Rocksteady On Batman Arkham City: ‘The ending was almost taboo’

Batman: Arkham City has one of the most controversial endings out there. All of us who played and finished it were absolutely shocked by how, well, shocking the ending was. We never expected what was about to come, but when it did, it amazed us, blew us away. A lot of fans were a bit too shocked, since the ending was not what some fans would have wanted (according to us, it was one of the best endgames in recent memory). Rocksteady says the ending they picked was almost taboo for them.

NOTE: Spoilers follow for the ending of Batman: Arkham City. Tread carefully if you want to remain pure.

In an interesting interview with CVG, Rocksteady’s game director, Sefton Hill revealed a few interesting things about the ending of Arkham City.

“You invest time in a game and this story, and you want to feel like the universe is affected by the events you play. We didn’t want it to feel hollow – Joker starts off poisoned, Batman gets poisoned, where does that story go? We knew people would be thinking: ‘obviously they’re not going to kill Batman or Joker, right?’ We felt killing Joker was a really striking end. It was almost taboo, like it was something we could never do. That would be interesting.”

“The idea of the two Jokers was something we hit upon early. If you play through the game again, you can see a ton of hints that the end is going to happen. Lots of people talking in the street talking about that as you play through. At some point we’ll release a video of all the hints, or something.”

It will be interesting to see to which new direction the studio will take with the next Batman Game. Have thoughts? Let us hear them in the comments below.