Batman: Arkham Knight

Another pre-order bonus has been revealed by Warner Bros. for Batman: Arkham Knight. The pre-order named Gotham’s Future has been seen on steam which gives buyers two costumes for Btman; Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Batman Beyond from the animated series.

It is not yet clear whether this will just be a steam exclusive or whether it will apply for console owners as well.

Following includes the exclusive items you get if you purchase the Comic Bundle and also the exclusive content available of PlayStation 4 owners:

Comic Bundle:

Includes: The Game, Batman 1st Appearance Skin, Exclusive Limited Edition 25th Anniversary Hardcover Graphic Novel. This product is a soft bundle and takes advantage of Amazon's ability to ship more than one item together to you in an Amazon box. This product does not contain unique packaging. PlayStation Exclusive (included in Standard Edition and Comic Edition of PlayStation 4 owners):

Includes: For PlayStation owners, Batman Arkham Knight offers the exclusive Scarecrow Nightmare Pack, in which Gotham falls victim to Scarecrow's fear toxin, transforming the famous city into a twisted, hellish nightmare. Tear through the city in the all-new Batmobile and face off against a towering vision of Scarecrow and his undead army as they spread terror on the streets.

At the reveal of the $40 Season Pass for Arkham Knight, gamers got a little annoyed. Main reason being they didn’t mention anything about the contents of the DLC, just the hefty price point.

Responding to the backlash, Warner Bros. responded accordingly (cited by GameSpot):

"We’ve heard from our community that you want more information on what we’ll be delivering in the Season Pass. While we aren’t ready to unveil every aspect of the content we’ll be developing, we would like to share more detail now to give you a better sense of the scope of the Season Pass."

Details of what to expect in the DLC:

Batgirl: A Matter of Family: An all new prequel story expansion in an entirely new location where you play as Batgirl for the very first time in the Arkham series - check out the first render of Batgirl.

The Season of Infamy: Play as Batman in all new story missions featuring legendary super-villains invading Gotham City, with new story arcs, missions and gameplay features.

Gotham City Stories: Play as Batman’s key allies in narrative missions extending their storylines, from both before and after the events in Batman: Arkham Knight.

Legendary Batmobiles with Themed Tracks: Drive the most iconic Batmobiles from Batman’s 75-year history, on custom-built race tracks, each themed to that Batmobile’s specific era. Every Batmobile will be drivable across every race track.

Crimefighter Challenge Maps: Engage in a series of new challenge maps utilizing the unique play styles of Batman and his allies.

Character Skins: A variety of skins from across the eras for Batman, Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman.

The scenes that have earned Batman: Arkham Knight its Mature rating has finally been revealed. Last month it was revealed that Rocksteady’s final game in its Arkham trilogy, is the first game to get a rating other than a Teen rating by the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board).

The ESRB’s centers their explanation on a scene where someone is tortured on "a bloody operating table", they also mention that there are moments where you can shoot unarmed characters and a hostage, this raises a question if you play as a character other than the dark knight at some point, for batman is known for his refusal to kill, the statement follows -

"This is an action-adventure game in which players primarily assume the role of Batman as he battles several villains spreading chaos across Gotham City. Players traverse a variety of locations around Gotham while battling thugs, examining crime scenes, and occasionally rescuing hostages. Players engage in melee-style combat using punches, kicks, and gadgets (e.g., batarangs, explosives). Enemies cry out in pain when struck, and some takedowns are highlighted by brief slow-motion effects and loud impact sounds.”

“Some sequences allow players to use tank-like vehicles with machine gun turrets and rockets to shoot enemies; a vehicle's wheels are also used to torture an enemy in one sequence. Cutscenes depict characters getting shot (on and off camera) while restrained or unarmed. Large bloodstains/pools of blood appear in crime scenes and in the aftermath of violent acts; one room depicts a person torturing a character on a bloody operating table. During the course of the game, players can shoot unarmed characters and a hostage. Neon signs in a red-light district read “live nude girls” and “XXX.” The words “b*tch,” “gobsh*te,” and “a*s” appear in the dialogue."

Batman: Arkham Knight has been delayed. The game’s official twitter, twitted out earlier that the game was delayed by three weeks from the already delayed released date which was June 2.

This is not the first time that Warner Bros. and Rock Steady have pushed back a release date back. The game was originally planned for release on October 14 last year, then it was delayed to June 2^nd . This new release date confirms that the game has been officially delayed for eight months

"We're a developer that hates to make any compromises, so we are sorry to say this means it's going to be just a little bit longer until you can play the epic conclusion to the Arkham trilogy," stated the game director Sefton Hill. "As a reward for your patience and understanding, and to make the wait even more unbearable, we are pleased to whet your appetite with a new gameplay video."

The newly released video, shows seven minutes of gameplay from the game and shows Batman chasing after an armored vehicle with links to Scarecrow.

Batman: Arkham Knight is the highly anticipated conclusion to Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham trilogy. The game will be released exclusively on next gen consoles and will feature not only a massive map but also the Batmobile. The Batmobile is a major component of the game and the developers have been able to implement a lot of new gamplay mechanics thanks to it.

Dax Ginn, markeing produces of Rocksteady, was interviewed recently about what the capabilities of the batmobile would be and what kind of variations we could see in the game thanks to it. The following was his lengthy response:

"I think there are a lot of driving games where we could have kind of borrowed gameplay mechanics just because they're easy," he said. "For us, the focus was: 'What's the Batmobile all about? How do we make the experience feel really unique? We really were very concerned about the Batmobile experience feeling like a bolted on driving mode, and we did not want that. That would have been a real failure for us.

So the integration that you saw between the functionality of the Batmobile and the abilities of Batman himself was really important to us, and we developed them early on. So [we have] the ejection—being able to use the speed of the Batmobile and translate that into Batman's movement and then calling the Batmobile back in—kind of splitting them up and then reuniting them in a seamless way.

The challenges around the city are laid out so that if you need to move along a flat plane, obviously the Batmobile is going to be the best way to do that, but there's a lot of gameplay that is set in the vertical plane, so you are encouraged by the nature of the city to leave the Batmobile. But you never need to feel like, 'Oh I need to remember where it is.'

As I noted, the destruction stands out. There's more demolition-derby and bulldozing to this Batmobile than I'd anticipated. Ginn believes that'll please players and help them still feel like a superhero. "It's really nice to be able to say, 'If you get turn slightly wrong as you're making a right turn and you're going to run into the side of the building, you're just going to rip that corner of the building off,' rather than something that just stops the Batmobile, which totally kills the power fantasy of the Batmobile."

"Batman's no-kill policy is pretty non-negotiable whether he's driving or not. You would have seen thugs taking care of themselves," Ginn said. In addition: "The Batmobile is loaded up with a taser system, so, if any thugs come at the Batmobile when it's parked up, it will just taser them automatically and throw them away. And you would have seen it in our previous games that if there is a situation where the player would be able to lethally interact with someone, the game kind of reminds you that, 'Hey, look, you're Batman here, this is not just something you want to try and undermine. You need to be the Batman.' There are systems we have that encourage the player to take this seriously and behave the way Batman would."

The ability to rip through Gotham’s buildings, trees, barricades and pretty much anything else in a super powered tank sounds like a load of fun. Don’t worry though, the night the game takes in entirety of Gotham city is evacuated so, you will not be risking any civilians. I cannot wait for them to show us a bit of the gameplay.

There are few things that has everyone excited for the next installation to the Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham series, Arkham Knight. First off this is the last game of the series, the finale of the trilogy. Second, we get the Batmobile and it is a major part of the game. Last of not least, this is only a next-gen exclusive and only coming out for the Xbox One and PS4.

According to Rocksteady they couldn’t have done this on last gen consoles. I mean the numbers speak for themselves, the game is 20X larger than Arkham Asylum, and the open world is bigger than 5X of Arkham City’s. This is a major decision because they are walking away from a solid fan base on the PS3 and Xbox 360, and we are talking about millions of gamers here. This was definitely a financial risk but the fact they did something for the sake of making an amazing game really has me excited. As always we know they are going to make a solid game, so we will be concentrating more on the new thing they are adding – the Batmobile!

When Dax Ginn, the producer of the game, was asked “a bigger world doesn’t necessarily mean a better game right?” his response was, "When you've got the Batmobile, yeah. We couldn't have gone five times smaller and had an awesome Batmobile experience. We need to be clear about what this game is going to bring that's different and new and exciting. The answer? The Batmobile. So what's going to need to change in order to make that incredible? That justifies the size."

He continued on explaining the reason for the game being an exclusive to next gen consoles, "Really, the Batmobile was the missing piece. We wanted to go big on it, and once we realized that's what we want to do, all of our technical decisions fell into place. The fantasy of driving at high-speed, being destructive, being powerful and maxing out the game space, because you need a big game world to drive that sort of speed. They're all next-gen things. So having the opportunity to work exclusively on next-gen and really commit to that - it's a no-brainer in that respect. It's all or nothing. We couldn't have straddled both generations and hoped for an awesome experience."

"It feels like we achieved what we set out to achieve," said Ginn. "I guess it depends on what happens next, that will tell us whether we're complete idiots or we're actually doing the right thing by gamers. I think, as a gamer, I love a sense of completion. Closing the book on something feels very satisfying. From a developer's perspective, it gives us the opportunity to say what's next: do we look at Batman from a completely different perspective, or do we do something else?"

I personally have high expectations from the game and know Rocksteady is totally up for it. AS to what they will tackle next, new take on Batman or a completely different franchise, I know it will be amazing regardless and I can’t wait to hear what they decide on.