Batman Arkham Knight

[JasonPratt]

Last night's AAR: the game for the past three or four nights has developed a weird lighting effect (despite my gfx being turned down including the enhanced floodlights) where... well, I think lightning is blinding me. But only if I look in a particular direction. When lightning 'strikes', this includes both a graphic of the lightning bolt, and also a quick directional strobe or perhaps two or three for different colors. I think what's happening is that one of the strobes is staying turned on sometimes after the strike, so that if I happen to turn back in that direction it blinds me (yet doesn't at all affect how an area is lit, only the reaction of my virtual eyes to 'looking' in that 'direction'.)

Quitting to the game menu and reloading the game fixes the problem, except that I have to make sure the game has autosaved progress recently so I don't have to go back and do something annoying again.


Meanwhile, speaking of annoying, I now have significantly less than 100 Riddler trophies remaining, a few of which won't activate until later in the main game (as far as I can tell). I have also finished most of the militia occupation missions, except for a couple which won't spawn until later. And I have finished all the non-Riddler side missions except for one which hasn't activated yet, but which (as previously noted), I expect to be a quick version of the Cult storyline. Oh, and I still haven't found the fire chief, whoever that will turn out to be, though I've rescued all the other firefighters. I captured and cured Man-bat (which was simply a matter of following him around when he shows up in different thirds of the city and gliding down on top of him; but the writers did as much as they could to make what little story he gets tragically sad, I'll give them credit for that if not for the mission design itself). So he's in the isolation tank at GCPD. Penguin, Pyg, Firefly, and Two-Face are in the temporary high security cell nearby; the in-game capture score is reflected on a couple of chalkboards, which is a nice (if impossibly predictive) touch, and whether Batman survives after all or someone else becomes Batman (which seems more likely, and more likely Nightwing/Grayson, the original Robin), I expect the aftergame to involve the following further captures if I haven't completed the story 100% first (though I'm going for that): Harley (currently imprisoned in one of the local Batcaves, but for no good reason, so I expect her to be rescued or to escape later for the finale, perhaps with Ivy's help); Blackfire (whose side mission has yet to trigger); Riddler (duh); Scarecrow; and whichever villain is also behind the firefighter hostages, if any. (Firefly seems involved but his side mission finishes independently so there may be someone else.)

Ivy could theoretically, but I heard in passing that she'll end the game either dead or presumed dead.

Hush, Tommy Elliot, I've captured already and since Batman very very stupidly revealed his identity when he had literally no good reason to do so except for a few seconds of worthless drama which made no difference to the plot {inhale}, he's being held in a special cell down in a different Batcave area. (I wonder if I can get there and visit him like I can visit the others...?) His ultimate plan was also stupid, and nearly fails outright without interference from Batman due to stupidity, but he has the excuse of being insane. If I heard someday that the writers for his single mission were intentionally mocking him as a villain, because Hush's canon story actively annoys a lot of fans, I wouldn't be at all surprised. I was legitimately surprised he was introduced back in Arkham City at all; and then I was curious to see if the writers would do something interesting with him since I'll give them credit his first appearances in the Arkhamverse continuity are quite chilling. This feels like a pre-emptory toss, or toss off, to the fans: we promised Hush would be in the finale, but mainly as an out-of-game tease about whether he's the Knight, so here he is, ha ha.  ::) Whatever.

Since the game is ever-more-strongly pointing toward Todd being the Knight, unless it's a major curveball (Prometheus maybe?? -- but he only patterned his life in a somewhat accidental reverse image of Batman, he doesn't know Batman that personally), he won't be in any normal high security lockup: he knows Batman's secret identity, so he'll be sequestered somehow (or die). That'll be true whether it's Jason Todd after all or not, come to think of it.

I've finished the Azrael origin sideplot, and all things considered it was pretty decently handled, except that Barbara Gordon randomly collected the Sword of Sinners (or whatever it's called) for her office because that's where the final meeting happens. I recall seeing it there earlier and wondering what the hell, especially since I had already met Azrael and BATMAN HAD TAKEN HIS SWORD since Az had sworn not to kill in order to be Batman's successor. Did Batman put it on a stand in Barbara's office after... never mind, it's only going to be stupid however I look at it. I took the option of breaking the sword instead of trying to kill Batman with it, but I don't know what difference that'll make if any. There are only two endings I know of, one for completing the other for not yet completing the stories, and I suspect the difference will end up being minimal (along the lines of "I still have work to do").

I still have some hope that Croc and/or the Hatter will show up in connection with the Blackfire plot, though I have no positive reason to expect it yet. A Riddler trophy shows Croc is still around, though I haven't seen anything about the Hatter other than confirmation he was released when Arkham City was disbanded. (Maybe the Hatter is the fire chief?? -- he would wear a big hat, right?  :P ) Zazzaz (or however his name is spelled) was shown by a Riddler trophy to be in the city somewhere killing people, but it seems unlikely he'll directly plot in, although it's weird that they would confirm he's in the area and not use him somewhere. Bane already had a great story in Arkham Origins, and there is no evidence he's in Gotham City, so despite the South American mercenary connection I doubt he'll be involved with the Knight storyline after all.

Oh well. That ends my catchup from last night. I expect I'll be spending my next few real-life nights finishing up the Riddler sidequest(s) as far as the game will let me up to this point in the main story, so there won't be much reason to do another progress report for a while.

[JasonPratt]

Brief AAR of yesterday's gaming: finished off everything currently possible on the Riddler storyline, rescuing Catwoman and picking up all currently available trophies. Nothing especially surprising.

My unremitting hatred for whoever in Rocksteady decided on the trophy protocols, continues unabated, and with ever-renewing intensity. They don't only break up the flow of whatever other stories are going on, and aren't only jarringly out-of-place (not complaining about their occasional difficulty, but about trophies being where they have no in-game business being), but the conceit of trophies which cannot be attained without tech that hasn't unlocked yet continues. Worse, many trophies are locked behind plotwalls, even though I can see where they ought to be. I spent at least an hour and a half last night trying everything I could think of to get to several such trophies -- seeing as how they were visible on the map now (not in an area of the map not yet visible like the Knight's HQ, though God help me a large remaining number will show up there to spit on the plot, too), and seeing as how I had unlocked all possibly relevant techs already (though even then I had to spend a precious few upgrade points to  disable mines, for ONE TROPHY). Eventually in disgust and despair I went to the internet, which gave perfectly clear instructions on how to get trophies that on returning to the game simply weren't there to get. Sometimes the trophies and their machinery were even visible, but utterly unresponsive to input. I finally reasoned that the trophies wouldn't be available for retrieval until more main plot had passed, and so I cursed the very blood of whoever had first thought this kind of nonsense was a great idea, and of whomever had authoritatively decided to continue doing it in every game, caustically eroding whatever goodwill the designers had otherwise engendered from other parts of the game design, and moved along.

Amusingly, the writers themselves lampshaded this when Catwoman advised just leaving Eddie to stew in his own high dudgeon waiting for them to never come back. Though I half-suspect she'll be back to claw him up good when I finally beat him, since the writers keep foreshadowing that he'll regret using her as bait.

Anyway. On to the rest of the main story now.

[JasonPratt]

Haven't played yet today (due to extended ID4 family time); played most of yesterday afternoon until around 9 pm. Got a lot farther in the main missions.

1.) Got far enough to unlock the final side mission, with Deacon Blackfire (and maybe some surprise guest stars). Will be doing that as soon as the daily defrag is done.

2.) Got far enough to unlock three of the four final areas with Riddler trophies, and nicked all those. The fourth (and possibly very final) trophy area plot-locked back down after I left it, and I can't get back in yet. I wish I felt confident the designers will open that area again before the end of the game so I can get the completed ending.

3.) Upthread I mentioned I had read that Pamela Isley / Poison Ivy dies saving Gotham from Scarecrow; and that happened. A trophy unlocked in the area shortly afterward, but didn't really unlock until some time after that.  ::)  I've said before I hate the trophy mission designs, right?

4.) Got far enough to have my (apparently first) final fight with the Arkham Knight, the identity of whom I won't spoil for discussion until I've beaten the game. I will however say that I cheered pretty hard when, after the ArkKnight goes off to cry for a while (literally, that's said in-game), !!DEATHSTROKE!! arrives as a special secret guest star to run the militia in the final cleanup phase. This also gives me hope a few more characters introduced in previous games will pop in before the end unexpectedly. (The voice actor doesn't seem to be the usual guy who voices him in video games and animated features, which is too bad, but still.)

5.) Scarecrow's full "City Of Fear" plan blossomed, and it was suitably apocalyptic looking. It didn't last long before being thwarted, but as a spectacle I was not disappointed.

Odds seem reasonably good I'll be finishing the game tonight; so {checking} with the daily defrag done, off I go!

[JasonPratt]

As expected, I finished the game last night; then promptly took two aspirin and a Benedryl. Which should not be regarded as a comment on the quality of the game, but on the other hand I felt I should mention it, so... ;)

I'll save the major spoilers for the next comment, though obviously I've been dealing out minor spoilers along the way and that will continue here.


1.) I'm not sure if the final trophy area was already unlocked and accessible after my showdown with the Knight, or if it only opened up after the Riddler radios that trophies can be found there; but I found its entrance on the map kind-of-by-accident either way -- which also happened to be one of the final four Watchtower forts. I only needed internet help to locate how to get to two of the trophies, otherwise I had no problem finishing out the list. Once you get to the final ten, the Riddler comments on most of them, and that was entertaining though not enough for me to go through all that hassle again.

2.) Then I did the final battle with the Riddler, and as I expected Catwoman voluntarily arrived to help. The battle itself was reasonably fun, though not appreciably different from previous team-battles with Selena. There was a heartwarming scene of pathos afterward between Bruce and Selena, the end, and then perp-walking the Riddler into the maximum security cell back at GCPD.

3.) In a typical discontinuity between various writers on the game, even though no one but Batman (and Drake/Robin) knows where Harley is imprisoned (she stays in a local Batcave for the rest of the game), Officer Cash still devotes a spot for her in the evidence museum.  ::) Really, that should have been dealt with. There is literally no reason I can see why she was even imprisoned at that Batcave rather than GCPD -- I thought for sure she'd be rescued or would escape for part of the finale, simply because there was no good reason to imprison her there. But that didn't happen, even though I did complete all the storylines before finishing the game.

4.) There was not a riot at the police station for Batman to put down with the help of the cops; but instead a fight with vehicles of the militia army plus three rounds of melee combat on the roof. It was a fine fight (with a special failure animation very different from villains gloating or occasionally helpers mourning over the body of Batman, as elsewhere in the games), just not what I was expecting. But in this case that's okay.

5.) I needed a bit of internet help to find the last three planted road mines, which never served any tactical purpose for the villains during the game by the way; and once all the militia forces had been taken down (I did the mines last), Deathstroke arrived in a slightly less 'boss' version of the tank with which the Knight guarded Scarecrow's Cloudburst system. Much like what happened with the Knight, once I pummeled his tank (which was a lot easier to do), he tried to get out to fight and Batman one-shots him in a cinematic.

This, I have to say, was very disappointing. (Though in passing I decided that, despite how odd his voice sounded in his radio reveal, he was in fact being played by the usual voice actor.) ArkOrigins built up the Batman/Deathstroke battle, and although it happened very early in that game it was still quite decent. Maybe the designers couldn't figure out how to do another fight without it seeming too similar. At any rate, having Deathstroke, of all villains, simply taunt Batman on the radio while sending out minions, and then arrive for a tank fight, and then be one-shotted in a cinematic... well, even some of the writers lampshaded afterward how lame that seemed.

4.) Relatedly, the totally schizophrenic attitude of the writers about this being a trilogy or not, continued out through the end of the game. The writers often reference the events of Arkham Origins, including for example during the Deathstroke final militia missions (even establishing that Deathstroke hasn't fought Batman again since then -- and somewhat-cleverly trying to explain this and the lame way his side of the story ends by implying he's really too afraid to fight Batman again); but then in the final credits, only screenshots from Asylum, City, and Knight are shown, none from Origins. And yet, by the end of the game, even though got the 'full' ending, nowhere did I see even the slightest reason why Origins is being disavowed by the developers and publishers. Nothing contradicts anything in Origin's plot; and several things call back to it.

5.) Let's see, what else... oh, the Blackfire story, as I probably should have expected this late in the game, turned out to be only one combat mission (and a pretty easy one by now), with so little connection to "The Cult" story that I thought at first I was simply mis-remembering and this was some other supervillain. But then the biography and an offhanded comment by another character at the conclusion referenced the title of the story directly, so...? Whatever. They did this, the only justification for it being that it's where Batman first develops a combat-tank version of the Batmobile, which expressly does not and cannot be involved in the mission after all, instead of bringing back one of the previous supervillains from the Arkhamverse continuity. They didn't even bother having him team up with the Hatter or Killer Croc, both of which I guessed might have different thematic connections to the story.

6.) Relatedly, Croc does show up (a little more mutated than in Asylum), but for one cameo scene where he stands around in the background doing nothing until he's hit by a flying Batmobile. Sigh. No great final fight there. The Hatter never shows up at all, though a prose side-story suggests he's still around the city somewhere. I guess maybe that's just as well, but I'm sure the writers could have worked a way to include him had they tried. (Like in the Blackfire plot for example, cough cough hack.)

7.) I was more than a little surprised that the Knight barely shows up again after the previously mentioned showdown, and barely influences the plot when he does. I guess it sort of kind of makes sense, in a way... but to talk about that I'll have to shift over into the major plot spoilers.

Be warned that after this comment, I will just assume that anyone reading this far in the thread has played the game to the end, or otherwise had the plot spoiled for them!

[JasonPratt]

If you don't want the main secrets of the main plot spoiled for discussion (or otherwise), look away now!

I have to admit, I thought it was ballsy of the writers to have Darkseid turn out to be the big bad behind everything, and for Batman to defeat him by shooting him in the head with a bullet after snapping the Joker's neck, just as Darkseid's Omega beams hit Batman. This difference no doubt explains why the beams don't kill him, but rather send him back into time where you spend several more missions in a kind-of nod to the Assassin's Creed games working your way through history back into modern Gotham times -- except when you return, you're only a ghost, but that turns out to be a good thing because once all the criminals learn you're Bruce Wayne this allows you to go back to being a numinous frightening presence which strikes fear into the superstitious and cowardly criminal mind. This may also give a strong hint that the developers intend to take on the challenge of writing and producing a decent Superman game at last, and almost everything I've written in this paragraph is a lie, to help protect thread readers from being spoiled about the actual main plot and end of the game in case they accidentally scroll far enough down to read the start of this comment.

Almost everything. You'll see which parts were the truth, soon. ;)
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A surprising amount of the main storyline -- though I probably shouldn't have been surprised -- is about the death and final defeat of the Joker. The writers even poke at this when the player starts a New Game +, because the game starts with the player cooperating in cremating his body, but with the NG+ he jumps back to life briefly with a shock-surprise laugh, before settling back to burn. And then Mark Hamill, reprising his second-most-famous (and far more prevalent) role after Luke Skywalker, grumbles, "This... is how it happened. This is how the Joker died."

Even the version which starts a 'normal' game, features a clever spoiler in the song which is playing in the background while he's being wheeled into the crematorium: it basically spells out that the Joker's ghost will be returning to affect the plot in Batman's body.

This by the way is not a cute anti-spoiler paragraph for people who have accidentally read down this far. The Joker's ghost is haunting Batman's mind, slowly turning him into the Joker. This is made manifest by a dose of Scarecrow's fear toxin, and afterward the Joker pops up to offer sardonic faux-affably evil commentary on everything that's going on. Which sometimes kills the mood of whatever part of the story has happened, to be honest.

I won't go into how this has come about, since it boils down to comic-book science-fantasy (and not even intended as such, only an accidental side-effect of the plot of the previous game). Batman eventually beats it by the power of wishful thinking, or pure force of will, because he's the blankety-blank Batman; but that fits the long-established idea well enough that Batman's super-power is force of will. It culminates in an interesting 'battle in the mind' sequence where, after the threatened switch occurs and Batman is the one riding along (though in a restrained hallucination), he finds a way to scare the Joker, and then instead of 'killing' him locks him away permanently where he'll never get out again.

Batman's mind becomes the Joker's final and inescapable asylum. I think that's a neat idea, worthy of the end of this series of games, or worthy of the end of canon Batman stories for that matter. There's even a hint that this might finally lead to the Joker's redemption, eventually.

And then Batman and the Joker both die in an explosion. Maybe.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I'd be curious to read or hear from the writers how much of this story they had in mind from the beginning, since it turns out that the little roaches occasionally seen scuttling around various areas of Gotham, especially when Batman is being fear-gassed or fear-juiced, and even seen in a breeding box in the hold of a small boat in one of Arkham City's little harbors, are the source of Jonathan Crane's fear toxin. In the two zeppelin areas, the 'smash' collectables are sets of similar boxes, which I did not understand at all until later in the game. The writers go the distance in having Scarecrow (of all people) be the master villain of the game (even moreso than the Joker really, since he can only affect what's going on in Batman's mind, and actually relies on the fear gas to accidentally release him -- also the fear toxin plays a major role in finally defeating the Joker, because Batman is the blankety-blank Batman. ;) ) He's the one who keeps playing Xanatos Chess throughout the story, adjusting for various defeats. He's the one who convinces many of the other villains to fund the militia and bring them into the city under the Knight's command; and when the Knight goes down, he's the one who keeps the plot going by providing Deathstroke as the backup militia commander. The strong implication is that, rather like Hugo Strange in the Arkham City game, he'll springboard from defeating Gotham as a city here, into going after other DC Comic cities, using similar militia tactics.

Frankly, I strongly expected that Ra's Al Ghul would turn up behind the Scarecrow as a superior version of Dr. Strange's plan, due to the similarities; but the Ghuls (whether Ra's or Talia, or I guess Nyssa though she isn't mentioned) never show up in the game. Maybe that's just as well since then the plot would be too similar to that of Arkham City. Though it still seems like a missed opportunity. (So is a real lack of Killer Croc, who only appears in the final battle between Joker and Batman briefly in Batman's mind: the writers continually remind the player that Scarecrow's new more organic look is thanks to having been mauled by Croc. You'd think the psychologist would be looking for revenge there! -- since Croc is pretty damn fearsome and inversely hard to scare!)

Scarecrow is also responsible for a main theme leading to how the game ends: Batman started out as a scary idea that would manifest to wreck havoc on criminals (something the Scarecrow specifically says he used to admire Batman for); but over the years (apparently only ten or fifteen -- I've seen out-game things indicating Asylum happens only five years after Origins, which starts two years after Batman begins his war on crime, and Knight happens only one-or-two years and nine months after Asylum), Batman was simply too active. The thugs and various supercriminals got to know him too well. The Robins, presumably, didn't help with that, nor did "Batgirl": they humanized Batman, but made him less numinously frightening. Criminals were only scared he'd break their bones, not really truly scared of him. Scarecrow sees himself as finishing this process, as revenge against Batman, by reducing "the Bat" to a defeated, broken, mere man. Crane thinks this will crush the hope of good people, too, not understanding (because Evil Does Not Understand Good) that seeing Batman as only a man gives hope that anyone can do what he does, that everyone can be a hero without super powers if they only try hard enough and Dare To Be Awesome. (The game's story doesn't actually follow through on this idea, or not very much, but its respect for firefighters reflects this somewhat.)

Crane rightly, however, sees that what little awe the criminals have of Batman will thus vanish, and so even if Batman somehow wins through anyway his war on crime will be fatally crippled. No one is really scared of Nightwing or Robin; and they'll only see a rich guy who dresses up in a silly costume because his mommy and daddy died when he was a boy. Crane doesn't actually know who Batman is, until the end, but he does maneuver Batman into surrendering and being unmasked on national television; and any cleanup missions Batman takes on after the finale before instigating the Knightfall protocol, are... well, the missions aren't handicapped exactly, on this point the game inadvertently proves Crane wrong because all that happens is the thugs mock Batman while he's still just as ably thwapping them down. He can still (I presume) scare people during Predator missions, too.

Knightfall turns out to have nothing at all, despite the name, to do with the canon comics story arc -- certainly nothing to do with Bane (despite the Knight's South American mercenary and cult-of-personality traits, reminiscent of Bane). It simply involves Batman walking into Wayne manor in front of a sea of reporters and detonating it immediately, killing himself and Alfred.

At first I thought this was stupid writing, because Wayne thinks this is the only way to protect those he loves from retaliation -- as though various super criminals wouldn't go after the obvious Robins (Tim Drake and Dick Grayson) anyway, even if one of them (Tim) retires to marry Barbara. (For no good reason she wasn't killed by the Scarecrow after all; it's weakly written off as an effect of fear gas, which to be fair can be seen pumping into the room where Batman is standing when it happens. But it makes no sense in-story for her not to be killed. There's a hint in an audio unlock that the Knight protected her, but this is never spelled out anywhere so it leaves a weird hole in the plot, like the writers painting themselves out of too dark a corner.)

Then, in the after-credit epilogue, a rich couple and their young boy (passing by the church where Tim is about to marry Barbara, as far as I can tell, apparently just out for a walk that night!) foolishly saunter into a dark alleyway and are being mugged when the thugs see Batman on a nearby roof. They yell out, "Didn't you hear? Batman's dead! That don't scare us anymore anyway!" -- then they freak out as the figure morphs into a Bat-ghost-demon and swoops down on them.

The implication seems to be that Wayne, who has been telling people for a while that this is the end, and who told Selena that Gotham will need something worse than Batman, has faked his death and borrowed Scarecrow's fear technology to go underground as the ghost of Batman, restoring the numinous fear. If you go after Wayne's loved ones, you risk being zorched by Batman's ghost. (And by his loved ones, since many of them are still trained asskickers. ;)  Nightwing, by the way, simply vanishes from the plot once the Penguin missions are done, sent back to watch over Bludhaven.)

I can get behind that idea. Like Batman himself being the Joker's final inescapable asylum, it's a good retirement option for his story: he hands the main crimefighting off to his Robins, and only acts occasionally to keep up a numinous fear of being caught doing evil.

The main crimefighting duties may or may not include Jason Todd, who somewhat expectedly turns out to be the Arkham Knight. In the final showdown with Batman (about 75% of the way through the game!) he reveals his identity, then converts his semi-translucent blue ghosty-skull helmet into a red eyeless skull with somewhat hilarious grinding teeth. A Red Hood.

I had originally been going to be annoyed about this interpretation of his character, but they eventually established enough differences in what the Joker did to him -- keeping him terrorized and captive for months, hidden where Batman never manged to find them (in an abandoned wing of Arkham Asylum, though I think we actually visited that place in the game a couple of years previously, but thus his chosen name). In effect the Joker tried to do to him what the Joker does to Tim Drake in the Timm/Dini animated DC universe stories, and succeeds far enough to shatter Todd's belief in Batman replacing it with hatred for apparently abandoning him to the Joker. Although the writers don't spell this out, it explains why the Knight never goes after Alfred (all the Robins love Alfred), and why the Scarecrow doesn't in fact kill Barbara (because Todd protects her) -- until after the Red Hood runs away crying. Five minutes later Scarecrow is wheeling Barbara off a rooftop.  ::)

I was somewhat surprised the Hood doesn't factor more into the plot at the end: Batman clearly, at one point, expects Jason to save him (if only for his own vengeance), but instead the Hood only snipes one of Batman's manacles off at the end and then leaves. In the end, he didn't amount to as much as I was expecting. The writers don't even use him to establish that the Joker was working on identity transference tech (as in the "Return of the Joker" Batman Beyond storyline), or even to observe that this new murderous identity is how he defeated an earlier takeover attempt (although there are a few hints which could be read along that line).

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Overall, was I satisfied with the main story? Yes, overall, and with some of the side stories, maybe even most of those. The gameplay, when the engine isn't stuttering over the larger play area (perhaps), is just as brilliant as always, too. I kind of wish whoever has been in charge of keeping the Riddler trophy puzzle designs throughout the series, would lose use of both hands for a few years. ;)

[JasonPratt]

The most recent news is that there will be no news for a while: the PC version will remain off-sale, including none of the coming DLC, until late in the year. (Console owners will get their DLC on time.)

In related news, strong rumor on the internet (I've heard Destructoid mentioned) is that the first DLC mission set, Batgirl's "A Matter of Family", will only last about an hour. 

[Grim.Reaper]

Some news on upcoming patch....looks like still a few weeks away...I ended up purchasing a little while ago since I got fairly cheap...played it a bit but will wait to really get into it until some of the patching takes place.

Batman: Arkham Knight PC Update, 8/20
August 20 - Yorick
Dear Batman: Arkham Knight PC community,

The teams have been working hard to address the issues with the PC version of the game. We are happy to confirm that we are now putting the first interim patch into testing. If all goes well, we expect to issue the patch in the next few weeks. We'll be sure to report back in the next two weeks on how the testing is coming along.

Below are some of the major fixes and improvements you can expect in the upcoming patch:

• Reduced frame rate hitches
• Optimized system memory and VRAM usage
• Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
o Min Spec AMD GPU is once again the Radeon HD 7870 2GB

• More Robust In-Game Settings, including:
o Added the ability to change settings for Max FPS to 30/60/90
o Added toggles for Motion Blur, Chromatic Aberration, and Film Grain
o Added a "High" Texture Resolution value
o Added Texture Filtering option
o Added an Adaptive V-Sync option (NVIDIA only)
o Added VRAM Usage Meter
o Added Mouse Sensitivity Slider & Mouse Smoothing Option

• Fixed low resolution texture bugs
• Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)

While our first priority is fixing the issues listed above, the team is continuing to work on the following:

• Skipping the boot up splash screens
• DLC/Season Pass content
• Additional updates such as Photo Mode

We again thank you for your continued patience as we work on these issues. As always, we are continuing to monitor and listen for any additional issues.

- Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

[JasonPratt]

Well, that's sooner than October anyway. :)

[Grim.Reaper]

Well, that's sooner than October anyway. :)

Although I believe there was supposed to be an August patch originally as well....

[Grim.Reaper]

Looks like first patch live....

Good news - testing for the interim patch has been completed and it is now available for those who already have Batman: Arkham Knight for PC. As a reminder, below are some of the major fixes and improvements that will be addressed with this patch:

Reduced frame rate hitches
Optimizations for system memory and VRAM usage
Improved performance on all GPUs (requires the latest drivers)
More Comprehensive In-Game Settings
Fixed low resolution texture bugs
Fixed hitches when running on mechanical hard drives (HDD)

In addition to the above, we're continuing to work on the following for future updates:
Adding support for SLI and Crossfire
Adding support for the latest DLC & Season Pass content
Adding support for additional updates such as Photo Mode
Continued improvements and bug fixing for a Windows 7 specific memory issue that occurs on configurations with 8GB of system RAM and some NVIDIA GPUs during extended game play
Continued improvements for Windows 10 specific issues on systems with some AMD GPUs

As always, we will monitor for any additional issues that come up and will provide further optimizations and bug fixes along the way.

We would like to thank everyone for their patience and invaluable feedback. We'll provide ongoing updates here as they are made available. In the meantime, please enjoy the game with the latest patch.

- Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

[Grim.Reaper]

With it improving and you haven't bought yet, noticed pretty cheap prices at cdkeys.com....might be worth a shot.

Regular - $12
http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/batman-arkham-knight-pc-cd-key-steam

Premiere - $19 (includes season pass)
http://www.cdkeys.com/pc/games/batman-arkham-knight-premium-edition-pc-cd-key-steam

[JasonPratt]

I'll try to remember to re-install it again this weekend and report on any improvements. (It's a huge re-install, and I already beat the game once so I'm in no giant hurry to play it again.)

[JasonPratt]

I think I reported this in the Friday thread for Labor Day weekend, but it'll be more officially useful here. ;)

Re-installed it on my SSD this time -- in hindsight I should have put it back on my normal drive to compare experiences better after the early September megapatch.

Unsure what bugs per se were fixed; I don't recall there being any real bugs in my original playthrough (clocking over 60 hours). I am reading reports that some players are finding new bugs with the patch, such as the game refusing to launch, or refusing to launch after the initial post-patch launch. I never had those problems; but I launched the first time (and some subsequent times) through NVIDIA's Geforce experience. Be wary, though, be very aware.

Performance improvement? I didn't personally see any. The patch does make some more gfx options available, not many but some; and gives a much clearer idea of how shifting between various options will affect performance by reporting the memory hit on your GPU (at least for NVIDIA cards). I can report that turning off all options except volumetric smoke and running the game on 480 resolution is still a bit janky.  ::) I don't have a completely sorry card, it's a high 600 series SLI, top of the line a few years ago. I'm reading that people with current gen NVIDIA cards are still getting "yellow bars" with all the bling turned on, and so some performance blips at high speed.

One thing the new gfx tracking doesn't track, is how some of the options affect your CPU usage (since that's how they're run, not through the GPU). I still have a monster CPU, those things having not ticced up much since buying the Presence almost two Christmases ago now (I think? Surely it wasn't last Christmas?), so they made no difference in performance, but neither did they make any obvious difference in how the game looked better. Turning off some of the goofier gfx options did make the game look better (like the God-accursed lens flare), and I found out by accident (by adjusting in the middle of a paused Batmobile chase) that turning on anti-aliasing made things muddier, not crisper, so I turned that off.

Frankly, the game worked best turning everything off and the resolution down to 1050 from 1080 -- the latter was still okay, very high yellow bar, but still a tad choppy in the Batmobile highspeeds. Green bar is so smooth it's a little weird back in the other direction!  Can't win for losing there I guess, sorry WB. But I'd rather have too smooth than not enough.

Let me be clear though: even with all the glitter turned off, the game looks splendiferous at any resolution 720 (minimum high def) or better. I'm not convinced the game was EVER adding significant fx improvements in any way, even for the volumetric smoke, which sure when you could see it looked amazing, but rarely ever showed up in circumstances visible on the screen. So you'd always be taking a huge performance hit for having it on while racing around on the Batmobile, but rarely ever see it (since if the camera was ever back that far THE SMOKE WOULD OBSCURE THE VIEW!) Some of the glitter being turned off makes the game look better anyway.

My recommendation is, play it for the game itself, the gameplay itself, the story itself, and turn all the gfx off in the appropriate option menu; tick it up as high on the resolution as you can get and still have a green bar, and you'll have no worries and it'll look practically no different in any casually noticable way.