Batman Arkham Knight: Five Villains We Want To See

Earlier this week, the big news finally hit: a new Rocksteady Batman game would be released this year. Not only that, but the game would be Rocksteady's last entry into the Arkham franchise, finishing out the trilogy they began with Batman: Arkham Asylum. So if this is going to be Rocksteady's last Arkham game, who do we want to see Batman go up againt? We already know from the trailer that Two-Face, Scarecrow, the Penguin and Harley Quinn will all be involved, but we've seen all of them before. Here are five characters that haven't been fully featured in the series yet that we'd love to see make an appearance in Batman: Arkham Knight Hush Let's get the obvious one out of the way first. Everyone is kind of halfway expecting Hush to make an appearance in Arkham Knight, thanks to all the rumors and the strange announcement that showed up on the Batman: Hush Facebook page. Now, I'm not really a big fan of Hush, but even I have to admit that he's pretty perfect for a video game villain role. His whole convoluted plan in Batman: Hush involved setting up a string of oppponents for Batman to battle his way through. It's essentially a video game script as written. Plus, he already made an appearance in Arkham City, with Bruce Wayne's face no less, a thread that should probably get wrapped up in Rocksteady's final outing, even if it is only a sidequest.

The Court of Owls A brand new addition to the Batman mythos, the Court of Owls is probably too big and unwieldy an organization to play a role in the central story of Arkham Knight. On the other hand, their long history in Gotham City and that personal army of Talons make them perfect for a series of sidequest missions. Batman can search Gotham City for clues about the Court's existence, and whenever he gets too close, he enters into battle with a Talon or two. Sounds like a perfect setup to me.

Professor Pyg is one of the strangest, most insane villains among Batman's already insane rogue's gallery. He likes to perform surgery on people in order to make them more pefect. He has an army of genderless, lobotomized Dollotrons. He's pretty nuts. So why not let Batman fight through a legion of Pyg's Dollotrons at some point during Arkham Knight? He's one of the few Batman villains that hasn't been used countless times before, so let's give the new guy a chance and really weird some players out.

I'll always remember Man-Bat as the villain in the very first episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Being my first exposure to the character and some of my earliest exposure to Batman, the idea of turning Batman into Man-Bat seemed so clever it blew my mind. In retrospect, that episode is hardly among the best in the series, but it sticks with me still. He hasn't shown up yet in the Arkham games, but he could be a very cool boss fight if done properly. Rocksteady spent a lot of time teaching players how to swing and glide through Gotham in Arkham City, even throwing in some challenges. Now imagine having to use all of those skills while battling Man-Bat in the skies above the city. If Rocksteady wants to go out with a bang, that's the kind of boss battle that could do it.

In the trailer for Arkham Knight, you can hear the last will and testament of Thomas Wayne. That reading reminds me of Simon Hurt, the psychologist/devil who tries to take over Thomas Wayne's identity and destroy the Wayne family name, concocting a complicated plan to destroy Batman in the process. He even creates "The Three Ghost of Batman," police officers driven insane by experiments Hurt performed to see if he could create a new Batman. He's kind of terrifying, and the three ghosts would make great sidequest bosses. Batman: Arkham Knight will be released October 14, 2014.