Warning: Spoilers ahead. You remember the ending of Batman: Arkham City, don’t you? Of course you do. It was chilling. It was bold. It was cathartic. It was so satisfying on so many levels, especially if you have been a fan of Batman across all forms of media for many years.
The ending of Batman: Arkham City saw the death of the Joker. In many instances, that ending almost seems like it would back you into a creative corner, especially as far as the next game in the aeries is concerned. But the writers of Batman: Arkham Knight said that Arkham City’s ending enabled them, instead of restricting them.
During a Reddit AMA, Rocksteady’s developers were asked whether killing off the Joker at the end of Arkham City made writing Arkham Knight hard, especially now that the franchise’s iconic villain, who has so far appeared in all three Arkham games, is gone.
“I think it’s quite the opposite,” Rocksteady’s Gaz Deaves wrote.
“[Writer Sefton Hill] has said that when they started work on Batman: Arkham City, they had the vision of the final scene Joker’s death almost from the start, and looked at the story from the perspective of the events that would lead to that point.
“With Batman: Arkham Knight, that ending is the point that we jump off from, asking ‘what happens when Joker is removed from Gotham’ and looking at the fallout from those events.”
So, it sounds like, in many ways, Arkham Knight might be like The Dark Knight Rises, in dealing with the aftermath of The Joker. Let’s hope it’s better written than The Dark Knight Rises was, though.