The Arkham Story So Far...

                 *CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Picture it. You’re essentially an orphaned child. Your parents were brutally murdered in front of your eyes when you were younger leaving behind their billions of dollars, international business and mansion in the suburbs. What do you do?

Well, you might mope around in your slippers, go on frequent holidays or just count your endless fortune and jump into piles of it, Scrooge McDuck style. Or, alternatively, you could do what Bruce Wayne does; dress up in an armoured suit, frolic around buildings at night and beat the living crap out of anyone doing anything slightly illegal. Welcome to the world of Batman.

Batman: Arkham Asylum begins with Bats’ arch nemesis, The Joker, causing a ruckus in Gotham City Hall and when Batman turns up, is caught suspiciously easily. With the caped crusader thinking The Joker has an ulterior motive, he escorts him to Arkham Asylum, now full of The Joker’s gang members thanks to Batman’s crime-stopping expertise and a temporary shutdown at Blackgate Penitentiary, and this is where the story unfolds.

The Joker’s true intentions come to fruition when, after entering the Asylum, Harley Quinn takes control of the the security in the building and with the help of the corrupted guards and other members of the rogues gallery, keeps Batman inside. With the threat of bombs being set off in Gotham if anyone from the outside tries to get in, Bats is forced to work alone.

After a fight with Bane, pumped up on a drug called Venom, Batman soon learns The Joker’s true intentions and that he wanted to get inside to gain access to Penelope Young, the Asylum’s doctor, who is working on a enhanced steroid like drug called Titan (a drug based on Venom). When she refuses to hand over the drug, it is revealed that The Joker intends to use the Titan to create an army of superhuman henchmen and after Young is killed in an explosion, The Clown Prince of Crime finally gets his hand on the drug he has secretly been funding.

Fighting his way through both Poison Ivy and Killer Croc, and creating a single dose of antidote for Titan from Ivy’s botanical gardens, Batman returns to the asylum’s visitor centre where Joker is being applauded by his henchman. Here, Commissioner Gordon is being held and when The Joker fires a Titan filled dart towards the police chief, Batman jumps in its way and is hit. Refusing to transform Batman uses the antidote and battles against The Joker, who has injected himself with the drug. A battle of man against maddened, drug infused steroid monster begins, and when Bats knocks The Joker out, he is detained and taken into custody. For now the day is saved.

That is until the events of 2011’s Batman: Arkham City, which take place one year after Batman’s trials and tribulations in the Asylum.

The once director of the Asylum and now Gotham City mayor, Quincy Sharp (who is being manipulated by Hugo Strange) declares that the facility is no longer suitable to hold the detainees and therefore closes it down converting surround slums of Gotham into an immense prison-come-asylum enclosure where the inhabitants are given free reign to do whatever they want, as long as they don’t try and escape.

In a press conferance, Batman, as Bruce Wayne, opposes the move and is taken into custody in Arkham City by TYGER, the mercenaires in charge of the criminal-filled area of Gotham, where they are told of Wayne’s infamous alter ego.

After getting his gear via airdrop, Bats can begin his investigations into a mysterious scheme code named ‘Protocol 10’ that Hugo Strange is behind. Believing The Joker may know the details, he tracks down his arch-nemesis, who is slowly dying following the effects of the Titan drug which mutates in the blood. Trapped, The Joker conducts a blood transfusion on Bats, infecting the caped crusader with the same crippling disease where he also reveals that the infected blood is making its way into Gotham City hospitals.

With knowledge that Mr Freeze is working on a cure to the disease, Bats discovers he has been kidnapped by Penguin. This leads Batman to taking on his forces as well as Solomon Grundy and Penguin himself before Freeze, now free, reveals the antidote is too unstable. Bats decides Ra’s al Ghul, whose blood has restorative powers, is the only option so tracks him down and confronts him and former lover Talia.

With the restorative blood now in his possession, Batman returns to find a cured and rejuvenated Joker, and kicks his ass. In the meantime, Protocol 10 is launched by Strange and reveals itself to be a mass genocide scheme to wipe out the entire population of Arkham City and destroy the criminal element of Gotham.

In the chaos of gunfire and explosions, Bats is trapped and just as Joker is about to take advantage, Talia offers him a path to immortality in exchange for Batman’s survival. While distracted, Bats (aided by Catwoman) escapes and discovers that Ra’s al Ghul is the true mastermind of Arkham City and Protocol 10, not Strange. In fatally wounding Strange and being cornered by Batman, Ra’s commits suicide, rather than be detained.

The Joker then threatens to kill Talia if not given the cure, but while his back is turned is stabbed by Batman’s ex, who is then quickly killed by a second Joker, still stricken with the crippling disease caused by Titan. The decoy, healthy Joker then shape shifts into Clayface, who Batman quickly dispatches of before he is blasted into Ra’s’ secret lair by the real clown prince.

Here, The Joker looked to cure his ailments in Ra’s’ Lazarus Pit, but after Batman destroys it, the Clown Prince attacks him, forcing the only vial of antidote into the air and smashing onto the ground. The Joker soon succumbs to his illness and dies, with Batman carrying the villain out of the lair, placing him onto the streets and walking away in silence. The day is saved...again.

Now with Batman’s arch nemesis no more, Batman struggles to come to terms with things, believing they were closer than he thought.  With Gotham’s crime at an all time low, and one year on from the events of Arkham City, Batman’s remaining enemies, including Penguin, Harley Quinn and Two-Face unite to finally kill the man that has controlled crime for so long.

But with an as of yet unidentified foe pulling the strings, part three of the Rocksteady trilogy sees Batman go face-to-face with the person calling the shots known only as The Arkham Knight.