Here's Why Batman: Arkham Knight's Season Pass Is So Expensive

Last week Rocksteady and Warner Bros. caught a bit of flack over the cost of the recently announced Batman: Arkham Knight Season Pass. This would be the $40 add on pack that even I gave them quite a bit of guff over as that is close to the cost of another game just for six month's worth of DLC for Batman: Arkham Knight. Well it looks like the developer and publisher wanted to quell all of our concerns and outrage and give us just a taste of what is to come for the Season Pass that is the most expensive that I can note to date. That is at least covering most titles on PC, Xbox One and PS4 that I cared to take the time to look into.

The official word of all of this came from the social media site that Rocksteady has for Batman: Arkham Knight and their whole trilogy over on Facebook. The powers that be have made it perfectly clear that this is not everything that is coming in the Season Pass but I have a feeling that the details missing are just the specific skins, challenge maps, villains, and characters getting the extra bit of story pre and post Batman: Arkham Knight. At least we all get to see what happens to Batgirl before and she is actually playable in the game. Hopefully it is more that Catwoman was, story-wise, in Arkham City. That would just feel like a cop out to me.

Batman Arkham Facebook Page

Earlier this week, we announced the Season Pass for Batman: Arkham Knight. While the story of Rocksteady's Batman: Arkham Trilogy will come to a close on June 23rd, we are excited to continue telling stories and delivering more content to explore and play through in the 6 months following the game’s release. We’ll be building more narrative, more missions, more challenges and more characters and vehicles that we want players to experience, even though they didn't fit into the storyline of Batman: Arkham Knight.

We’ve heard from our community that you want more information on what we’ll be delivering in the Season Pass. While we aren't ready to unveil every aspect of the content we’ll be developing, we would like to share more detail now to give you a better sense of the scope of the Season Pass.

Batman: Arkham Knight — Batgirl
  • Batgirl: A Matter of Family — An all new prequel story expansion in an entirely new location where you play as Batgirl for the very first time in the Arkham series – check out the first render of Batgirl.
  • The Season of Infamy — Play as Batman in all new story missions featuring legendary super-villains invading Gotham City, with new story arcs, missions and gameplay features.
  • Gotham City Stories — Play as Batman’s key allies in narrative missions extending their storylines, from both before and after the events in Batman: Arkham Knight.
  • Legendary Batmobiles with Themed Tracks — Drive the most iconic Batmobiles from Batman’s 75-year history, on custom-built race tracks, each themed to that Batmobile’s specific era. Every Batmobile will be drivable across every race track.
  • Crimefighter Challenge Maps — Engage in a series of new challenge maps utilizing the unique play styles of Batman and his allies.
  • Character Skins — A variety of skins from across the eras for Batman, Robin, Nightwing and Catwoman.

So there is the prequel story for Batman: Arkham Knight. More story missions that will have other villains doing pretty much what Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight will be doing the game proper. Most likely a few new short stories like we've seen in past titles. Then there is the huge waste of time for me in the extra skins and challenges. Usually these consist of playing a section of the game with slight modifiers or just different text to make it pretend to be new. Then again maybe Rocksteady took a page from NetherRealm and will be able to make each new challenge, race, and skin feel new even though it truly isn't. I'm talking the Living Towers in MKX here.

As usual we are just going to have to wait and see. I am still not sold on the extra $40 price tag to be able to play everything for Batman: Arkham Knight and some of this still feels like it was a choice not to "place it on disk" so they could charge more. Granted if these story missions here add extra hours for each character involved I can see why they were not placed into the full game and needed the extra time to be DLC; not to mention the price. Until there is word on that aspect of Batman: Arkham Knight's DLC add-ons I'm still going to hold my cash to wait and see.

Given all of this new information for the Batman: Arkham Knight Season Pass have you changed your mind about it? Were you already going to get it and now are more excited for the whole thing? What about that new look for Batgirl here? Let us know all of your thoughts and discuss down in the comments below.

Batman: Arkham Knight