Editorial - In defence of Arkham Knight's Season Pass

This is an on the fly piece, but since the next review is Agents of SHIELD, which I can't review till Thursday, he's a little piece on the DLC for Batman: Arkham Knight (my main review is here)

Prior to the release of Batman: Arkham Knight a season pass was announced, people were not pleased to hear that it was £32 - almost the cost of an entire game. There has been a lot of comments on the internet saying that the season pass is a waste of money, and Rocksteady are a bunch of greedy suck ups to Warner Bros. Interactive, a bunch of greedy f*ckers. Or words to similar effect and I'm not entirely sure I agree...

Here is a list of the DLC Rocksteady are providing/have provided, for this I'm excluding any DLC that was free or came out as a pre-order bonus.

Story Based
Batgirl - A matter of Family (approx 1 hour including collectibles/side missions)
GCPD Lockdown (approx 15 minutes)
Catwoman's revenge (approx 15 minutes)
A flip of a coin (approx 15 minutes)
Season of Infamy (approx 100 minutes)

Batmobile Racetracks
Cobblepot's Causeway
Joker Parade
Ashes
Cataclysm
Penguin's Dockyard
Batcave Set
Batmobile proving ground
Waynetech loop

Challenge maps
Assault on GCPD
Cat's Conundrum
Newton's Cradle
Teen Titan
Deconstruction
Financial Crash
Feline Frenzy
Flying Grayson
High Interest
Sky High
Uncontainable
Armoured assault
Guardians
Precinct
Vertigo
Stage Fright
Chemical Reaction
Cauldron speedway TT
Wild Cat
Clockwork
Quarantine
Credit Crunch
High Fliers
Divine Intervention
Shark Bait
Jailbreak
Toy Soldiers
Destruction Line
Trash Disposal
Scales of Justice
+6 others

Skins
Batman: Flashpoint
Arkham origins Batman
Iconic Grey and Black Batman
1970s Batman
1989 Batman
2008 Batman
Batman vs Superman Batman
70s Themed Batmobile
Robin Themed Batmobile
Riddler Themed Batmobile
Rocksteady themed Batmobile
New 52 Nightwing
Arkham City Nightwing
1990s Catwoman
60s Catwoman
New 52 Robin
One Year Later Robin
Classic TV series Robin (Burt Ward)
Original Tim Drake

Alternate Batmobiles
1989 Batmobile
The Dark Knight trilogy Batmobile
Classic TV series Batmobile
Batman vs Superman Batmobile
Original Arkham Batmobile

Assign a value to these - say I dunno, £2 for the short stories £5 for the Batgirl one and £7 for the Season of Infamy, then 50p a challenge map, 20p a skin/alternate Batmobile (I know these are not the actual values of the packs, but I don't know those off hand because I own the season pass)

Total value = Story Based £18 + Challenge maps £18 + Skins/Alternate Batmobiles £4.80 = £40.80
Total Cost of the season pass upon release was £32

Let me be clear, I am absolutely against DLC that is essential to the completion of the game. This is not the case. And I would also be less happy if I thought the game didn't have enough content on its own - Batman: Arkham Knight has plenty enough contents to sustain itself in it's own right and yes I know it has issues, I mentioned all of them in my review.

I am also not saying I wouldn't have liked longer DLC, I, like everyone else was hoping for an epilogue along the lines of Harley Quinn's revenge or Cold Cold heart. But then you have to consider development. These DLC are all going to be/have been released in the 6 months that followed the games release. That is not a lot of time, especially when some of your resources are dedicated to fixing the issues that came with the PC version, fixing general bugs, listening to customer feedback (we can now play as alternate characters on most challenge maps) and developing the free DLC bits. The only reason the Batgirl DLC was possible is because WB Montreal worked on it. The idea of content being delivered only over 6 months is perhaps the biggest weakness of the season pass, had Rocksteady had longer they may have been able to develop longer story mission DLC as everyone wanted. But the development time isn't cheap. The reason season passes exist (I'd think, I'm no expert) is to have money up front to pay for the development of the extra content. It's the same reason (I'd imagine, again, I'm no expert) as why pre-orders are becoming more important (and why free DLC is offered to encourage it)

So, let's put out a comparison, Arkham Origins DLC included:

5 challenge maps linked by cut-scenes - using the same model that values it about £3.00 (adding 50p for the short cut-scenes)
2hr approx story mission Cold Cold Heart - £10
2 skin packs containing 6 skins + 2 bonus skins = £2.80

Total value £15.80
Season pass price £15.00

Now that's interesting isn't it, the added value from the Origins season pass barely exists. But there were far fewer complaints about it.

So my advice to gamers everywhere complaining about Arkham Knight's DLC - <Censored to avoid irritating internet f*ckers>

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Images used in this review are from Batman: Arkham Knight and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.

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