Batman: Arkham Knight is just a few days away, people. But maybe you haven’t played the previous Arkham games in quite some time or just don’t have access to them anymore and aren’t entirely sure how things have been leading up to this epic conclusion. Never fear, we here at Twinfinite are ready to help you out!
Seeking Asylum
Another day, another failed plot by Joker to destroy the people of Gotham City that was thankfully thwarted by Batman. As our story opens, the Caped Crusader is taking the Clown Prince of Crime to the Arkham Asylum House for the Criminally Insane.
Same shit, different day, but Batman’s more suspicious of his foe this time.
Joker gave up without a fight, when normally trying to take him out is much more of an event. As he’s sent off to his cell, Joker reveals that getting captured was all part of his plan to take over the asylum with the help of his main squeeze, Harley Quinn.
All the members of the Joker’s gang were transferred from Blackgate Prison following a fire that they totally started happened randomly and by coincidence, so the clown has the muscle to back up his takeover.
And no one can even so much as enter Arkham from the outside, because if they do, Joker’s bombs set all around Gotham City will detonate. Say what you will about the guy, he definitely knows how to cover his bases.
Thus, the Dark Knight must go in alone, aided only by his gadgets and his trusty tech genius ally Oracle, who frequently supplies him with gadgets for him to get around the asylum.
Along the way, he encounters two ‘roided up Joker goons whose blood matches Batman’s strongest enemy, Bane. After fighting off a particularly bad trip based on his fears courtesy of good old Scarecrow and saving Commissioner Gordon from Harley Quinn, Batman finds the mercenary turned villain.
Instead of being hyped up on Venom like he normally is, Bane is a weakling who divulges to him that an Arkham doctor (Penelope Young) developed an enhanced version of his Venom serum called Titan to help patients survive more taxing therapies.
The Joker caught wind of this and started funding her so she could continue her research and he could use it to create an army of superhuman henchmen.
But again, Batman gets another hit of that Fear Toxin and hallucinates the night of his parents’ deaths. Because when you’re Bruce Wayne, you’re either thinking about that or breaking some punk’s kneecap with a flick of your finger.
And wouldn’t you know it, Doctor Young also happens to be stuck in the asylum and hanging out with everyone’s favorite serial killer, Mr. Zsasz! Batman saves the doctor, but Joker isn’t too keen on her sharing her research and blows her up.
Batman learns from Harley that Joker’s got a Titan production facility in the botanical gardens, where Poison Ivy is just hanging out and doing her thing.
She tells Bats that the antidote to Titan (which is made by genetically modified plants) can be made from spores found only in the sewers inhabited by good old Killer Croc.
On the way there, Batman is hit with Fear Toxin yet again (seriously dude, seek help) and finally confronts Scarecrow… who is then dragged off by Croc to be an appetizer for the main Bat-course.
While Batman heads to the sewers to get the spores and take down Croc, Joker injects Ivy with some Titan and she unleashes plants all over the asylum.
Batman’s only able to get one dose of the antidote thanks to Ivy wrecking his equipment, which he pays her back for by defeating her. Joker calls out Batman to end this once in for all, the two meet, and Batman takes a Titan filled dart meant for the recaptured Gordon.
By sheer suspension of disbelief, Batman’s able to fight off the Titan and use the antidote on himself, but Joker’s having none of that and decides to take some Titan himself.
Batman beats him down, Joker reverts to normal (or whatever counts as normal for him), and the day is saved as Batman goes off to stop Two-Face from robbing a bank.
…Or is it?
Six months after the Arkham uprising, the asylum’s administrator, Quincy Sharp, has taken credit for Batman’s actions as a way to boost his mayoral campaign.
His constant public gestures put the terrorist Titan addicted duo T&T on his back, which ends up getting 300 civilians killed. Naturally, Sharp uses this as a way to declare martial law and give himself unlimited power in a state of emergency.
Batman starts investigating Sharp’s records and discovers that Sharp’s all but ready to make him a public enemy.
He suspects that someone’s manipulating Sharp from the shadows, but before he can nail down anything concrete, Sharp goes and unveils Arkham City: half of Gotham walled off to house all the criminals (including the superpowered ones) from Blackgate and Arkham.
The criminals will be free to do as they please, with their only rule being to not escape.
Joker, Penguin, and Two-Face already have gangs set up and are working on creating turfs for themselves; with six months to live, the clown is content to just cause as much chaos as he can before he expires and the Penguin is gathering all the guns and bullets he can for a small war.
Sharp’s thugs round up anyone who has so much as a minor conviction and puts them in Arkham City, along with political prisoners who know too much about Sharp’s puppeteer, psychiatrist Hugo Strange.
The gates close on Arkham City one final time, and Batman’s unable to dig up anything on Strange. Unfortunately for Bats, Strange is able to dig up plenty on him, enough to learn that his secret identity is Bruce Wayne.
City of Villains
Jump forward another six months and it’s here where Arkham City begins. Bruce Wayne defiantly holds a news conference at the doors of the prison-city when Strange’s TYGER mercenaries come up to nab Wayne.
Strange confronts him straight up with the knowledge of his double life, so Bruce suits up as Batman to put an end to Strange and learn more about his Protocol 10.
He suspects Catwoman may know something since she’s prone to sneaking around and gaining intel, but she’s currently being tied up by Two-Face after trying to break into his personal safe. Two-Face thinks offing her will gain her respect, when in reality, it just gets him some scars from Selina and tied up hanging over his own pit of acid.
(Where do you get one of those in Gotham, of all places?) Joker tries to assassinate Catwoman, but Batman tracks him down to the Sionis Industries steel mill. The Dark Knight goes through his henchmen, takes down Harley, and… the Joker’s dead.
Vitals are flat and everything. It’s a bit low-key, but guess that’s the end of the game– wait no, it’s a trick and Joker and Harley knock him out.
However, the clown is dying because of the Titan formula, so he performs a transfusion with Batman to get him to comply. And just for good measure, he’s been donating blood to various hospitals all around Gotham. Gross.
Good news: Mr. Freeze was working on a cure. Bad news: he’s been captured by the Penguin.
After dealing with Penguin’s men, punching his shark (no, seriously), and taking down Solomon Grundy, Batman gets Freeze his suit back.
Luckily, Freeze has already developed a cure, but it’s too unstable to use. There is one way to render it stable, and that’s with the regenerative properties of the Lazarus Pit, in the possession of one Ra’s al Ghul, head of the League of Shadows.
Bats puts a tracker on a League ninja in Penguin’ s display museum and tracks her down to underneath Arkham City. There, Ra’s daughter Talia allows him a chance to see him if he goes through the trials of Ra’s al Ghul.
After getting his drink spiked and doing some dive bombing to ghost Ra’s, he finally meets the man in all his old, near death glory. Ra’s takes a dip in the Lazarus Pit after Batman refuses to kill him and becomes the Head of the Demon, at which point he’s beaten and gets his blood taken for the cure.
Batman heads back to Freeze to finish the cure, but once it’s done, Freeze turns on him and leads to one of the best boss fights ever. During the fight, Harley steals the cure and gives it to nice ol’ Mistah J.
The Bat and the Clown fight, at which point Strange activates Protocol 10, which will wipe out the whole population of Arkham City and wipe out Gotham’s criminal problem.
The TYGER mercenaries are slaughtering inmates while Strange launches missile strikes from Wonder Tower.
Batman gets buried underneath the rubble from a missile attack on the steel mill, but before Joker can finish him off for good, Talia offers the clown immortality in exchange for sparing Batman.
Catwoman helps the Dark Knight out of the rubble, and he shuts down Protocol 10 before heading to Wonder Tower to put an end to Strange.
He infiltrates Wonder Tower and learns that Ra’s is the true genius behind Arkham City and kills Strange for not defeating the detective, but not before Strange causes the Tower to self destruct.
Ra’s kills himself to avoid capture, but Joker’s still out there. He threatens Talia and has Batman meet him at the Monarch Theater. The two meet, but Talia ends up getting the killing blow on the clown before she’s shot and killed… by another Joker.
During the game, the Joker we’ve been seeing with the scars from the Titan formula has been the real Joker, very much nearing death.
But the healthy looking one that Batman saw dead in a chair and beat on earlier was Clayface. Batman defeats Clayface, but Joker blows up the theater floor and sends them down into Ra’s lair below. Bats destroys the Lazarus Pit and takes some of the cure for himself.
He thinks about letting Joker have some of it as well, but the Clown’s obsessive need for a cure ends up being his downfall and he causes the vial to smash into pieces before he dies laughing.
Batman carries his body out of Arkham City, putting it on a police car and walking away in silence.
With Joker dead and Harley turning out to actually not be pregnant like she originally thought, she isn’t taking it well, to say the least. She gets his gang together and stages a trap for the cops that are incoming into Arkham City, which led to two officers getting kidnapped.
Batman shows up to try and save them, but she ends up locking him in an air-tight glass ball in a memorial for Joker. Two days later, Robin arrives and frees him.
She then activates the next phase in her plan and rigs the area with bombs she stole from the GCPD, forcing Batman to track them down while Robin finds and saves the police officers.
As a last resort, she baits Batman back to his statue prison and activates the mechanical guardians from Wonder City to kill him, but that’s not enough to bring down the Dark Knight.
Her plan’s all shot to hell, Harley activates a bomb in the Joker structure that she hopes won’t just kill Batman and Robin, but will also reunite her with her beloved Joker.
It doesn’t work and she’s put back in custody, but Batman’s still shaken by the death of his love Talia and Joker. With Arkham City shut down, Harley’s gang behind bars, and the evil clown six feet under, things have changed in a big way for the people of Gotham, and Batman in particular.
Gotham Will Burn
When Arkham Knight is finally in the hands of gamers, a year will have passed since Joker’s death. The crime rate in the city has gradually declined, and everyone’s feeling safer without the Joker around.
But this wouldn’t be Gotham if someone wasn’t terrorizing the people, so Scarecrow decides to have Halloween night be the night he unleashes fear toxin and bombs through the city and forces all six million citizens to evacuate.
The GCPD are outnumbered when compared to the criminals still hanging around the city; Harley, Two-Face, and Penguin’s gangs have all united under Scarecrow’s banner alongside other mainstays like Poison Ivy and the Riddler with the hopes of killing Batman once and for all.
The situation is further complicated by a black ops team from Venezuela led by a man only known as the Arkham Knight, who wears a militarized version of Batman’s suit and is hellbent on killing the Dark Knight. And sure enough, someone called this happening back in the last Arkham game.
In the open-world segments of Arkham City, Batman could come across a man watching him at several points throughout the game, but he vanishes when Batman gets close to him.
That man is none other than Azrael, and each time you meet him, he’ll give a cryptic message before vanishing and leaving a symbol behind. Deciphering all the symbols leads to the Gotham Cathedral, where Azrael tells him of a prophecy.
He claims that “Gotham will burn” and the Dark Knight is the only hope for the city, but at the cost of his own life.
Batman blows him off, but Azrael promises they’ll meet again. Sure enough, Azrael will be returning in Arkham Knight, and in the trailer he says: “The prophecy has come true.
From the ashes of Arkham City, the fires are raging and Gotham is burning. I can see that same fire in your eyes. Before this night is through, that fire will consume you.” So much for not believing in fairy tales.
The stage is set. Gotham is burning, the Knight and the Scarecrow have gathered all the big bads plus the Knight’s forces and the criminals who’ve stayed behind to raise hell, and Batman has only a few allies at his disposal– Gordon, Oracle, Nightwing, Catwoman, and Robin.
The odds are stacked against the Dark Knight, but when aren’t they? This is what awaits players when they buy Batman: Arkham Knight. You ready to Be the Batman?
About the author
