Batman isn’t supposed to kill people. But that doesn’t stop players from trying it anyway — and the results are pretty silly.
Last year, developers Rocksteady claimed that Batman’s no-kill policy was “non-negotiable, whether he’s driving or not.” But in the following video, Eurogamer finds that things are a little more ambiguous than intended:
Here, for example: an NPC is suffering the entire weight of what might as well be a tank:
As the game explains it, you have merely tased his person into submission — which is why they lie on the ground unconscious. But, uh, they really do look dead. Or should be dead. Eurogamer repeatedly crushes the body in the video, even.
You’re telling me that these people, who are being run over at high speeds, are all alive? Well god damn.
Other times, the game is less ambiguous. But the way in which it disables you from harming the NPCs is still hilarious:
That rocket pretty much went NOPE.
Arkham Knight seems to straight up glitch out sometimes when you try to force Batman into murdering people, too. Give the video if you want to see that in action — it’s funny as hell.
Comments
17 responses to “What Happens When You Try To Kill People In Batman: Arkham Knight”
This will be one of the first things modded out of the PC version.
Yeah, like how a few people were ‘offended’ that they couldn’t kill kids in Fallout.
You got it backwards. In Fallout 1 and 2 you were able to kill children, it was silly that Bethesda took a part of the freedom away in fear of offending the people that thought it was distasteful. Not the other way around.
But you could in fallout 2, and it had a very serious set of repercussions. It was FAR more persuasive a deterrant than simply having god mode on, and it didn’t break game immersion to do it.
People weren’t offended by the inability to kill children, they were dismayed by the laziness of the devs.
Something that’s easy to overlook is that fact that on such productions as FO (AAA titles, lesser or greater) there is a producer/designer/director that documents, as part of the design process, how the game logic should behave, what rules it should enforce / allow / not allow etc.? And that its the devs that then implement those rules – quite often influenced (i.e. told in clear and certain ways) by marketing/corporate who says “no we won’t go there” or “yes, we will”?
Hey I don’t work in the gaming industry (I’m not nearly creative/lucky enough ), but I am a dev and I honestly think that people should maybe “walk a mile in their shoes” before calling out lazy – on anyone. Now if its a plain out, break-the-game bug, then for sure – but this game decision isn’t that. It’s a consistent game constraint in the series – no surprises, that’s the way Bethesda want it (my assumption).
I get you are indicating what people thought – no offence to you mate. But I wish people would perhaps consider the bigger picture and maybe they’d conclude that it was a business decision to not allow that act, rather than an act of laziness on the dev’s part.
I agree, I don’t believe it has anything to do with the devs being lazy. It is more about Bethesda choosing to not having something in a game by the way they think the game could be perceived by the public majority. The core of the issue (on this discussion post) is being offended you could not kill kids, talking about laziness goes in a direction that is moot on this particular topic.
Oh you act all high and mighty on the topic, look at these cretins who dare to dream of slaying these digital children!
But tell me this, with a straight and honest face (or text equivelent) – you can’t say you didn’t want to give Nelkir of Skyrim what he had coming to him after hearing that line of his, can you?
ANOTHER WANDERER, HERE TO LICK MY FATHER’S BOOTS. GOOD JOB.Just like real kids I ignore them.
I was thinking last night it doesn’t matter how much my tank tazed that guy since I hit him at top afterburner speed off a bridge.
This is something I often think when playing these games.
Sure Batman doesn’t ‘kill’ people. But you better believe that if you kick someone as hard as you can IN THE SPINE, the best case scenario for them is a serious, serious injury.
But yeah, he totally kills people. You can’t punch people in the head like that and not make a few omelettes.
You can also pick people up and chuck them over barriers into pretty epic pits in Asylum. The game calls it a ‘ring out’ and carries on like nothing happened.
It seems a weird suggestion, but if anything the game should be classified HIGHER because of the lack of deaths.
The argument when they classify games with drugs in them is that the drugs don’t accurately reflect the real life repercussions of drug use and are therefore dangerous (the Duke Nukem steroids, for example).
With all the carry on about one punch (or “coward punch” as they’re now called) deaths you’d think a game should be rated higher when you walk the streets knocking everyone unconscious and nobody dies….
That’s a really good point. In one of the previous games (can’t remember which) one of the take downs was moving to a lying down enemy and punching them as hard as he could in the back of the head.
In real life, that would probably kill most people, and is almost guaranteed to break your hand. Of course, Batman is wearing armoured gauntlets, which probably means he hits even harder…
Not groovy! (but cool games – hope mine comes in the mail today!)
I’m always concerned when people get annoyed/angry/frustrated that they cannot kill people in video games. Is it some type of release they get from the gratification of virtual murder that they cannot otherwise get in their daily lives outside of a game? Because if that’s the case … Thank the Gods we have video games.
Tha last gif is misleading, there’s a drone (tank essentially) off the left of the screen that the missile is locking onto, it’s not avoiding the guy running.
Also something interesting I hadn’t noticed until seeing that slow gif of running people over – if you look closely, none of the people actually are getting run over. It looks like they’re getting electrocuted and sent flying as soon as the car gets close.
Overall though, yes it’s silly (as seen in the first pic sitting on a body) but it’s a video game, a Batman video game. Does it really matter? lol
Allowing the player to kill minors in a game is an instant banned classification in Germany – pretty sure in several other countries as well. It’s not as though preventing that from happening is really taking away an integral element of gameplay is it? (If it is… you are playing some pretty sick games)
Despise when they do shit like this.
I have a massive open world with supposed ‘freedom’ yet can’t kill innocents ‘accidently’ or in Fallout and TES’ case can’t kill children. I’m making the choice to do so.
What’s up with that?! I