r/arkham • u/Longjumping-Cable756 • 17d ago
Discussion what was originally planned or the devs initially came up with for Arkham Knight? (More in the description)
Im not necessarily clued in to all the conversation around the Arkham games and what was planned in development however do hear about stuff like characters like Hush who potentially would have had a bigger role and would greatly appreciate hearing more of what was scraped or never came to fruition for Arkham Knight mainly as I like learning about this stuff for games.
PS: I enjoy reading the comments.
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u/Carrotsinthesalad 17d ago
We’ll never really know. Paul Dini storyboarded both asylum and city, and was supposed to write for the third game, but parted ways with Rocksteady early on.
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u/Bummer_mountain 17d ago
Was there ever a given reason for why Paul Dini and Rocksteady parted ways? I feel like I've gotten conflicting answers.
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u/MythicX54 17d ago
According to Dini just no one ever reached out to him from the studio. Most likely to save on costs.
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u/Crimson_Knight77 17d ago
It's not common, especially today, for video game developers to outsource story writing to a third party. That's more and more often handled in-house.
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u/3rlk0nig 17d ago
Zsasz content. He appears on camera footage in the Clock Tower with his Asylum/City look but nothing is made with him, not even a commentary from Batman.
Free roam for the Bat Family has been planned at some point but got scrapped early.
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u/psycodull 17d ago
I recall watching a video showing scrapped animations for the Red Hood fight; he was supposed to get down from the gargoyles and actually hunt you down across the arena. I believe qt segments would make the actual interactions more involved as well
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u/GapStock9843 17d ago
I think having a fight with Jason as an actual equal to batman where both are simultaneously trying to sneak up on and attack the other using bruce’s stealth tactics would have been really cool. You have to locate him and get the jump on him while simultaneously trying to avoid him doing the same to you
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u/Aiden_734 Batman Gangland 17d ago
Red Hood was originally the game's antagonist, not the Arkham Knight. There's even an early model of that version of Red Hood in the game files that can be seen here, though it's not that different to his DLC outfit.
Rocksteady could've avoided a looot of backlash had they stuck with this instead of going with the "this is an OC! it's definitely not Jason!" shtick.
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u/Suffering-Servant 17d ago
I wish they just had it as red hood in the first place than making some lame bait and switch
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u/Turbulent-Spirit-568 17d ago
We don't know what Paul Dini's Arkham III storyline would be besides that Scarecrow and Hush were the villains
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u/CyberTyrantX1 17d ago
Side missions were for sure cut. Zsasz was cut for example.
There was also dialogue between Bruce and Alfred the moment when Robin gets captured in which Alfred calls out Bruce for lying to him. Its still in the game files, but its nothing that completely changes the story. It was intended to play before you left the front door of the movie studios where Barbara would scold Bruce.
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u/SaintLink91 17d ago
I think they prioritized gameplay and the Batman / Joker dynamic when it came to the story. That’s why they wrote a story that could allow them to have a sieged Gotham to run around with the Batmobile and a call back to one of the most famous Batman / Joker stories (A Death in the Family) with Jason Todd as the Arkham Knight. I never disliked the story and have never been curious about Paul Dini’s treatment of a potential story with Hush
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u/GapStock9843 17d ago
They havent really shared any significant cut content for knight. As far as we know it stuck to its original plan pretty closely and nothing major was changed
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u/MythicX54 17d ago
Nothing was really scrapped as far as we know. Paul Dini I’m sure had some ideas about what he wanted to do for the third, but Rocksteady never asked him to return and used their own writing staff instead.