Rocksteady consulted with Warner Bros. and DC Comics on the game's conclusion

Feb 13, 2012 09:29 GMT  ·  By

The ending of Batman: Arkham City wasn’t made just to shock fans, as Rocksteady, the game’s developer, planned for such a conclusion and even consulted with people from DC Comics and Warner Bros.

Batman: Arkham City was a stunning title, with lots of varied gameplay and a story that delivered players new adventures as they guided the Dark Knight through the seedy underbelly of Arkham City against villains like The Joker, Two-Face, or The Riddler.

While all of these things delighted fans, the ending was quite controversial, to say the least. We’ll be talking about a big spoiler in the article, so those who’ve yet to finish Arkham City might want to stop reading right now.

After a back and forth fight with Batman, The Joker ends up dead at the end of the game. This was planned by Rocksteady a long time in advance and quite a few precautions were taken to ensure that it didn’t seem as a cheap shock to players.

“We decided fairly early on, I guess,” Rocksteady Director Sefton Hill told XBW, via CVG. “Batman is very much about the story, so we discuss the story early. Right at the start we sat down and thought what story we wanted to tell. We knew we had Joker starting off sick from the previous game and we wanted to play on that idea.”

“Pretty early on we hit on this idea of Joker poisoning Batman and the two of them having this kind of shared goal, but with diametrically opposed world views. You invest time in a game and this story, and you want to feel like the universe is affected by the events you play. We didn't want it to feel hollow - Joker starts off poisoned, Batman gets poisoned, where does that story go? We knew people would be thinking: 'obviously they're not going to kill Batman or Joker, right?' We felt killing Joker was a really striking end. It was almost taboo, like it was something we could never do.”

Hill said that Rocksteady’s idea was endorsed by representatives from the game’s publisher, Warner Bros, and the Batman comic book designers from DC Comics, as they easily understood the reasons for killing off such an important character.

“There were no dissenting voices, as long as it was done in a proper way, as long as it was clear that Batman didn't go out to kill him - that's never what Batman would do. Joker being responsible for his own downfall because he wasn't able to resist stabbing Batman in the back was something we thought would be a nice poetic end for him.”

Batman: Arkham City’s ending was definitely one of the most touching conclusions of last year. What do you think? Did the game provide a good ending to its adventures or were you hoping Batman and Joker would continue their back and forth struggles in a new game?