If you haven’t yet tried Batman: Arkham Shadow… well, why haven’t you? If your excuse is that you don’t have a VR headset then you should know that the game is currently free with new purchases of the Meta Quest 3 and super-affordable Meta Quest 3S – and this exclusive title is one of the best (perhaps even the best) games on either of these systems.
For those of you who have played through Batman: Arkham Shadow and who have any lingering questions about the story’s twists and turns, or if a sequel is in the works, I’ve had the chance to chat with Ryan Payton, the studio head of Camouflaj (the team behind the game), to find answers to all of these questions.
You can catch our full interview on the TechRadar YouTube channel (or by watching the embedded video below), or you can read on to catch five takeaways I particularly wanted to highlight. The first couple of entries on this list will be spoiler-light but know that some massive plot points are discussed lower down. There will be another warning as we enter spoiler territory – but take this as your early warning to not scroll too far if you haven’t finished the game’s main story.
1. More content incoming
More Arkham Shadow content will be dropping in the coming months, so get ready to return to the Batman VR title even if you have wrapped everything up.
Some patches – like the one dropping this month – will focus on bug fixes based on community feedback, but as we enter 2025 Payton says Arkham Shadow will get “more challenge maps” and also “some additional story content.”
The challenge maps are fantastic ways for players to test out and demonstrate their mastery of Batman’s gadgets, so I’m definitely excited for more of those to play, and I can’t wait to delve a little deeper into the Arkham Shadow story.
Payton does add that it’s not going to be some big free DLC (downloadable content) like players got from Arkham Knight; instead, it’s a mixture of content that was planned but didn’t quite make it in time for the title’s launch date, and additions based on what players are responding to. Payton explains that these story extras will clear up a few dangling threads, but also introduce some new questions, the answers to which we could get in the future. And speaking of those unanswered questions…
2. Camouflaj wants to make a sequel
For now, the entire Camouflaj team is dedicated to finishing Arkham Shadow – working on that extra content we just talked about – but Payton admitted that he and the team had a blast making the game, and would jump at the chance to come back for a sequel. “I think we’ve been pretty open about how the team had just the best time with the partnership… and it’s been just a fun roller-coaster ride all the way.
“With this whole experience we’ve just been thinking, look, if the game does well and people respond positively to it, we hope that we can make it a very easy decision for leaders across Meta and Warner Brothers and DC to ask us to do more.”
He says the positive fan reactions hopefully will make that dream a reality – and I’m one of those fans hoping for a sequel, as I’d love to return to Gotham for another VR Arkham adventure.
*SPOILERS*
This is your final spoiler warning. After the image below we’ll be talking about the final scenes of the game so if you don’t want the mystery ruined stop here, and come back when you’re done playing Arkham Shadow.
3. Harvey Dent / Rat King, two sides of the same coin
The reveal of Harvey Dent / Two Face as the Rat King was a twist I and a lot of players didn’t see coming, but when talking to Payton about the ending I was almost as surprised that the Rat King wasn’t originally envisioned as a way to obscure Dent’s villainous side.
Instead, Payton revealed that the team decided early on that Rat King would be an entirely new antagonist so that the team could create a scary, mysterious villain without the baggage that would come with adapting anyone else in Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery. It was only after agreeing on the Rat King that the team started to think about who might be under the mask, ultimately settling on Dent.
This then helped to inform the entire story of two brothers facing their shadows: Bruce, who conquers his and chooses to spare Joe Chill (a twist Payton said he was surprised caught so many players off guard), and Harvey, who falls to his shadow and is shaped into Two Face.
An interesting detail Payton added here was his perspective on Two Face. Rather than seeing the villainous half of Harvey Dent as Two Face, he instead envisions Two Face as the whole, with Harvey Dent and Rat King as the character’s opposing personalities.
4. Keeping things Chill
That Joe Chill twist was another one that surprised me, even though looking back it was so darn obvious. The moment Bruce realizes that one of his closest prison allies was the man who killed his parents was one Camouflaj wanted to get right, as it occurs at the climax of their story, and for a time they were going to obscure this connection to try to keep players from guessing it early.
“We were going to call him Frost,” Payton revealed, “We debated this for a year and then I think we just said, ‘Hey, let’s respect the player.’ Some people are going to pick up on it, and that’s okay.”
Despite the team choosing to keep Joe’s name as Joe, and even using an aged-up version of Chill’s Arkham Origins character model, a lot of players didn’t spot the twist. I for one am so glad they kept him as Joe, however, as this impactful moment just wouldn’t have hit as hard if it had been obscured behind the Frost moniker.
5. Joker, I hardly know ‘er
When you think of Batman you think of Joker – the pair are the most iconic hero/villain duo in all of comic book media – but I agree with a comment Payton made in our chat that the Joker’s status as a fan-favorite baddie means he “takes up all the oxygen in a room.” To that end you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place: keeping Arkham Shadow Joker-free could mean the game lacks a key aspect of what a Batman game is, but including him could completely overshadow the wider story Camouflaj wanted to tell.
At the same time, Payon explained that the team was working on the solitary confinement segment of the game. As an exploration of the prison setting in media in VR, there were several aspects of the genre the team wanted to portray, and one key element was that Matches (Batman’s prison persona) should go to solitary confinement.
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hamish.hector@futurenet.com (Hamish Hector)
