Spoilers galore all throughout this thread, guys. Says so in the title. I assume there's no need for spoiler block, yes?

So at face value, the character of the Arkham Knight seems to exist mainly for a way to keep the word Arkham in the title. Not only that, but the fact that he's not exactly the main villain AND the fact that he just disappears after his reveal seems pretty....bad. The character Arkham Knight appears to just be there to have tanks battle your batmobile.

But this attitude doesn't give the game nearly enough credit! The title Arkham Knight is a double entendre. Arkham Knight also applies to Batman. Think about it, this series started in the asylum itself, moved to a city filled with the psychos, and now we're here. What is this game about? Batman dealing with HIS OWN sanity. He himself feels like he's becoming one of these freaks. The biggest one of all, in fact. I love the idea that Batman conquers his own delusion and deranged mind in the concluding chapter. He becomes the :"Arkham Knight" in that sense, defeating the craziness in his brain.

Now I know this may be such an obvious thing for smart folk to realize and also because double entendres are nothing new in Batman stories. For example, the title "The Dark Knight Rises" could apply to Bruce, Blake, and even Bane in that film. But the fact that I see so many people complaining about the Arkham Knight character himself feeling unimportant calls for this argument to be made in full, so here's my best attempt at spelling it out and defending the title which frankly I'm in love with now after thinking about it.

Sure the character is all over promo material and thus it could be interpreted as a bit of a fake out, Trust me I know why some would be disappointed by both the title and the character but try thinking of it in this light and I hope you can agree with me that this is a fitting title after all.

Yeah I had thought about that. It's pretty cool to think about it like that, but at the same time I still feel it was really dumb for Jason Todd to call himself the Arkham Knight just because he was tortured in an isolated part of Arkham Asylum. It just didn't seem like an area that was that important to the story and felt really shoe horned in just so the player didn't realize it was just a different way of telling the Red Hood story. Honestly, it felt lazy. Like really lazy.. and I think that's why it made me upset when I realized it was Jason Todd. I wouldn't have been as upset if throughout the series we had hints of this coming along, like side missions indicating that someone with dual pistols was killing villains or criminals on the street or even just establishing Jason Todds character before this game would have been a lot cooler to his storyarch of becoming the Arkham Knight...

Not to go entirely off topic here, but believe me, you should be glad with what we got. Just look at how they treated Hush. He shows up in Arkham City all decked out like he's ready to royally fuck Batman up, and then... he's put through a table within 5 minutes of meeting him in Arkham Knight.

The point I'm trying to make is, they set Hush up. They seemed to imply they were going to bring him back for some major shit later. And they didn't.

As for the topic, they probably would have made a better twist by having it turn out that the Arkham Knight didn't even exist or some shit. Like the fear toxin was messing with his Batbrain and he was seeing his own worst fear come to light: His failure to protect the city at all costs. The Joker would have been a good fakeout for this, having the player think that he was just seeing a manifestation of his guilt to save The Joker. But in reality was the Arkham Knight; Batman.

Sorry if I derailed your topic a bit. I'm just super disappointed by the story in this game but I don't want to walk around being a huge sourpuss around it or something.

@n7: I loved the story immensely from beginning to end, sorry to hear you didn't enjoy it.

I think Arkham Knight being a hallucination would be waaaaay way too predictable. It's the first thing I thought of. think about it, the story is scarecrow's got a bunch of fear gas. I think the go-to twist would be that Arkham Knight isn't really there so i'm very glad he was an actual person.

Also I too was a bit disappointed with Hush but still glad they tied it up at least