The Best Arkham Knight Feature is One You Won’t See Coming

Rocksteady already managed to capture a lot of attention with the playable Batmobile and upgraded graphics in it’s upcoming Batman: Akrham Knight game for Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One. That’s not what’s attracting raised eyebrows this morning though. A new interview with Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill indicates it’s story is so explosive that a key demographic won’t be able to get their hands on it without their parents permission.

Sefton Hill, Rocksteady’s founder and the director in charge of Batman: Arkham Knight discussed the game in some detail with IGN. Out today, the interview includes a few light details about what buyers can expect when Batman: Arkham Knight arrives on store shelves in June.

Read: Interview Reveals Gotham’s Epic Size in Batman Arkham Knight

According to Hill, Batman: Arkham Knight will be the first game in franchise history top earn a Mature rating for the Electronic Safety Board or what most simply refer to as the ESRB. It’s the ESRB that goes through video games and decides what rating the content rating should be. An egregious amount of violence, blood and adult language leads to an M for Mature rating.

To put this into perspective, past games in the Arkham series have earned T for Teen ratings. Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 5 for the Xbox One earned a M for Mature rating. The more adult a game is rated, the harder it is for children to get their hands on it without their parent’s permission.

Hill told IGN “I’m not blind to the fact that [the M rating] does mean some fans will miss out… I don’t want to be oblivious to that fact. It would have been wrong to water down the game and deliver a story we didn’t believe in to keep the game “mass market” or enable it for more people.”

He also says that Rocksteady didn’t start out trying to create a mature game. Instead, the studio decided to air on the side of telling a story fitting of the Arkham franchise. Batman: Arkham Knight will completely end the trilogy for Rocksteady. According to Hill, almost every villain imaginable is gunning for Batman in the game. Taking the troublesome scenes out of the game would have compromised its integrity, which wasn’t worth it. In the interview Hill repeatedly notes that Gotham’s villains will take Batman to some “dark places” in Batman: Arkham Knight.

All told, it looks like we can expect Batman Arkham Knight to be a rampant bad guy fest. That definitely fits in with the rest of the series.

Rocksteady basically changed super-hero fantasy games overnight with Batman: Arkham Asylum, the first game in the franchise. For too long, Batman was used and abused by developers looking to cash in on the Batman name. Rocksteady delivered a somewhat open-world game with a free-flow combat system and tons of gadgets. Batman felt powerful, something gamers hadn’t experienced in past titles.

All of that is back in Batman: Arkham Knight. With the Joker disposed of, a new villain arrives to take down Batman and put an end to his meddling once and for all. In trailers, the Arkham Knight seems almost like Batman, a man with a improved suite and slate of gadgets at his disposal. The Arkham Knight also seems to be in command of regular forces hell-bent on destroying Gotham once and for all too. The Gotham City in this game will be many times bigger than what users got in Batman: Arkham City. Players will cruise through Gotham in an upgraded Batmobile that has an attack mode and can be used to help take down enemies remotely.

Batman: Arkham Knight launches on the Xbox One, PS4 and Windows PCs June 2nd.