t have had time to do anything else. “We want to focus on making the best single-player experience we can,” Hill told Game Informer. “We don’t feel that it needs a multiplayer element.”
I’m all for it – I didn’t feel like Rocksteady needed to add multiplayer to either Arkham City or Asylum, so here’s hoping the new game is as focused as the first two were.
A few other cool things I noticed:
- The game’s combat programmer Tim Hanagan says that thanks to the power of the new consoles, there are between three and four times the number of thugs active in Gotham as there were in Arkham City. Some larger riots feature up to 50 characters on screen. That’s a lot of dudes.
- After sitting out last year’s Arkham Origins, Kevin Conroy will indeed be returning to play the role of the Dark Knight, as he accidentally hinted at last year. Nolan North, Wally Wigbert, Tara Strong and Troy Baker will also return to reprise their roles as Penguin, Riddler, Harley Quinn and Two-Face. Nice!
- According to GI, the game uses a “juiced-up version of Rocksteady’s custom modified Unreal engine,” which could mean a number of things but seems like it will still use Unreal engine 3, not Unreal 4.
- “Arkham Knight” is apparently the name of a new archrival in the game. It’s an entirely new character being created from scratch by DC’s Geoff Johns. Interesting.
There’s a bunch more in Game Informer, along with a lengthy written preview of a big chunk of the game. You can find the issue in stores or get it digitally through the Game Informer site.
Comments
9 responses to “Batman: Arkham Knight Won’t Have Multiplayer, Will Have Kevin Conroy”
It’s pretty sad when announcing your game won’t have multiplayer is considered good news in todays industry.
thats becuse in this day for whatever reason every game has multiplayer and the single player suffers because of this i for one am glad that they will be focusing on a even bigger world to roam as the batman
It is kind of sad, but I think if they announced it was only going to have 2 player co-op in the main campaign (Batman and Robin, Batman and Nightwing or something like that) people would go ****ing bugnuts at the idea. I think people have grown sick and tired of shoehorned Multiplayer (like Arkham Origins had) and want Multiplayer to actually *mean* something again, to actually add to the gameplay.
I pitched the idea in the other threads yesterday of Multiplayer Co-op Challenge maps but is that what Origins did?
At the end of the day I think in this case the main game may be better served by being single player only but I still love the idea of Batman, Nightwing, a Robin and Batgirl working together to take some villain down.
Yep. I’d rather see a co-op campaign in this, than adversarial.
I like this guy.
Ugh… Origins’ difficulty escalation tended to be “add more enemies”. It made fighting a little too chaotic for my liking, as you couldn’t always see who was attacking in the melee. Not saying that spending ten minutes in a single fight, calming down and not being able to see the floor for all the unconscious bodies isn’t satisfying, but spending half an hour before that getting absolutely wrecked because you kept getting hit by people hiding behind other people is not fun.
Archrival? Hmm, another vigilante? Intriguing…
Needs new gadgets and fun ways to use them
Yessss! I want this game now!
I’m super keen for this. I love Rocksteady for knowing what they’re making and sticking to it. Their attitude and approach to the Batman games has been incredible. I’m very excited to see what they move on to.