City of Villains
Jump forward another six months and it’s here where Arkham City begins. Bruce Wayne defiantly holds a news conference at the doors of the prison-city when Strange’s TYGER mercenaries come up to nab Wayne.
Strange confronts him straight up with the knowledge of his double life, so Bruce suits up as Batman to put an end to Strange and learn more about his Protocol 10.
He suspects Catwoman may know something since she’s prone to sneaking around and gaining intel, but she’s currently being tied up by Two-Face after trying to break into his personal safe. Two-Face thinks offing her will gain her respect, when in reality, it just gets him some scars from Selina and tied up hanging over his own pit of acid.
(Where do you get one of those in Gotham, of all places?) Joker tries to assassinate Catwoman, but Batman tracks him down to the Sionis Industries steel mill. The Dark Knight goes through his henchmen, takes down Harley, and… the Joker’s dead.
Vitals are flat and everything. It’s a bit low-key, but guess that’s the end of the game– wait no, it’s a trick and Joker and Harley knock him out.
However, the clown is dying because of the Titan formula, so he performs a transfusion with Batman to get him to comply. And just for good measure, he’s been donating blood to various hospitals all around Gotham. Gross.
Good news: Mr. Freeze was working on a cure. Bad news: he’s been captured by the Penguin.
After dealing with Penguin’s men, punching his shark (no, seriously), and taking down Solomon Grundy, Batman gets Freeze his suit back.
Luckily, Freeze has already developed a cure, but it’s too unstable to use. There is one way to render it stable, and that’s with the regenerative properties of the Lazarus Pit, in the possession of one Ra’s al Ghul, head of the League of Shadows.
Bats puts a tracker on a League ninja in Penguin’ s display museum and tracks her down to underneath Arkham City. There, Ra’s daughter Talia allows him a chance to see him if he goes through the trials of Ra’s al Ghul.
After getting his drink spiked and doing some dive bombing to ghost Ra’s, he finally meets the man in all his old, near death glory. Ra’s takes a dip in the Lazarus Pit after Batman refuses to kill him and becomes the Head of the Demon, at which point he’s beaten and gets his blood taken for the cure.
Batman heads back to Freeze to finish the cure, but once it’s done, Freeze turns on him and leads to one of the best boss fights ever. During the fight, Harley steals the cure and gives it to nice ol’ Mistah J.
The Bat and the Clown fight, at which point Strange activates Protocol 10, which will wipe out the whole population of Arkham City and wipe out Gotham’s criminal problem.
The TYGER mercenaries are slaughtering inmates while Strange launches missile strikes from Wonder Tower.
Batman gets buried underneath the rubble from a missile attack on the steel mill, but before Joker can finish him off for good, Talia offers the clown immortality in exchange for sparing Batman.
Catwoman helps the Dark Knight out of the rubble, and he shuts down Protocol 10 before heading to Wonder Tower to put an end to Strange.
He infiltrates Wonder Tower and learns that Ra’s is the true genius behind Arkham City and kills Strange for not defeating the detective, but not before Strange causes the Tower to self destruct.
Ra’s kills himself to avoid capture, but Joker’s still out there. He threatens Talia and has Batman meet him at the Monarch Theater. The two meet, but Talia ends up getting the killing blow on the clown before she’s shot and killed… by another Joker.
During the game, the Joker we’ve been seeing with the scars from the Titan formula has been the real Joker, very much nearing death.
But the healthy looking one that Batman saw dead in a chair and beat on earlier was Clayface. Batman defeats Clayface, but Joker blows up the theater floor and sends them down into Ra’s lair below. Bats destroys the Lazarus Pit and takes some of the cure for himself.
He thinks about letting Joker have some of it as well, but the Clown’s obsessive need for a cure ends up being his downfall and he causes the vial to smash into pieces before he dies laughing.
Batman carries his body out of Arkham City, putting it on a police car and walking away in silence.
With Joker dead and Harley turning out to actually not be pregnant like she originally thought, she isn’t taking it well, to say the least. She gets his gang together and stages a trap for the cops that are incoming into Arkham City, which led to two officers getting kidnapped.
Batman shows up to try and save them, but she ends up locking him in an air-tight glass ball in a memorial for Joker. Two days later, Robin arrives and frees him.
She then activates the next phase in her plan and rigs the area with bombs she stole from the GCPD, forcing Batman to track them down while Robin finds and saves the police officers.
As a last resort, she baits Batman back to his statue prison and activates the mechanical guardians from Wonder City to kill him, but that’s not enough to bring down the Dark Knight.
Her plan’s all shot to hell, Harley activates a bomb in the Joker structure that she hopes won’t just kill Batman and Robin, but will also reunite her with her beloved Joker.
It doesn’t work and she’s put back in custody, but Batman’s still shaken by the death of his love Talia and Joker. With Arkham City shut down, Harley’s gang behind bars, and the evil clown six feet under, things have changed in a big way for the people of Gotham, and Batman in particular.
