Batman: Arkham City

• 1. Introduction

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  The blueprints for Batman: Arkham City were hidden in a secret room inside the warden's office of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game that came before it. Rocksteady Studios planted those hints in the 2009 original while that game was still being finished. The plans for the prison were quite similar to the layout players eventually walked through. The sequel arrived in 2011 and carried Batman out of the asylum and into a walled-off section of Gotham City. Its streets were ruled by the city's most dangerous criminals. What would make Bruce Wayne walk into a prison he publicly despised? How do designers build a city for a hero who flies over it? And what becomes of the Joker, a villain who seemed unable to end?

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• 2. A Super-Prison in Gotham

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  Eighteen months after the events of Batman: Arkham Asylum, Quincy Sharp is the mayor of Gotham City. Sharp was once the asylum's director, and he took credit for stopping the Joker's armed siege. He used that reputation to win office, then declared both the asylum and Blackgate Penitentiary unfit to hold the city's detainees. His administration closed them and bought Gotham's most notorious slums, turning the whole district into an immense prison enclosure called Arkham City.

  The psychiatrist Hugo Strange runs the place, while secretly manipulating Sharp. A rogue private military firm called TYGER Security watches over the inmates. Strange lets the prisoners do as they please, so long as nobody tries to escape. Batman keeps a wary watch from outside. Meanwhile the Joker is dying from a disease caused by an earlier overdose of the Titan formula, an unstable steroid mutagen that turns men into powerful and savage monsters.

  At a press conference, Bruce Wayne announces his opposition to the project. TYGER mercenaries arrest him on the spot and imprison him inside the walls. Strange then tells him that he knows Wayne is Batman, and releases him among the criminals anyway. Sefton Hill, the game's director, said this left Batman "vulnerable and exposed in a way that he has never been before". Rocksteady chose Strange as a primary antagonist because his power and controlling manner keep the lockdown in place once Batman is inside.

  Alfred Pennyworth sends Wayne's equipment by airdrop, and Batman is back in business. His first act is to rescue Catwoman from Two-Face, who hopes to earn respect by executing her. Strange, meanwhile, is preparing something called Protocol 10, and the only lead Batman has is the Joker's hideout in the Sionis Steelmill.

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• 3. Cure and Betrayal

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  Inside the Sionis Steelmill, the Joker captures Batman and gives him a blood transfusion. The transfusion infects Batman with the same fatal disease. The Joker adds that he has poisoned Gotham's hospitals with his infected blood. Batman now needs a cure for himself and for the innocent citizens in danger. He looks for Mr. Freeze, who had been working on one before the Penguin kidnapped him.

  The Penguin holds Freeze in a fortified museum. Batman fights through the Penguin's forces and then through his imprisoned monster, Solomon Grundy. He defeats the Penguin himself and frees Freeze. The cure Freeze has built is useless because it is unstable. Batman reasons that the therapeutic properties of Ra's al Ghul's blood could finish it. He tracks one of Ra's's assassins to an underground lair, where he meets Ra's and his daughter Talia, a former lover of Batman. With the blood, Freeze makes an antidote, but Harley Quinn steals it.

  When Batman returns to the Joker, he finds the villain healthy again. During their fight, Strange activates Protocol 10, a scheme to wipe out the entire population of Arkham City and destroy Gotham's criminal element. TYGER troops begin executing inmates, and Strange fires missiles from his base in Wonder Tower. One missile hits the steel mill and buries Batman under rubble. Talia arrives before the Joker can act and offers him immortality if he spares Batman's life.

  Catwoman helps Batman escape, and Alfred persuades him to shut down Protocol 10 before chasing Talia and the Joker. Batman infiltrates Wonder Tower and disables it. Ra's al Ghul turns out to be the true mastermind behind Arkham City. He mortally wounds Strange for failing to defeat Batman. With his dying breath, Strange triggers Protocol 11, the tower's self-destruction. Ra's kills himself to avoid capture.

  The Joker then calls Batman to the Monarch Theater, threatening to kill Talia. There, Talia impales him, and a second Joker kills her while she is still sick with the disease. The impaled Joker reanimates as Clayface, who had been posing as a healthy Joker at the dying villain's request. The theater floor collapses to reveal a Lazarus Pit beneath it. After beating Clayface, Batman drinks part of the antidote and destroys the pit before the Joker can use it. The Joker attacks him as he debates curing his enemy, and the vial smashes. Batman admits he would have saved the Joker anyway. The Joker dies, and Batman lays the body on the hood of Commissioner Gordon's car before leaving Arkham City in silence.

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• 4. Gliding Above Gotham

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  Rocksteady left the Batmobile out of the game because it could not travel across the city's broken terrain. Putting Batman in any vehicle, the team felt, would make it a completely different game. By the time the programmers had taught Batman to dive and glide between the asylum's buildings, extending that to a city seemed natural. Arkham City has a virtual footprint five times that of the asylum, and its layout was modified for swooping and gliding. Hill's key goal was to deliver a "Batman in Gotham" feeling. He also argued that a fully free-roaming open world would not suit a Batman game, because it would weaken the atmosphere. Instead the city was meant to push the player to think like Batman in order to survive.

  The X-ray-like Detective Vision mode had to be rebuilt. In the first game it proved too useful, and some players kept it on for almost the entire adventure. It also hid the game's design aesthetic. A time limit was considered, but the team felt Batman "wouldn't make a gadget like that". The solution was to make it awkward in certain moments. It can obscure navigational information, and enemy strikes blur the screen while it is active. Art director David Hego called the redesigned mode an "augmented reality mode".

  Combat builds on the Freeflow system from the first game. Batman can now counter several blows at once, catch thrown projectiles, attack from the air and chain long strings of strikes. Rocksteady doubled the number of animations to match. Armed enemies demand different answers. Those with stun batons can only be attacked from behind, shield carriers must be disarmed with aerial attacks, and body-armored thugs need rapid successive strikes before they can be harmed. Guns inflict significant damage, while bats and lead pipes can be countered. Rival gangs also fight turf wars that make moving around the prison harder.

  Batman begins the game with the gadgets he earned in the first game, to show that he is prepared for things going wrong. New tools include smoke bombs, a Remote Electric Charge gun that stuns enemies, and the Disruptor, which remotely disables guns and explosive mines. Freeze Blast grenades encase targets in ice and can be thrown into water to form makeshift platforms. Experience points buy upgrades in three areas, each with approximately 15 options. Many of those gadgets are also the keys to the puzzles of a villain who prefers questions to fists.

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• 5. Riddler and Catwoman

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  The Riddler scatters 440 challenges across Arkham City, and most of them are hidden trophies. Rocksteady designed them near the end of development and spread them through every area without crowding the map. The team wanted players to solve puzzles with gadgets rather than hunt for trophies tucked into obscure corners. A player lacking the right tool can mark a trophy on the map and return later. Interrogating the Riddler's henchmen reveals more locations, which means saving them for last in a fight. Other riddles send players to a specific item or place and reward them with a story about the answer. After enough challenges, Batman must save a civilian hostage from one of the Riddler's death traps.

  The main campaign runs about 25 hours, and the side missions add roughly 15 more, for a total near 40. Completing the story on normal or hard difficulty opens New Game Plus. Players replay with everything they have earned, against tougher enemies and without the on-screen warning icon for incoming attacks. Separate challenge maps, ranked online by performance score, test combat, stealth and efficient travel.

  Catwoman carries her own heist-focused storyline that crosses the main plot at set points. She fights with clawed gauntlets, bolas and her whip, and some Riddler challenges can only be completed by her. Her missions were first written to end with her coming to Batman's aid. Late in development, the team added an alternate choice that lets her leave the city with her loot. That change took two days to implement.

  Robin got a deliberate makeover, with a shaved head and a modern costume meant to move away from the "Boy Wonder" image. Concept artist Kan Muftic described the character as "a troubled young individual that is calm and introverted at times, but very dangerous and aggressive if provoked". The shaved head was inspired by cage fighters. Rocksteady first planned to leave Robin out of the main story, then added him as a believable way to deliver new gadgets to Batman. Robin and Nightwing are both playable in challenge maps through optional downloads.

  The studio also weighed a multiplayer mode and dropped it. Hill asked, "If we use all of the energy that is required to create multiplayer and instead focus this on the single player, would that deliver a better overall game?" The answer shaped how the team filled the city with villains.

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• 6. Villains and Voices

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  Rocksteady gave the open world a crowded roster, because a larger city needed more threats. The designers chose to show a small piece of each villain's story rather than dwell on a few. That let players meet many characters and feel the weight of a superprison full of supervillains. Each territory takes on the look of whoever controls it. Dax Ginn, a marketing manager at Rocksteady, said that in the Joker's territory, "you get a very Joker-ized experience". Mr. Freeze's area is ice-themed and Poison Ivy's is a jungle. The Joker's fire-themed steel mill uses large white clown faces against its oranges and reds.

  The architecture draws on 19th century Art Nouveau design, and Strange's Wonder Tower was inspired by the Eiffel Tower. The characters themselves use a modern hyperrealism style. To build this world, Rocksteady grew its workforce from 75 to over 100 people. Crunch lasted about eight months, with staff working until 11 or 12 each night after an 8am start. Paul Dini, a veteran Batman writer, wrote the story with Paul Crocker and Sefton Hill.

  The Joker's death was settled early in the design. Rocksteady wanted to poison Batman with the same illness, forcing two opposites into a shared goal. Warner Bros. and Dini did not object, provided it was not done for shock value and Batman was clearly not at fault. Mark Hamill said this would be his final time voicing the character, though he later returned for Batman: Arkham Knight. Kevin Conroy, who voices Batman and also the villain Hush, called the sequel "really, really dark".

  The cast is large. Tara Strong took over as Harley Quinn from Arleen Sorkin. Grey DeLisle plays Catwoman and Troy Baker voices both Robin and Two-Face. Corey Burton is Hugo Strange, Nolan North is the Penguin, and Stana Katic voices Talia al Ghul. Maurice LaMarche plays Mr. Freeze and Calendar Man, and Martin Jarvis is Alfred.

  The music came in two albums from WaterTower Music. The score by Nick Arundel and Ron Fish has 19 tracks. The Album collects 11 original songs inspired by the game, from mainstream artists including Daughtry, Panic! at the Disco and Coheed and Cambria. It reached shoppers on the 4th of October 2011, two weeks before the game itself.

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• 7. Selling the Dark Knight

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  Warner Bros. wanted an audience beyond superhero fans, including players of first-person shooters like Call of Duty. Its marketers accepted that Batman's status as a cultural icon was unavoidable, so they emphasized other sides of him. Black-and-white photographs of Steve Jobs and James Dean inspired the look. The imagery, streaked with blood and bathed in light, was meant to refocus attention on Batman's humanity. The campaign appeared on 120 magazine covers and targeted approximately 15 million consumers. It also included viral videos and costumed actors at press events. A viral strand hid audio recordings between Strange, Sharp, the Riddler and the Penguin, each found by solving a puzzle. By April 2012, three gameplay trailers had gained about 6 million views. The effort took more than a year and cost at least $10 million.

  A six-issue comic series, also titled Batman: Arkham City, began on the 11th of May 2011. Dini wrote it, Carlos D'Anda drew it, and it bridges the plot between the two games. Warner Bros. also developed toys through Mattel, Hallmark cards, batarang-shaped controllers and apparel from labels including Converse and New Era.

  Toys "R" Us in Times Square sold 500 copies on Monday the 17th of October, a day before the official date. The first 100 pre-order customers could get copies signed by Jim Lee, Kevin Conroy and Sefton Hill. Australian retailers EB Games and Game also broke the date two days early.

  The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions reached North America on the 18th of October 2011, Australia on the 19th, and Europe on the 21st. The Windows version was pushed back to the 18th of November without explanation. Pre-orders came in more than 200% above those for Arkham Asylum. Retailers offered bonus outfits drawn from The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Earth One, Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. A PlayStation 3 Sinestro Corps outfit came with the Blu-ray of the film Green Lantern. Collectors could buy an edition with a Kotobukiya statue, and the UK had a Robin Edition. The Game of the Year Edition reached the United States and Canada on the 29th of May 2012. Critics widely mocked its cover for printing review scores and quotations in type that dwarfed the game's name. The Windows version also required Games for Windows - Live, a fact that caused confusion until it was confirmed in late August.

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• 8. Acclaim and Aftermath

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  On Metacritic, the PlayStation 3 version scored 96 out of 100, the Xbox 360 version 94 and the PC version 91. The game tied with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as the highest-rated game of 2011. Andrew Reiner of Game Informer gave it a perfect 10 and called it "the best licensed video game ever made". Nick Cowen of The Guardian named it the best Batman game of all time. GamesMaster scored it 97% and called it "the gold standard by which all future videogames should be judged". Not every reviewer agreed. Griffin McElroy of Joystiq found the story a string of excuses to meet one-dimensional villains and called the Riddler challenges frustrating without the right items. Christian Donlan of Eurogamer thought it lacked the surprise of its predecessor.

  The game sold two million units in its first week, from about 4.6 million shipped. Arkham Asylum had sold 4.3 million over its whole life. By the 8th of February 2012, more than six million had been shipped. In the United Kingdom it took the top spot from FIFA 12 and became the biggest game launch in Warner Bros. history there, doubling Asylum's first week. In the United States it sold 1.5 million copies in October 2011 alone. GameFly named it the most requested game of 2011, ahead of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Lifetime sales passed 12.5 million units and revenue passed $600 million.

  Awards followed. At the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards the Joker won Character of the Year. The 2012 BAFTAs gave prizes to Mark Hamill for Performer and to the game for Action game. Paul Crocker won Best Videogame Script from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. E! Online and CNET each placed it first on their lists of the best games of 2011. In November 2012, Time put it among the 100 greatest games ever and wrote, "It's hard to imagine a better superhero game than Batman: Arkham City. It's also hard to imagine a better video game in general." In 2014, Empire ranked it 12th on its all-time list, ahead of Arkham Asylum at 28th.

  The launch was rough. Some copies lacked the code for the Catwoman missions, which Warner Bros. said affected fewer than 0.5% of customers. In the United Kingdom, a fault left the game unplayable for some, with an error saying the downloadable content was corrupt. Rocksteady's European community manager, Sarah Wellock, blamed the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. In early November, Rocksteady investigated reports of Xbox 360 save files being erased. PC players using DirectX 11 saw performance problems and were told to run the game on DirectX 9.

  The story kept growing. Harley Quinn's Revenge arrived on the 29th of May 2012, set two weeks after the main game, with Robin searching for a missing Batman. Greg Miller of IGN scored it 9 out of 10, while Stephen Totilo of Kotaku was critical. A Wii U version followed on the 18th of November 2012 and scored 85 on Metacritic. Remastered versions reached the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on the 18th of October 2016, and a Nintendo Switch trilogy arrived on the 1st of December 2023. Batman: Arkham Origins came out in October 2013 without Dini, who said Warner Bros. and Rocksteady suggested he take work elsewhere. Rocksteady's own sequel, Batman: Arkham Knight, followed on the 23rd of June 2015, nine months after Arkham City, with the Scarecrow attacking Gotham.

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