The Arkham games have a lot of differences and similarities, and I think the biggest similarity is that all the games have good reasons for why Batman can swoop down, fight a group of thugs without a second thought and he will know 100% that they are bad guys. If this isn't established well, Batman just looks like a dick picking on a helpless victim.

Asylum - Closed off Asylum on an island, mass breakout. It's a pretty good bet anyone Batman sees needs to be beaten and subdued.

City - Closed off section of city turned into a superprison. Gang wars being fought. Again, it's a good bet everyone is a bad guy. Also, Batman's line "[Strange] said something called 'Protocol 10' will make him famous. I can't leave Arkham City until I find out what that is." That line was very important in establishing why Batman can't leave the city walls, which is just a veiled excuse for the game designers to not render the rest of the city.

Origins - Massive snowstorm and a city wide evacuation. Again, it's a thinly veiled excuse but it works IMO for vacating the streets so that Batman knows anyone on the streets is either a crook or a corrupt cop. The eight assassins provides sufficient reason for Batman putting his life on the line. When Alfred suggests hiding in the batcave, Batman rebuttals that the eight assassins will put innocent lives in danger in order to attract his attention.

I think for a new Arkham game, specifically a BATMAN BEYOND Arkham game which I would call ARKHAM BEYOND (total misnomer because it wouldn't be about Arkham Asylum, but IMO you have to have Arkham in the title from now on) the excuse would be that 10,000 MEMBERS OF THE JOKERZ GANG HAVE COME TO GOTHAM CITY FROM ALL OVER THE COUNTRY FOR THE JOKERZ CONVENTION AT THE GOTHAM CITY CONVENTION HALL. THEY AREN'T BREAKING ANY LAWS, THEY ARE ACTING TOO NICELY. BUT, THE NIGHT OF THE CONVENTION, ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE ON GOTHAM CITY AS THE JOKERZ ATTACK AND SET INTO A MOTION TO RELEASE THE FAMOUS 'JOKER TOXIN' ON THE CITIES INHABITANTS, WHICH THEY WILL SUCCEED IN AND TERRY MCGINNIS AND THE JUSTICE LEAGUE WILL HAVE TO FIGHT THOUSANDS OF JOKERZ AND ORDINARY CITIZENS WHO ARE POSSESSED BY THE JOKER TOXIN!!!!!

What do you all think of that premise?

Meh.....

not sure they would transition into the future so quickly.

First they have to make a game with scarecrow hush and azrael that also deals with Batman's feelings over the death of the joker and Talia (although she will be resurrected).

Sounds good...the Batman Beyond game not your plot lol no offence.

But not before Rocksteady wows us on next gen.

Well I think you got this all wrong they didnt have these set ups so players couldnt go around beating up random people like in GTA but it was for ease of devolpment even if that werent the case in City they had regular inmates that Batman couldnt beat up

As for batman beyond i hate it so i wont even bother

Eh. They could just have a mechanic that restricts you from attacking civilians, games do that all the time. And if you're looking for a significant event to justify keeping him in the suit, how's about we do the exact opposite and let you switch between Bruce and Batman whenever you want. Also, while a Batman Beyond game is an awesome idea, I'm not sure how popular it would be to a mainstream audience though to be honest. The scope for that seems a bit limiting. You know, as opposed to having Batman in general where you can pull from every source imaginable.

Story wise, it'd be cool if instead of just one big story with side missions for bad guys, have a bunch of mini campaigns for dozens of different villains (partially for the sake of making things smaller not every Batman story needs to be a massive event). However, after the plot for Arkham City, this is kind of impossible as pretty much every major villain is still locked up and the only way to circumvent that is a massive breakout... wait a minute that's a perfect plot for the game!

Bruce takes down Arkham City. We enter after a reconstruction of the city. Everything's nice and open then boom break out and individual plots for each villain in the breakout and maybe an overarching plot of finding out who planned the breakout if you wanted to go that way. A little cliche but it's just a rough idea. Or we can have it take place between Origins and Asylum and have great intros for every villain we show. Plus that way we could open the plot to a bit of police hostility being present and that could allow for GTA-esc police chases in the Batmobile and frankly I think that'd be awesome.

What I really want gameplay wise is a free roam GTA scaled Gotham City. Hell with NextGen tech we can afford to go even bigger maybe Division scale free roam New York City size (with everything present and explorable, even Arkham Asylum, Blackgate, Wayne Manor, etc.). Two forms of travel: same Batwing fast travel mechanic from Origins as well as a drivable Batmobile you can call upon at any time during free roam. Aside from that, not much needs to change with the next one. Maybe just switch to a new engine (Frostbite, CryEngine, whatever Ubisoft uses) and an overhaul of the animations. Also, if they actually went with the reconstruction idea that allows for possibly having hidden Batcave checkpoints throughout the city to facilitate the Bruce to Batman change feature I mentioned earlier as well as update the Character Bios and Wayne Tech features to only being available from these spots (cos while, yes it's a videogame, it's nice to have some context instead of him popping up a screen in the middle of battle to look at these things).

Sorry to hijack your thread you just got me thinking up my own premise for a game and I just had to ya know.

@chrisj_1: Hijack away! Your idea sounds awesome. I can honestly talk for hours about this. I wish I worked for WB games or Rocksteady :(

@chrisj_1: That sounds really cool but that's just not what the arkham games are about. Maybe a spinoff like that could surprise people and be great. But good idea

your idea sounds really similar to the 10,000 Clowns story arc from Batman Beyond

I don't want a batman beyod game.

Nah...I want normal Batman, not beyond.

@jayc1324: Yeah I know it wouldn't exactly be an Arkham game but that's the same reason I'm not really feeling the strictly Batman Beyond game the OP suggested. The range is a bit limiting it'd be great to just have an overall Batman game ya know? Use every single villain to their fullest extent in an open world dynamic video game setting as opposed to snippets of personality shown in simple boss fights. This is just simply where I would take a Batman game if I were in charge not specifically an Arkham sequel per say just Batman.