The fourth game of the main Batman: Arkham franchise, Batman: Arkham Knight, is widely regarded as one of the best action-adventure games of all time. One of the main features that helped the game stand out was its immersive open world. Initially, the plan was to keep Gotham much smaller, but that changed after Rocksteady Studios added the Batmobile in the game, making it the first game in the series to feature a Batmobile.
Gaz Deaves, Social Marketing Manager at Rocksteady Games, once explained that they wanted to make sure that it’s meaningful to drive the Batmobile around in Gotham City. To make this happen, they decided to massively increase the map size.
Rocksteady Studios increased the size of Gotham in Batman: Arkham Knight after they added the Batmobile
In 2015, Gaz Deaves, Social Marketing Manager at Rocksteady Games appeared for an interview with Godisageek and explained how the addition of Batmobile in 2015’s Batman: Arkham Knight convinced the team at Rocksteady Games to increase the size of Gotham City in the game,
“I remember talking to (Rocksteady Co-Founder) Sefton Hill quite early in the project, and he said when they decided they wanted to put the Batmobile in one of the first things they did was say, ‘Let’s make a Batmobile and put it in Arkham City, as we’ve got the existing lay-out there.’ So there were tech demos that were done there and we realised that because Arkham City had been designed for Batman to navigate on foot and to glide around all the streets had really sharp corners and were really narrow, and it wasn’t much fun to navigate in, so one of the things we realised when we decided we wanted to put the Batmobile in was that Gotham would need to be a lot bigger.”
Initially, Rocksteady Games planned to keep the map size small but they realized that it would be a really meaningful experience to drive around Gotham City if it was big. The result was a massive open world that was praised by the fans.
Batman: Arkham Knight was the first game in the series to feature a Batmobile
Batman: Arkham Knight, which was the fourth installment in the main Batman: Arkham series, was the first game to feature a Batmobile. Deaves explained how the idea was executed,
“When we started to create the epic conclusion to our Arkham trilogy we really wanted to go out with a bang and make sure that there was a really cool, innovative, very new strand to the gameplay to add to that Dark Knight experience, and the kind of the obvious thing for us to do was say: what does the Batmobile look like in the Arkham universe?”
Batman: Arkham Knight was a massive success and earned various awards, including Best British Game, Best Game, and Best Action-Adventure Game. After 9 years, fans finally got a follow-up to Batman: Arkham Knight‘s storyline as 2024’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is set five years after the events of Arkham Knight.
Batman: Arkham Knight was released on June 23, 2015, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One.
