At long last, Warner Bros. Interactive revealed the new release date for Batman: Arkham Knight. The game is set for an official release date of June 2, 2015. The wait is much longer than originally expected, considering the game was originally announced to debut in October 2014. Although the wait is long, Rocksteady Games has a great track record. The bad news is that the game will not be out for almost another year. The good news: Rocksteady has plenty of time to make an incredible, smooth and polished final product.
Actually, the first announcement of an October 2014 release date sounded somewhat early. Although there was suspicion that Rocksteady was already hard at work on the follow-up to Batman: Arkham City, the announcement came shortly after Batman: Arkham Origins was released. Granted, that was a different developer. The 2015 delay did not surprise me, since the game was actually revealed shortly before E3 2014.
June 2015 means that Rocksteady is not rushing this thing, and that is positive news. Rocksteady Games is not compromising the integrity of the game by rushing it out before it is ready. The company does not want to create a glitched out buggy product, like Arkham Origins, to hit the shelves. The glitches in Arkham Origins constituted a major failing among critics and fans. Not to mention, this game is being developed exclusively for the next-gen consoles, so a lot more probably had to go into that. Arkham Knight will truly be a next-gen gaming experience.
At the same time, Rocksteady will not have any excuses for errors or a disappointing final act. The game better be as polished and as smooth as Arkham City. If the final leg of the game turns out like Mass Effect 3…well, then that is on Rocksteady. However, I doubt the development staff is oblivious about the game.
Since Rocksteady has all the extra time, I hope this means the depth of the campaign, including Easter eggs and other side missions, will be out of control. In addition, I would not mind free roam of Gotham City with characters other than Batman; for example, Red Hood, since he has already been announced as a playable character in his own dedicated story pack. One other element I really would not mind is a cutscene gallery. In previous Arkham games, you could only view images of the cut scenes in a glorified side show. Getting the actual cut scenes to view later in a gallery would be nice. It is new-gen tech. How hard could that be to pull off?
Batman: Arkham Knight hits the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Windows PC on June 2, 2015. Two limited collector’s editions will also be released on the same date.
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