The New Arkham Game Announced, Batman Arkham Knight, & Back With Rocksteady

Batman Arkham Knight

Batman Arkham Knight has just been fully announced and is back in the hands of Rocksteady. Not to mention next gen and PC only.

So this was unexpected today. Batman Arkham Knight has been announced from Warner Bros. and Rocksteady. Yes, you read that. Rocksteady and not Warner Bros. Games Montréal where I thought the franchise had moved on to slowly piddle out as did most others I know who were not impressed with Arkham Origins. I guess it looks like Warner Bros. just wanted another title, or two, to come out while Rocksteady worked on bring the franchise to the next gen platforms. Not sure if it is a good call but I am glad to see that we have Batman Arkham Knight to look forward to this year.

So what do we know so far? Not a whole lot but that is to be expected as Batman Arkham Knight just got the announcement treatment. But here we go.

It looks like The Scarecrow (third best villain to Joker and Riddler) has come back to unite all of the other still living villains in Gotham to finally kill the bat. Those announced villains in Batman Arkham Knight so far are, The Scarecrow, The Penguin, Two-Face, and Harley Quinn. I am sure many of our other favorites will make a cameo or play a role, sans the Joker unfortunately if it takes place after Arkham City, but that is what we have announced so far. We still have time to find out.

Also we will get to actually drive the Batmobile around in Batman Arkham Knight. Rocksteady has designed a new look and feel for it and we will get to freaking drive it around. Hopefully it won’t be in a ‘fast travel’ style and more of a GTA style. At least to the degree that we should be while being the bat. As before, we are going to have to wait and find out how those mechanics will play out but we will get to add the Batmobile to our roster of tools in Batman Arkham Knight. Awesome!

Lastly, then I’ll let you watch the Batman Arkham Knight announcement trailer in peace multiple times, it also looks like if we pre-order we will be getting to play as Harley Quinn in the game. Hopefully it will be like playing Catwoman in Arkham City and not just challenge maps. Could you imagine playing as Harley in kind of a ‘what happened to her after the Joker’ kind of story? That would be amazing and fun as hell. Almost as amazing as if they were able to get Mark Hamill to come back to voicing the clown prince of crime. One can dream right?

Here’s your Batman Arkham Knight trailer.

You still here? How awesome is it that they are using The Scarecrow as the main villain in Batman Arkham Knight? Or at least making him play and think he is the main villain as seems the case in all of the Arkham games. He was so well used in Arkham Asylum and then was just “Easter Eggs” through the rest of the franchise. Granted, he did get ‘eaten’ in the first game or at least that is what we were led to believe, so it will be interesting how they explain that off. If they have too that is.

Which brings me to another observation from the above trailer; don’t all of the characters look to be a bit younger than in Asylum and City? Even Batman looks a bit younger when he has the mask off. Could Batman Arkham Knight be a bridge between Origin and Asylum? If that were the case then it would be easy to explain The Scarecrow as well as keep The Joker playing his counter role to Batman. This is speculation of course but it was something that came to mind when watching the trailer for the first time.

Either way, Batman Arkham Knight is due out sometime in 2014. E3 is most likely going to be huge with news for it. We’ll bring it as we get it. Oh, and did I mention that this is also slated to be the final chapter in the franchise? No? Well I just did.