5 Missed Opportunities In The Batman Arkham Franchise 

One of the biggest missed opportunities was not having Hush be a main villain and team up with Arkham Knight & Scarecrow

I think the biggest missed opportunity of mostly Arkham Knight specifically was the fact that you never go to visit Arkham City or Arkham Asylum again. I would've loved to go back to Arkham City or even a mission at the asylum at the end of the game when you go there to get unmasked. Hell, I would've even been fine with visiting wonder city or something like that.

I think- especially in knight, there was a missed opportunity to play as other characters in the main game- the exception being catwoman in city, (and a lesser extent of Azrael and Joker - for a brief moment in Knight). It would have been cool to have certain areas you could switch the character. Having missions and areas only accessible to certain characters but other could be played by either character.- this would help in repayability and enhance the overall experience.

One misstep I can think of is how they handled Two-Face throughout the whole series. The two games he appears in, his role is essentially nothing, it adds nothing and ultimately leads nowhere. I'm not saying that Two-Face should have been a main villain, but before his accident, Harvey Dent was one of Batman's biggest allies. It would have been nice to have some interactions with him in origins (maybe a rescue mission where you have to save Two-Face from one of the assassins or another stand-alone DLC similar to the brilliant Cold, Cold Heart and add a cut scene where Harvey Dent commends Batman for his work and plants that seed of a future alliance where if Batman catches the assassins and other criminals, Dent will be sure they get put away, which would be easy to do since Batman has been doing that all night. It would also give Alfred a bit more of a voice in a way since he'd been trying to get Bruce to consider allying himself with others throughout the story.) Also, since they introduced Jason Todd into the narrative (which completely botches the time line of the entire series), having Two-Face feature more prominently would have made sense, given that Jason's father (in some continuities) worked for, and was killed by Two-Face. Maybe having the Arkham Knight come after Two-Face, and in the midst of it all, having Two-Face come to Batman for protection, would bring it around full-circle in a way. Another missed opportunity in my opinion is the inclusion of well-established GCPD officers like Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya in Arkham Knight. You spend so much time at the GCPD that not having them there makes no sense. Especially since Bullock was featured in Arkham Origins (and Robert Costanzo even reprised his role from the animated series). The friction between the two after Barbara's and especially Jim's disappearance would have fit in. Then they could have buried the hatchet in the end, which would have been a nice touch, given that it's Batman's last night. It would be another loose end tied up. Also, inclusions of characters like Dr. Leslie Tompkins (even in a brief cameo or a voicemail) would have been nice. Especially after Batman was unmasked. There are many more things I could add, but these were the biggest ones I could think of.

Deathstroke, Two Face, and especially Black Mask were done dirty so many missed opportunities with them

Honesty all of black mask he got screwed over throughout

I always say that they should've expanded on the relationships between the side characters and batman. For example the relationship between Bruce and Selina.

Just imagine if they would have introduced Prometheus as the Arkham knight

In Arkham Knight I wished we had the real very big Batcave for us to explore. Like say, Batman needed to get new equipment or check on Alfred or a big Boss battle with Jason Todd, and he revealed a secret tunnel underneath the river that can lead to the cave that would be awesome especially doing the entry with your favourite Batmobiles and even that too, change the Batmobile at the cave so you don't have to exit the game to do so. Thats a missed opportunity there for sure

For me a missed opportunity is no mentions about Jason before Arkham Knight so when you finally see flashbacks you know it's for something else. It could be easily added, like do a hallucination after fear gas of Jason in thorn Robin uniform screaming "why didn't you find me" or "it's your fault I'm dead". Or add a line of dialog here and there like Alfred scolding Bruce that he's working too hard and it's going to ruin him just like searching for Jason did.

Arkham Knight really missed out on adding new interesting villains throughout the game. I would've love to see side missions with villains like Calendar Man, Black Mask, Prometheus etc. It may be a Batman problem in general but I feel like writers aways feel like they NEED to have the Joker, when in reality he has a huge gallery of villains.

10:53 Dude, you're honestly going to make the case that we don't care when something happened to these characters in the games? I absolutely cared about them when Alfred nearly died, Barbara was falling out of a skyscraper, and Tim gets abducted by Crane. When they tricked you into thinking that Jim actually died in Arkham Asylum, I was pretty stunned. I was certainly more invested than "I saw them in a comic once and now they're in trouble, but I don't care". Maybe that's just me though.

One thing I wanted to see was the Wayne Manor! We should’ve been able to explore and use it as a hub world of sorts in the Arkham games 😞 Kinda like Super Mario 64 or the Tomb Raider games?

One missed opportunity I would say is using a different main villain for the next game other than the Joker

Biggest miss for me was Hush. Would of loved for the Arkham Knight to be Hush with the motive he wants to be the next Batman as well as Wayne. And would of thrown a new layer of Scarecrows plot to unmask Batman when it happens it just throws more uncertainty into if Batman is Bruce Wayne.

I always felt like the handling of the Bat Family was one of the biggest missed opportunities. You hit two of my biggest issues with them on this list. The lack of gadgets was ridiculous. Nightwing and Robin don't have smoke pellets? And why did they lose gadgets between City and Knight. They also should've had bigger roles in the story. I understand that Batman's alienation of them was a plot point in Knight, but there was a major opportunity to expand their use. What if Batman kept them busy by sending them on the side missions in his place? It would've kept Nightwing and Robin busy. It would've given Batman a better means of testing Azrael. It would've also made their usage optional if the players just wanted to stick to the main story.

Another missed opportunity is that some areas of the games would have made a great challenge map but they never made one

All 4 of the Batman games are some of my favorites of all time and play frequently. So it's hard to find a fault. But there are a few nitpicks I do have. But here are the ones that I always get me. 1. Numbers stations in City/Origin. When you use the remote hacking device as a radio receiver, each game had a numbers station easter egg. But the station only gives you the equivalent of "Drink more Ovaltine". Why didn't these little easter eggs possibly lead to a special hidden riddler trophy or even better yet, a scavenger hunt. Also, this whole concept was not used to its potential. It's mostly a way to break up the action, and give batman a reason to go to the next place. In origins, I think it might only be used once. 2. Why weren't there more detective activities like the ones in Origins in Knight? We have really only the car crash to investigate like that. Arkham city actually had more, albeit small and relating to only the joker's sniping at the beginning and the Deadshot quest. 3. Deathstroke. Nuff said. 4. We got a lot of Aaron Cash and Jim Gordon, but what about other GCPD staples. I would love to have seen Harvey Bullock and Rene Montoya. They only appear in little visual easter eggs here and there. 5. In the Return to Arkham re-release, why didn't they make the gadget control layout consistent? And dammit, when I make the transition from any of the first 3 to Knight, I keep pushing LB (I play on xbox) to go to detective mode, which often does something I don't want it to do, which is call the batmobile.

I think that they should have put Jason Todd or Red Hood in before Knight

To kind of go along with the marketing missteps at the beginning of the video, Rocksteady also was very adamant that the Joker would not play an integral role in Arkham Knight, and as we all know, he was a very intrical role. He wasn't the main villain for obvious reasons but he was very much there and a negative influence on Batman and his actions

#4 YES! I also wish we could have played with those characters in the game, not just challenge maps. Even if it was just gliding around the city and beating up thugs. It would have been cool just to explore the city with them. Maybe a couple side missions

I won't say that i disagree with you about "Return to Arkham" I'll just say that i don't see issues that you see. I really enjoy playing this remaster on Xbox one and it's really fun for me. I will agree about leaving Origins out of it because it is really mistake because it is a very good game which has quite a lot of fans

I think that the reason Deathstroke had a tank battle in Arkham Knight was to get rid of the Bat-Tank and then have their fight. But we all know that it was to use the Batmobile for the majority of the time.

10:45 Well, this makes sense. In Arkham Origins, their relationship is still developing, so it makes sense that a lot of that character development is shown. By the time of Arkham Asylum (Batman's literally closed off from the rest of Gotham, how big a part could Alfred actually play?), their relationship is the textbook relationship we all expect from Bruce and Alfred. The character development of their relationship is finished, so I wouldn't call it a flaw for not having too much of the spotlight devoted to it.

'such wasted potential' - sub-zero 2019

When degenerate Jay uploads another video and YOU ACTUALLY GET NOTIFS FOR IT: awww shit here we go again

Being able to play Asylum, City and Origins in the Knight Engine would be amazing

I think one of the biggest missed opportunities is being able to free roam as characters other than Batman. Ik that some side missions require another character but maybe after finishing the sm u unlock the character idk.

For the last entry, I do think that the remaster of B:AA with the dark and gloomy feel is the entire point of the game, and maybe in the original version they had issues enhancing that feel. I also noticed more changes in B:AA, than in B:AC.

I completely agree with you Jay all these were really good opportunities that were missed. To me the most missed was the alienation of the Bat family and the last point with the Return to Arkham remaster.

Should have done way more with hush,Shouldve connected the villains like how they did in city instead they played them off as side missions and red robin shouldve been in the story with Damian wayne as Robin

imo arkham origins saved deathstroke from being the biggest joke in the series. If Arkham Origins had never come out well you all know what we ended up with in Knight

I think return to Arkham should’ve just been rebuilt from the ground up on Arkham knight as story dlc

That “Number 5” with Jill caught me off guard also now I need one with Nate

I wish they added Damien Wayne he is my favourite robin and I really want to see him in the Arkham games

Can we get a nightwing centralized game he’s popular and is a cool character with cool arcs

Would have been cool if you could do multiple campaigns. Playing as 2 face, bane scarecrow and so on but with their own story’s gadgets and skill trees.

I’m so exited for Gotham knights just scared it will turn out like avengers

Arkham knight and origins were missed opportunities IMO especially knight

I’m not sure which “numbers sequence” I prefer

Minor missed bet: in Asylum, make the Titan henchmen the early boss battles and Bane the penultimate one.

Your wife is killing me with the countdown!😂 So funny!

The only missed opportunity was a batman beyond arkham game. :(

Amazing video Jay. Also I feel that the Arkham series missed a huge opportunity with side missions. I love the side missions for all four games but some felt like just repeats. I wish they invested into bringing more diversity from a gameplay perspective for them.

I understand so many people hate jaosn being Arkham knight but I reallllly love it, think about it, the timelines match perfectly it makes so much sense when you think of his kidnapping and torture happening BEFORE Arkham asylum, then deathstroke sneaking him out of the asylum during arkham asylums events, then him training and doing all his preparations during city, then in Arkham vr you can even hear him being tortured and harmed by inmates so it would have to take place before Arkham, so his story was very progressive and well planned

It always frustrates me how much origins gets sidelined and how Arkham is just seen as a trilogy. Additionally hush was a huge missed opportunity for Arkham Knight. From what I heard, the original plan for Knight was to have scarecrow and hush but that changed when Paul Dini wasn’t involved and you can definitely feel his presence missing in Knight.

Prometheus in knight would’ve been such a nice end to the trilogy

I will say to this day... Arkham Knight should’ve been Damien Wayne. Red Hood should’ve been a side character that contributed to the story like nightwing and robin.

I think it would have been cool if Bane's memory was somehow restored and he could have been a big 3 boss with Todd and Scarecrow. A smart Bane was missing in Asylum and City and was only captured in Origins

Hey, could I suggest that whenever you do a list video that you keep the number and sub-title in the top corner as you discuss it, and possibly time stamp them too. Either way, nice vid! Oh, one last thing, I worked on Origins and I think the marketing was perhaps a little risky but ultimately it was to make Joker a big surprise and establish the origin of Batman and Joker's relationship.

Number 6: Joker didn't say, "marry Christmas you filthy animal" to Batman, with a Tommy gun, in the hotel, on Christmas in Arkham Origins "and a happy New Year."

Good job mentioning Prometheus. I'd rather have him be the Arkham Knight than that poor Jason execution.

The Creeper. They kept teasing him and he never appeared once despite plenty of times where it would have made perfect sense. In City, they could have had Ryder go Creeper shortly after getting locked up and we could have had a sequence of him kicking the crap out of some thugs. Hell, they could have had him play a central role in both the Political Prisoners and Deadshot quests. In the case of the former, he could have been the one who set up the safe zone we see some prisoners hiding in and basically focused on keeping them safe throughout the game. In the case of the latter, you could have had a much larger version of the Deadshot fight where the entire map was the arena. Essentially, Creeper would jump around distracting Deadshot, giving you small windows to grapple between buildings to get closer to him before diving back into cover. Same basic principle as the fight we got though on a far larger scale and one that would put heavy emphasis on Deadshot's ability to kill at a distance. In Knight, Ryder's attempts to get the story on Blackheart would be his cover for trying to stop him. We could have had regular run ins with Creeper where we help him gather information on the cult. It would culminate in the battle at the statue. However, this time Ryder just pretends to be captured and is never actually in danger, to the point that when Batman drops in, he's actually annoyed that he didn't get to hear the entire sermon. Backheart turns to ask what he's talking about, only to get sucker punched by a massive, yellow fist. Creeper then jumps into the arena where he and Batman tag team the thugs. Once they're dealt with, Blackfire is captured and the rest plays out more or less as we saw in the game.

Personally I think it would’ve been cool if during the final joker hallucination after Bruce Wayne is unmasked, we first saw Batman as our character while we played through the hallucination. But as you play through his voice and his actions become more and more clearly Joker like. Until he has his conversation with Alfred and then Kevin Conroy‘s voice fades into Mark Hamill’s joker and his skin turns a pale white with red lips.

I wish ratcatcher was a side mission in arkham knight along with the jason todd boss battle being way more better #👊

damn didn't expect arkham knight spoilers lol i was getting closer to beating the game too

I felt like Arkham Knight was building towards a showdown between Batman with the Batfamilt and GCPD at his side vs The assembled forces of the villains. All of the side missions involving his crew felt lowkey like recruitment missions for the final battle and I think not having that final showdown during the final game was a missed opportunity

The only missed opportunity for me was not being able to choose which character to play as during free roam in Arkham Knight. How cool would it have been to explore Gotham as Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Azrael, Harley Quinn and Red Hood beating up criminals rather than just Batman all the time?

Used to watch your videos all the time and RU-vid stopped recommending me your videos. Glad I rediscovered your channel.

I would've loved having a legitimate 1 v 1 or at most 4 player multi-player predator challenge mode. Just multiple people playing as Batman trying to out predator each other. Perhaps using detective mode jammers and scoring similar to the Mr. Freeze boss fight, with takedowns needed. Also, I would've loved it if we could've had the POW! and similar words overlaid while using the Adam West era skins. Counter icons were already a thing. Would've been a nice touch.

Think his relationship with Nightwing is fine. He's giving him the space he needs to be his own hero, but also knows he's better at being the hero. It's the Tim Drake relationship that gets done over, really. We never come close to seeing what Tim could be.

GCPD Officer: HELP Batman: Damn Harley is pregnant

I remember that exactly a year ago I used to put your videos in the background while I was trying to get the platinum for arkham knight! I love you guys!!

This makes me think about how they could make a batman beyond game in the arkhamverse. They could've held off all of the villains that didn't really make appearances in the series and added them to a batman beyond game. It would be a bit chaotic if they continued to add all these villains that should play big roles into the games, but they could kind of reset a little bit with batman beyond and give gotham a new wave of villains that create different challenges than the original villains did. In my head this makes sense because the joker is dead and the rest of the bat family could take care of all the original arkham villains while this new batman comes in and faces these new villains that nobody knows how to stop, and hopefully this time they would be able to pick roles that truly fit for each of these new villains so everyone can get the amount of time on the screen that they deserve.

Great video Jay! Always wondered why Calendar Man and Jack Ryder were mainstays in this franchise with seemingly no pay off..

Being able to free roam the city as all of the playable characters would’ve been dope

The biggest missed opportunity was origins not being remastered 🤦🏽‍♂️

number 6 not having the shark repellent as a gadget for the shark (ik its referenced)

Biggest missed opportunity was the fight between Batman and death stroke. Should’ve been more intense/hardcore because it was a long awaited battle after their first fight in origins

My personal top pick is not having more actors from Batman TAS reprise their characters. The ones that are still with us that is.

Always nice to see an Arkham video from you!

played Arkham origins recently. I loved it.

Well if you remember from the games especially asylum Batman starts off with very little gadgets, in asylum he just has a batarang but he gains an arsenal throughout the campaign so I think it does make sense that the bat family who is not as involved with each campaign has a limited arsenal just like Batman would normally outside of these major events.

Damn Prometheus would've been great. I guess they didn't want to step on Azrael's toes by having 2 highly trained anti hero's.

I wanted a Calendar man mission

This is great

personally, i feel that one of the misstep's of the franchise is how they handled secondary villains. sure, i get that you can't dedicate much time to EVERY bag guy because of the main plot, but some enemies that had a LOT of potential just flat out never got the time in the spotlight they deserved. i've already seen plenty of comments about two-face and black mask, and how could i forget the absolute injustive of deathstroke in arkham knight, but i feel two characters that REALLY got the short end of the stick was mad hatter and hush. mad hatter is a very interesting character in my opinion, as well as his role in arkham city if you read the bios/stories thoroughly like i did, which is what gave me my newfound appreciation for the villain. but he's only in a very quick side mission in city, a side mission in arkham origins that's only barely longer than arkham city, and a "blink and you'll miss it" portion of arkham knight's DLC, not even base game. i feel like they could've done so much more with him. and as for hush, his build-up in city was good, if a bit brief, and any hype he may have had was utterly destroyed when we finally saw his return in knight to a resounding "eh"

Arkham is my favorite game series

Would have been so big and epic if hush and scarecrow had teamed up and hush trying to take down Bruce Wayne and scarecrow trying to take down batman. Would have been the ultimate challenge!

I think Prometheus would be cool to show up in one of the movies, too.

Jay all I’m saying is that. Like you know what to do if you want your channel to grow. It’s Arkham/Batman content. The thing is it’s always great like every video when you do it on Batman they are just bangers. But I do understand you trying to branch out that’s out the channel will truley be it’s best. Where your reaching to many different type of people. Keep grinding🐐💯

Imo a missed opportunity is with Gotham Knights. Since Arkham is kind of Batman's descent into becoming the Batman who laughs, would've been so dope if GK was a continuation and he was the villain

I think the reason for the alienation in knight for Tim was to find the cure for the jokers and himself as he knew what he would be able to do, and he wanted Dick out of Gotham so if he lost control there would be someone out there that could beat him and he couldn't immediately get to to kill off as the batfamily would be his first target

Saying the new villain isn't Jason Todd until we heard Arkham Knight say "Old Man" and he knew a lot about Batman. I still remember when the game was announced. Everyone knew, even Beast Boy knew, this guy was Jason Todd lol 😆

There is so much missed opportunity’s that it would be very hard to explain them all 😂

I will forever say that the entire story of Arkham knight was a mismanage of the threads left in city. We had hush, teases to Jason, the remnants of the league of shadows, Batman’s guilt with joker that doesn’t involve his force ghost. Redone Scarecrow sections. Death stroke. The bat mobile felt like a way to gloss over a game that had a lackluster story. They coulda just made the game “Batman Arkham Penance” or something and had it be a red hood story with the vengance/penance aspect being supported by a heavy hush role, minus the not so believable army.

I thought the biggest Missed Opportunity was not allowing you to play as other Characters once the Knight fall Protocol is activated and give you extended quests w Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman.

I feel like they messed up the marketing the most on AK. It should've either been that Batman was the Arkham Knight or called Arkham Red or Arkham Hood, something like that. And also the interactions with the whole bat family in general. In the game trailer it showed a cut scene with the whole bat family together in the clock tower but they never came together in the game.

Haven't seen you on my recommended in a while

13:05 That one flight training segment was the hardest in the game.

Love your vids man!

I would’ve wanted more hints to the Justice League or something outside of Arkham or more interaction with the Bat Family before Gotham Knights .

Great video as always

I think when it came to the rerelease of Batman Arkham Asylum and Batman Arkham City they could have given us maybe a few extra side missions, or some extra skins, or something along those lines

One of the greatest missed opportunity in Arkham Knight specially was crime scene investigation thing from Origins. They used it only once (finding Barbara) in the Main Story, they could've used it more in more detailed manner (not just finding finger prints of Stagg). It truly gives the meaning to the point that Batman is a detective. Imagine Batman solving the entire case of 'who is Arkham Knight?'. They missed it in Arkham City as well.

the fact that you can only play through each game twice (one new game and one new game +) on a save file is annoying.

They should make a batman arkham collection game where you can use all the skins in all the games. All the games are remastered. I would find that to be really cool. Also fix the bugs in origins bc they can be funny but the do take away from the immersion of the game.

The Etsy shop jewelry and prices are amazing. (Btw amazing content)

Making Gotham much better was a miss oportunity for me. In knight it felt small and more like a big race track than a city. The design had potential but not enough buildings. I hope in future batman games they can make gotham similar to spider man ps4/5 new york which was lively

A real Wayne Manor with a batcave that you could freeroam and is connected to Gotham City.