It’s official — WB has announced Arkham Knight via this month’s Game Informer. The game will feature a big open-world Gotham (supposedly bigger than Arkham City’s); familiar Batman villains Scarecrow, Penguin, Two-Face and Harley Quinn; and a driveable Batmobile .
Arkham Knight will be out for PC, Xbox One and PS4 later this year. If you pre-order, you get playable Harley Quinn DLC.
While the game is being promoted as coming some time in 2014, retailer GameStop’s listing is a bit more specific. We contacted the Arkham Knight‘s publisher to clarify whether that’s a real date or a placeholder. They merely reiterated that the game is coming in 2014.
Original story follows:
An early GAME UK retail leak has spoiled today’s big Batman reveal: it’s Batman: Arkham Knight, the final game in the Arkham series, and it’ll be out this year for PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
Last week, GameStop started receiving marketing materials for Arkham Knight, which match up with the box art above . This will be the third Batman game by Rocksteady, the studio behind Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. Last year’s Arkham Origins was developed by WB Montreal.
Looks like the Batmobile is driveable, and Scarecrow will be the main villain. Seems like there’s no current-gen version, which is good news, as they won’t have to scale down anything to fit into old hardware.
Rumours have swirled about Rocksteady’s next Batman game for quite some time now, after Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy accidentally mentioned that he was working on an Arkham game that was not Origins.
[via NeoGAF]
Comments
51 responses to “The Next Batman Game Is Arkham Knight”
The lineup for the new consoles just got a massive boost. Pre-order it is although I’d be a bit disappointed if that’s a day one DLC that they’re offering as pre-order incentive again
When will they stop?
I thought three would be enough!
This is being made by Rocksteady so technically they’ve only made two Batman games so far. Arkham Origins mainly rode on the coattails of the previous Rocksteady games and while being decent didn’t actually contribute anything important story wise or really even gameplay wise so lets just ignore it. I believe they are also saying that this is the last one but I could be wrong. Also honestly unless you are somehow fundamentally broken you’re reaction should actually be something like. ROCKSTEADY MAKING A NEW BATMAN GAME. HELL YES.
I would imagine that Origins was, amongst other things, a test to see if WB Montreal could handle development on a Batman game.
Rockstead have said they’re moving on to something else after this
(Please, dear God, please let it be Green Arrow), and Batman is too lucrative a property to go unmilked, so look to see future Batman games coming from Montreal.Also, Origins wasn’t that bad.
But will they make another one after this?
They can’t keep making good ones forever.
they might make other Batman games but I think they might drop the Arkham title
I thought Origins was actually better designed and written than City, it was just too buggy.
I believe they stated that this will be the last of the series. (I vaguely remwber reading this in either the ign or the game informer article)
It’s also written on the image at the top of this article.
Super excited for this and a drivable Batmobile would just be the icing on the cake.
This feels like Grand Theft Auto: Arkham City Stories
Quote from here: “Albert Feliu, lead character artist, says the polygon count on one character in Arkham Knight is as big as the count of the whole Arkham Asylum environment”
Woah.
While it’s nice that they have more power to play with, that does sound like a really inefficient use of resources that could be used to better effect elsewhere.
Looking good.
I hope they don’t resurrect the Joker to make him the main villain again, although if Scarecrow is the main villain I can see them at least having a Joker cameo as part of his fear hallucinations
Been a lot of rumours about Hush being the main villain recently…
Spoilers?
Spoilers for what exactly? A 3 year old game?
Oh god yes. Huge Batman fan. Huge Rocksteady fan. This right here is my reason to finally go next-gen!
Game Informer are reporting that Arkham Knight does not actually star Batman as the main character
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2014/03/04/batman-arkham-knight-what-does-the-name-mean.aspxEdit: I stand corrected. I must have indeed read it wrong to come to that conclusion. Brain not work in morning time….
So they might be drawing from the knightfall saga?
Exactly what I thought with Azrael having been introduced in City.
Article says ‘new character created by Rocksteady and DC’ so I don’t think it’s a reference to Azrael?
Maybe he’ll be an underling of Azrael? Oh man, who knows.
Just please, no Joker this time.
That’s not what it says at all, it says the subtitle “Arkham Knight” is not a reference to Batman, not that Batman is not the main character. It’s written as bait to get you to sign up to their paid subscription service, so that is not surprising.
You’re reading that wrong though… the article you linked to just says that ‘Arkham Knight’ doesn’t refer to Batman. The subtitle doesn’t have to refer to the main character.
Yea, I too read that as “Batman is still in game, but the subtitle refers to someone else)
The Arkham Knight is the main villain, not a reference to Batman himself.
I’m sorry… did you just say playable Harley mother-BLAMing Quinn? In a Rocksteady Batman game?
Be still my beating heart, and fly free my wallet. We have found the promised land.
In the challenge rooms…
Like you could play as Joker, Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman, Black Mask, & Bruce Wayne in the other games.
If it is just pre-order DLC that seems likely, rather than actual playable content like the Catwoman DLC from Arkham City.
Looking forward to this – a real end to the series!
Geez, I don’t know. While this would explain why Rocksteady didn’t make Origins, possibly being too busy making this game for next-gen and their publisher wanting a trilogy on current gen, I’m not sure if I can get all that excited. The two main problems with Origins were it was too safe/repeat of City and crippled with bugs, but there was also a third problem being that people were getting a little worn out of Batman. Maybe Origins did too much damage to the brand or maybe this game will make up for it. Who knows.
What Rocksteady should do is go off and make a Spiderman game!
Of they do move on to another superhero game, I doubt it will be Spiderman. Rocksteady are owned by Warner Bros, who also own DC Comics.
Also, I think Activision probably still has the license for Spiderman.
Even happier that I skipped Origins now for exactly this reason.
Even if I’m not burnt out on Batman though, I do think it’s time for a new naming convention.
Arkham Knight is a pretty ordinary name as far as I’m concerned.
It’s going to be the last game in the Arkham series. Why name it something completely different?
It’s just not a very good name, there’s only so many decent things you can follow directly from Arkham so that it both sounds good and makes sense. It’s not the end of the world, but that name is a combination of linguistic wonkiness and a bad pun.
If they’re going to keep making them (and I think they well might if this is a big hit) then being the 4th game in the series and the 1st game on the new gen I think it would have been a good chance to call it Arkham Stories: ‘Good Name’ or something.
Ok that sucks too, but you get what I mean.
The official email I received from WB says ‘The Explosive Finale to the Arkham Trilogy’ so this game is intended to be the end of the Arkham ‘series’.
Personally, I love these Batman games but I’d love to see Rocksteady move onto other things, even if all that means is making a new DC superhero game.
Hard to get excited for batman now that it’s just another annual franchise. Anyone remember the days of waiting 3 – 4 years for the next installment to a franchise and getting mega excited?
Thief was great huh?
Seriously there’s plenty of great games that you still need to wait for.
Having two developers an pumping out a mediocre 3rd title last year didn’t help in this case though. Origins WAS totally unnecessary.
I am mega excited for this. I loved origins, WBM did a great job outside of the bugs but they will learn from that. I can see WBM now concentrating on a suacide squad game while rocksteady concentrates on batman.
I do like the prospect of a new Batman game, enjoyed all three Arkham games.. but I’m tired of the “Arkham” moniker attached to it now.. its lost all meaning in these games.. Arkham Asylum made sense, and so did Arkham City to an extent.. Arkham Origins did not really get in to anything about the origin of Arkham except for a throwaway line of during the end credits and now we have Arkham Knight.. Will there be anything in this new game related to the name Arkham, or the founder of Arkham. I really dug the story on the history of Arkham Asylum so I’m just annoyed how its sort of lost all meaning now. Would prefer a name without “Arkham” in it tbh.
In saying that.. can not wait to drive around in the batmobile!
I guess we can’t speak for the name connection with this game, but Origins was, from start to finish, all about why the prison system was not good enough for the new breed of criminal Batman attracted. The events were the catalyst (origins) of Arkham’s repurposing as a supervillian penitentiary – remember that in this game universe, it’s not just for the crazies like in the comics, it’s for all supers.
i was worried until i saw that it was rocksteady making it.
its a new gen version with no legacy system restraints, they have had a long time to work on it and i loved the first 2 games.
cant wait
Whoa. There’s actually a… GAME for the new machines? ONLY for the new machines? The mind boggles! Might actually be worth buying a PS4 this year after all!
Personally, I felt like Origins was just an expansion pack to Arkham City. I hope they do something markedly different this time.
Pissed off it’s not coming to Wii U. I’m not sure if it’s worth buying a PS4 for, even though I’m a batman fan and even loved Origins.
Game looks good, but I think I’m still a long way from investing in Next Gen, maybe at the end of the year there will be more games available that I want. It’s not like the hardware will go up in price either.
Still missing the feature I want most in a Batman game, Co-Op. There’s Batman, Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, Catwoman even and a few more less well known characters. Red Hood may be a bit more anti-hero due to his methods but he does fit. All characters would have staples such as Batarangs and Grapplers but they’d also have other more unique gadgets and perhaps vastly different fighting styles.
I don’t think the whole game could be done that way but a few multiplayer challenge stages where communication and team work matter, would really be great.
I wonder if they will push aside patching game breaking issues on this one.
The map is meant to be 5 times bigger than Arkham City.
I hope it’s a thorough redesign and they don’t just expand on the existing City/Origins map.
Not exactly a fan of making the map bigger. Arkham Asylum was methodical. Set piece after set piece and it was brilliant. Every corner and every room was fully utilised to create atmosphere and tension. You never knew which rooms were buffers to the next set piece or if something was going to happen in there.
Arkham City was no let down, but it diluted the atmosphere and environment. You knew exactly where things were going to happen and to an extent you get to choose when you want to do them. Not to mention the amount of time wasted gliding around…
So looks like Arkham Knight is headed in the direction I am not super keen on. I’ll be optimistic about it but really hoping this isn’t gonna be GTA: Batman…
I didn’t even realise til I read your comment but I think that’s the reason Asylum has been my fav arkham game so far.
Hrm. I’m sure it’ll be a solid game, but I think they really should have taken a different tack with the game at this point. I guess the rumoured Silver Age game was maybe too much to ask for, but this seems like it’ll be more of what we’ve seen in the past with the tight design of Asylum even further diluted than it was in City.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s more of the same very solid gameplay, but I think it was really about time for a Bioshock Infinite typed departure for the franchise.
EDIT: I’m seeing references to a new main character… maybe this will be something slightly different. We shall see.
I’m not sure why rumors of there a different main character are gaining traction when the trailer is quite obviously batman and has the tagline “be the batman” (or similar).
I’m assuming this is a sequel to City but the trailer doesn’t tell us much. Is Kevin Conroy returning to voice batman, for example? Need to know more please.
Well that’s a vote of confidence in the new consoles – now all we need is for someone from Sony to learn how to read exchange rates!
hey they said they wanted to make a big blowout for the last game its probably gonna suck 1. its only gonna be new consoles which means they just want you to waste even more money and 2 it looks like the joker is actually dead which is actually very sad to say