Batman: Arkham Knight has been slapped with an ‘M’ rating by the ESRB, developer Rocksteady has confirmed.
This will likely come as quite a shock to fans of the superhero franchise, considering this is the first time a Batman title has received a Mature rating. Previous Arkham games were rated ‘T’ for Teen.
In fact, the rating has surprised even Rocksteady itself:
"From our point of view, we never wrote it or made it with a rating in mind. We never did that in the previous two games… We just felt that this is the story that we really wanted to tell,” commented studio founder, Sefton Hill, during a chat with IGN.
"I’m not blind to the fact that [the M rating] does mean some fans will miss out… I don’t want to be oblivious to that fact. It would have been wrong to water down the game and deliver a story we didn’t believe in to keep the game ‘mass market’ or enable it for more people. We feel that’s the wrong way to go about it. We said we love the story and we don’t want to jepoardize that."
Batman: Arkham Knight is the final chapter in the critically acclaimed Arkham franchise, and is due for release in June on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.