VIDEO: ‘Arkham Knight’ Batmobile Features Gigantic Guns, Maybe Someone Should’ve Thought About That For A Second

Ever since the announcement of the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight video game, one of the key selling points has been that it's going to feature a Batmobile that you can actually drive around Gotham City. It's pretty cool to see, if only because Batman's car is really the only aspect of the character that the previous three games in the series didn't really make an attempt to recreate, and today we've gotten a sneak preview of the Batmobile's "Battle Mode." It seems that players will be able to use the Batmobile in combat, deploying all the guns and missile launchers on Batman's iconic car.

Yep. All those guns. On Batman's car. You can probably see where I'm going with this.

Although early appearances of Batman involved the character using guns (and also wearing purple gloves and flying around in an autogyro, something that I really hope the next Arkham game tries to recreate), Batman avoiding the use of firearms has been a tradition since about 1941. This is something that mass media versions of the character seem to have a pretty hard time with, particularly when it comes to the Batmobile. Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, for instance, featured a Batmobile that was armed to the teeth with machine guns and bombs that were used to straight up murder a bunch of henchman. But then again, that was also a movie where Batman tried to shoot the joker with machine guns on his Bat-shaped airplane and then Huracanrana'd a guy off a bell tower to his death. That flick's got problems.

For Arkham Knight, the developers seem to be drawing heavily from the Batmobile in The Dark Knight Returns, particularly with the nonlethal "riot suppressor" ("Rubber bullets. Honest.") so there's definitely precedent. Then again, that's also a story where Batman breaks a shotgun in half and tells a bunch of troubled teens that guns are the weapon of the enemy, so who knows.

Two final things that are worth noting about this teaser: First, the declaration that Arkham Knight, the fourth mainline game in the series, is "completing the trilogy." Apparently Arkham Origins, which was not developed by Rocksteady, has been retconned right out of the official narrative of the games. Second, there's a reference in the background to the Gotham City Halloween Parade. Forget about putting a set of giant guns on the Batmobile --  I think we can all agree that a Halloween parade in Gotham City is easily the worst idea ever. You're just asking for trouble, folks.