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You can see Arkham City island from afar in Arkham Knight. Although I don't remember if you can see specifically its Ace Chemicals and GCPD buildings.
There is a a building in Arkham City with a huge Ace Chemicals sign on the side and a smoke stack. In Arkham Knight there is a much larger factory in a different Island that Scarecrow is operating out of.
There is a GCDP building in Arkham City and another on Bleake Island.
I believe that it’s a retcon made for gameplay/story reasons in Arkham Knight. Personally, I would have preferred to have been able to revisit Arkham City in Knight in addition to the other islands.
In City there are only narrow channels separating the game island from the rest of the city. There's no hint of (and also no room for) Pioneer's Bridge.
In Origins the island taken over from City is much more isolated, the new south island is a mess of buildings, Pioneer's Bridge is kind of forced in without much reason beyond having a bridge there. On the bridge threre are traffic jams that look like cars just being abandoned for the evacuation - but there is not a single intact ramp to actually get cars up or down from there! More or less the same goes for all those crazy train tracks that start and end without any real purpose. Also especially the north east corner of the north island has many strange changes - look at GCPD rotated 180 degrees and turned into a train statin with phantom tracks, look at the metal harbour bridge rotated 45 degrees to enable the connection to Pioneer's Bridge, look at the relation of the church to the Casino...
Up to now you could shrug it off and say: OK, WB Montreal did not know what they were doing - and then comes Knight and basically confirms all that crazyness from Origins as the new official city layout, completely ruining continuity from City to Knight. And even there are a bit more subtle changes to the "City" island, if you look for the location of Pioneer's bridge, "City" GCPD, courthouse, Ferris wheel, it's obvious the whole island is kind of squished and bent.
In a game series that has so much focus on details, all that seems a bit lazy. And also frpm my POV makes all those "canon" discussions rather pointless... ;)
What confused me is that the Batman Wiki seems to be insinuating that there is a cohesive visual canon. I’m reading Riddler’s Gambit atm, and the book only acknowledges a single Ace chemicals (the one in Arkham City) and it was at that one that Joker fell into the acid vat.
It would be pretty cool if some clever fan incorporated all of the locations from the 4 mainline games into one vast cityscape.
I know Gotham comprises a series of islands, but the Gotham we see in Knight goes a bit overboard with that concept in my humble opinion.
So my only conclusion: none of the creators actually really care about those inconsitencies. So worrying too much abouit stuff like that seems like a sure way towards losing your mind... ;)
The two you specifically asked about are not really retcons.
The GCPD building in AC is the "old GCPD building," which had been abandoned and was no longer even being used as a police station at the time Arkham City was built; the police were already using another building by then. There's no reason to assume that the cops operating out of a building on Bleake Island in AK is somehow a retcon of the Arkham City building having been a police station at one point.
The ACE Chemicals building in Arkham City is a single tower; it's probably an office building. It doesn't look like it's supposed to house an actual chemical plant. Whereas the one in AK is an actual chemical plant. It shouldn't be a stretch to accept that a large company like ACE owns two buildings. After all, the lawyers and the finance guys and the marketing guys and the contracts guys have no business hanging around where the plant workers are mixing chemicals. So there's no reason to assume that ACE's chemical plant being seen on an island in AK is somehow a retcon of them having another building with another purpose in the Bowery in AC.
EDIT: I see where you pointed out that the ACE building had a smoke stack in AC. So maybe that building actually was supposed to be some kind of chemical plant in AC. There's still nothing that says they can't have two of those, though.
Which is the same building that in Origins (six or so years earlier) was still a train station and then was rotated 180 degrees to form the police station only to be abandoned almost instantly again. Because - we remeber - in Origins the GCPD was located in Burnley.
Not very convincing.
No wonder there's so much crime in Gotham City - if all the police really does is moving houses... ;)
Arkham Knight follows Arkham City anyway and features its model quite good I think. The view from Wayne's Tower in AK:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3466143424
Also your screenshot above omits the completely missplaced Pioneers Bridge.
Btw. if you climb up Wonder Tower in City and look down on the city you can easily see how very different the whole layout is compared to Origins and Knight.
Have you ever met a Highlander fan? They’re blubbering wrecks. 😄
You’re quoting that dmned Batman wiki, aren’t you!😄
As I said above, the Arkham Knight prequel novelisation specifically says that the Ace Chemicals in Arkham City is NOT an office block, it’s a fully functional chemical plant. (As evidenced by the giant smoke stack on the side) The book only refers to this one location as THE Ace chemical, never in plurality. Furthermore, the book states that the Joker was made there when he fell into the vat.
The Wiki is just plain wrong. It’s desperately trying to fit puzzle pieces together by smashing their metaphorical fist onto the mismatched pieces.
As Gps has said, there is no real visual continuity. It’s like the old Batman films;(BATMAN/Returns/Forever) they were supposed to be in the same continuity but the cities were completely different, as was the Batcave and Wayne Manor.
I haven't quoted anything. Nothing I wrote in this thread came from anywhere but my own memory of the games.
I've never read that novelization, so I don't know anything about how canon it's supposed to be. But, in general, I'd consider the games to supersede any tie-in content. If the games contradict the novel, then the games win. I have read some of the Arkham tie-in comics, and those contradict the games all over the place. Same for the tie-in movie. Don't take the tie-in stuff too seriously.
What you're saying doesn't sound like a contradiction to me, though. Failing to mention a second building and referring to the AC building using a definite article doesn't preclude there being a second building. (Have you ever gone to "the" library? Did that preclude there being a second library?) Maybe there's something more to this supposed contradiction that would be made apparent if I read the book (say, a line saying that "ACE has only one plant in Gotham"), but I can't see one from what you've said.
Ok, I'm not surprised if the wiki is wrong on a ton of stuff. But I have no idea what the wiki says about any of this, so I'm not sure what you're actually arguing there. Maybe just leave the wiki out of this because it's one thing that's clearly not canon in any way.
I don't disagree with that. But I also don't think either of the two things you asked about are supposed to be retcons.
I don't think the AK developers knew anything about the novel when they added the ACE Chemicals location to the game; the novel may not have even been planned at that time. If there is some contradiction, it's not the game retconning the tie-in novel; it's the tie-in novel being obsolete from the start. Because the tie-in novel was never going to win out over what's shown in the game itself.
And the only reason I've seen you give for thinking the GCPD building is a retcon is that there are two of them. Unless you have some other reason you didn't mention, this is clearly not a retcon. Having a GCPD building on Bleake in AK is not an attempt to rewrite history and claim the others never existed. It's simply a different building.
But smoke stack or not (which btw. actually is not there in Origins!) - the building in AC is PRETTY small for a fully functional chemical plant. There's not even a proper logistics area where trucks could be loaded or unloaded. There are only two small garages.
Not sure where the big cauldron with toxic slime to sink the Joker in should be located?
Btw. anyone ever noticed there are quite a couple of houses in Origins, that don't even have a poper door? (For example the high one next to the museum, where the helicopter crashes) Or the Gothcorp building in Cold Cold Heart must have been build (and the hotel that stood there before torn down) within a week?
Anyone notice the tram track switches in Knight are physically unpassable and the carriages at Grand Avenue hang several meters above the actual platforms? So not sure how passengers should board them. The turntable there is also total nonsense. OK, I get it, this is not a train simulator - but the person who designed that stuff obviously had not the slightest clue how technical things really work...
As said before: it's a nice and atmospheric backdrop for the game story, but should not be taken too serious.