Batman: Arkham Knight spoiler thoughts

Despite his well-executed death in Arkham City, Joker still plays a prominent role in this game’s story.  I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I do like what they did with tying his take over of Batman’s psyche with Scarecrow’s gas as Batman’s greatest fear. I like the trippy ways he appears in the background constantly taunting Batman, as well as the way signs and advertisements in the city warp to imagery that reminds Batman of his failure in saving Joker. I love how he externalizes Batman’s personal thoughts in his own psychotic and depraved way. On the other hand, it feels like the Joker has been too prominent in the *Arkham* games, and I feel like other important Batman villains like Two-Face never get the screentime and attention I feel like they deserve. Joker is without a doubt Batman’s greatest foe and an extremely important part of the Batman mythos. That being said, he’s not the *only* part of the Batman mythos, and his constant overshadowing of the rest of Batman’s villains is something about this series that’s always bothered me. If it wasn’t for the fact that he stole the show from Hugo Strange and Black Mask in City and Origins, I could maybe overlook it. It’s just disappointing when these games don’t give that kind of attention to Batman’s other prominent enemies, regulating most of them to side content instead.

Like I said in Backlogged review, the Arkham Knight actually being Jason Todd was always painfully obvious. I think that makes it all the more disappointing that Hush and Azrael don’t play any real role in the main narrative. I think that if they did play an actual role, they might have been able to actually add a sense of mystery to the Arkham Knight’s identity, but no, they both just get written off in a disappointing fashion. Hush in particular is just a cutscene, there’s no actual mission for him aside from just going to Wayne Tower and pressing a single button.

The ending was pretty good. I remember I used to not be happy with how ambiguous and left to interpretation the ending was, but after replaying it, I actually like it, and it’s a lot less ambiguous than I originally thought. It's pretty clear that Batman faked his death by destroying the Wayne Manor and now he’s using a new version of Scarecrow’s fear toxin that’s likely to have been altered to cause less damaging psychological effects in order to keep the myth of the Batman alive. I don’t think it’s the best possible ending, especially since we don’t see Barbera, Dick, or Tim’s reactions to the Knightfall Protocol, but the speech from Commissioner Gordon on the way to Tim and Barbera’s wedding is emotionally satisfying enough.