Why a Bat Family’s Role in Future Arkham Games May Be Set in Stone

Before Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Rocksteady could do no wrong. It managed to craft a brilliant action-adventure-style Batman foundation with Metroidvania and Zelda elements and a fluid, rewarding combat system that would go on to inspire innumerable games. Plus, the cherry on top is that the Arkham games all respected the Batman mythology and DC lore that it inherited and fleshed out in an original continuity drawing explicit influence from Batman: The Animated Series. Now, if rumors are correct, Rocksteady is hoping to take the whole line back to formula.

It would be great to see Rocksteady return to Batman and the Arkham games in particular because that was its bread and butter, but that was a decade ago. Rocksteady had a great recipe where Batman was always the lead and companions eventually became playable as either the stars of their own DLCs or complementary companions who would come and go during scripted encounters. Seeing Bat Family members receive their own Arkham games would be lovely, though if a formulaic return to tradition is what will satiate the masses it is unlikely that players will be getting rid of Batman anytime soon.

An overview of the Arkhamverse timeline would illustrate how there are only so few years left for Arkham games to cover where Batman plays a solitary role. Batman: Arkham Origins and Batman: Arkham Asylum are the only entries so far that actually allow Batman to be a lone figure casually speaking to his companions via cowl comms and attempting to convince himself that he works better alone, for instance, while in Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Knight he’s shooing away Catwoman or a Robin left and right.

Ironically, the Arkham games have actively evaded origin stories for the Bat Family while stressing origin stories for Batman’s rogues gallery, though Knight sort of muddies the water as it debuts an origin story for Jason Todd as both Arkham Knight and Red Hood. Shadow is now expected to provide origin tales for at least a few iconic Batman villains, and Bat Family recruits such as Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, and Tim Drake appearing for the first time in the canon is on the table.

Batman’s Popularity in the Arkhamverse May Guarantee He’s Not Going Anywhere

That said, it’s likely best for Bat Family affiliates to simply be given their own standalone DLCs where they can be lead protagonists, such as Robin in City’s Harley Quinn’s Revenge or Batgirl in Batman: Arkham Knight’s A Matter of Family (which includes Robin as Batgirl’s Dual Play companion). Indeed, Knight’s Dual Play feature broadened the roles of Bat-Family characters while sustaining Batman as the key protagonist and has since been collecting a thick layer of dust and cobwebs.

Dual Play is an ideal means of having Bat Family companions appear in gameplay, actually lends itself to having Batman and another character behave like a dynamic duo, and will hopefully be reprised in a possible future Arkham game developed by Rocksteady. Gotham Knights’ blunder may not have necessarily been enough to dissuade studios from pursuing a Bat Family-centric game altogether, but because the Arkhamverse has such a long and popular lineage with Batman being insurmountable in his popularity it is unlikely that the Bat Family will ever reach the same pedestal.