Disappointed with a button prompt at the end (Spoiler)

The "Kill the Joker" prompt.

I sat there for five minutes after the Joker stopped talking, hitting every button and direction but the one they wanted me to. Sure, the subsequent scenes were pretty great, but Batman doesn't kill, dammit. A real bummer since there were several other situations in the game where you could make hidden choices.

I'm am going into this fully in the expectation that this is a thread that will have spoilers, so if you don't want to read it, don't read my comment as it has spoilers, and with that assumption, I don't feel the need to add spoiler blocks.

I'm not. It fit the story well, as that was the tip of the iceberg for him with the toxin, and in the end, he finally, mentally defeated the Joker, though as villainous as the Joker is, it was kind of sad ending honestly. Plus, he didn't really kill him obviously. Now that I think about it, the title of the game is very weird, as the Arkham Knight really doesn't feel like the main story plot, and perhaps that's the point. You have Scarecrow, and you have Arkham Knight (Jason Todd), but it's more about the affect Joker had on Batman, and how Batman's fear is turning into a person like the Joker.

It's weirdly railroad-y. I'm with the OP on this one. I waited forever for there to be an alternative. The game super didn't actually earn that moment, and no, the Joker just being annoying all game doesn't actually count. That moment felt like Rocksteady regretted not letting the player kill the Joker a little more explicitly in Arkham City. Like, the Joker so clearly killed himself in City that it makes zero sense for Bats to actually get broken up about that. It wasn't actually ambiguous at all. That said, I thought the actual nightmare sequence that followed was cool. It was just that one prompt they didn't earn. If the story dictated that Batman had to kill the Joker right then, there's no prompt needed. It wasn't the powerful "Mash Square to Brutalize Zeus" moment that God of War employed to great effect at the end of 2 where they found players mashed long after Zeus was nothing more than a bloody mess.

There's no actual choice in these games. The one choice you actually make [Azreal Spoilers] Killing Batman or Walking Away was actually super cool, and I'm bummed that we'll probably never know if that choice meant anything besides personal satisfaction.

@the_joker: I thought it had to be done and made perfect sense story wise, and didn't expect an alternative, so I pretty much pressed it right from the get-go. The Joker being annoying isn't really a factor, nor do I consider annoying the correct word. I mean, it might be for Batman, but it's funny to me, combined with dark at times. And again, Batman finally overcame it, and he didn't really kill. All heroes break, but Batman was drugged which just heightens the sense of whatever he was feeling. I think it should be in there, to show that heroes are also human; not invincible to such things. It's about breaking them down, and raising them back up. That said, I say that, and I didn't find it that intriguing as it was just so quickly paced I didn't feel I had much time to think about any one portion in that section for too long.

@ntm: Annoying for Batman is more what I'm saying. On a personal level, I clearly enjoy the Joker a great deal. My counterpoint is that a forced prompt is something that I'd say virtually every player should feel compelled to enthusiastically press when it pops up. The sheer idea that there's a divide over whether it's earned in the first place is problematic. I think you're absolutely entitled to be like "I'm gonna crush this clown's clavicle so good", and I bet you super not alone in feeling that way by the end. I just contend there is an equal number that feel exactly the opposite. I almost wish the OP had made this a poll. I'd be super interested to know how many people went one way or the other on this.

@the_joker: I didn't feel that way though; I didn't want to kill him, but I also didn't hesitate, because to me, it didn't feel like a choice was being given, it was simply a button prompt to press to move the story along, with not much to think about other than what Batman had just done then, and what he was about to do next. In that sense, if Rocksteady was trying to make the player feel like we're taking Batman's hand, and snapping his neck, it kind of failed, because to me, it worked just as it would if there were no button prompt. That's what I'm saying, there wasn't much to think about, but if the point is brought up, as a story perspective, it makes sense to me. I had neither a negative or positive feeling about the action taken, I was simply witnessing a story play through. Also, you talk about a divide, and maybe it's just me here, but I hadn't heard anyone discuss the topic until now.

I just did it because I have been conditioned to hit button prompts as soon as they show up on the screen, but immediately thought that things might have played out differently if I had it

I think it's fine, because Batman isn't killing a person. Batman knows that the Joker is just a figment of his imagination, and maybe this was his was to exorcise that demon. I really liked everything in that game Arkham onwards, and that the first person Joker section was fittingly dark and creepy, and made total sense.

I actually waited much longer in Robin's cell in the movie studio. I thought that was going to be the mental struggle between Batman and the Joker at the time.

I did avoid snapping the Joker's neck for a while until I realized that could mean Batman was killing the mental phantom and not taking a life. I'm glad Rocksteady made good and the final solution was to lock Joker away.

In the prologue I also didn't shoot anybody as the cop in the diner.

A counter argument as to why that prompt could make sense is that NOT having the strength to restrain himself against killing the Joker is actually Batman's greatest fear thus making it the perfect hallucination for the Scarecrow toxin. That's also potentially what was being conveyed there.

@ntm: This. I agree. Thought that whole ending sequence was creative and well themed.

Here I thought that this was a thread about 'Press X to Pay Your Respects.' Talk about one of the most jarring, tone-deaf references that I've experienced recently. It completely took me out of one of the most integral sequences in the game.

Actually the exact same prompt was in Arkham City.

@village_guy: The picture he showed is from City actually.