Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham series is the gaming equivalent of a chef-d’œuvre. The franchise is a flawless piece of art from the start to the end, and although all the main games in the series are absolute perfection, the last game, Batman: Arkham Knight, was kind of destined to fail with this one design choice.
Instead of making the game for the generation of consoles that were popular at that time, Rocksteady decided to make the game for the new generation, which was a huge gamble.
Let’s delve deeper into this and find out why this was a huge gamble for the developing team.
Batman: Arkham Knight was made on the eighth-gen consoles
With no new sequels yet, Batman: Arkham Knight is currently the last mainline installment in the Arkham franchise. The game was released back in June of 2015 and was the fourth main installment in the series. It was one of the games in that year that ditched the previous generation consoles and headed for the new ones.
2015 was the era of eighth-generation consoles, which included systems like Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One. Although both of them were released back in 2013, no one was really sure whether the new consoles would take off or not back then, with some even calling it the worst generation of consoles.
In a 2016 interview between Red Bull and the co-founder of Rocksteady, Sefton Hill, he revealed how making the game on the newer consoles was a gamble, but making it on the previous generation consoles would have been detrimental to the developers’ vision.
It definitely was a gamble, no one really knew what the uptake of next-gen would be like at that original point, but when we looked at the scope of what we wanted to achieve with Arkham Knight, we knew within the first few months that if we were to remain on previous gen systems we would really have to compromise the vision. We could either make a game that we knew was worse or really just go for it and make the game we all wanted to make and forego the previous generation of consoles.
In the same interview, Hill also credited Warner Bros, the publisher and parent company of Rocksteady for green-lighting the bold decision, even though no one knew the outcome.
Rocksteady made the right decision by switching to the newer consoles
Ultimately, Rocksteady’s decision to make Batman: Arkham Knight for the eighth-generation console paid off. Although ditching the consoles that players were used to was a risky venture, Rocksteady’s decision to move on to the newer consoles let the developers fully realize their vision for the game without any compromises.
Batman: Arkham Knight pushed the limitations of what new hardware could achieve back in 2015, and it delivered one of the most stunning and immersive experiences that might not have been possible with an older generation of consoles. The Arkham games hold a very special place in the gaming industry, and they also proved that sometimes, taking a leap of faith might just be worth it.
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
