Gritty neon, dirty buildings and rain. Batman sees it all as he stands atop a warehouse full of Penguin's goons.
After a quick discussion with Nightwing, he drops through the glass, black fists deftly delivering pain to those trying to destroy his city. His foes fall before him, as his ally Nightwing moves in perfect unison to keep the bodies on the floor.
This is his city, and for the first time, you can truly believe it.
Batman is one of the world's most loved superheroes, but he is far from universal. Batman belongs in Gotham, a fictional City that is almost as iconic as real-world metropolises like New York.
And finally, the move to next-gen consoles has allowed the team at Rocksteady to truly deliver on the promise of Gotham.
"Creating the atmosphere of Gotham is something that our art team is always banging on about all the time," Ginn reflects.
"It's not just a city. It's Gotham City. And the rain in Gotham City is very particular, the reflections, the bitumen, the way that neon bounces off wet bitumen… Smoke and those atmospherics… I think next-gen allowed us to take that further than we've ever done before."
And making the world of the Arkham Knight feel like it's not just a generic copy of a generic city was something only possible thanks to the hardware improvements of the PS4 and Xbox One consoles.
"If you think back to Arkham Asylum, the atmosphere felt very legit and authentic, but making an asylum feel like an asylum is a pretty easy thing to do because as long as you've got bloodied gurneys and tiled walls and that sort of thing, it's quite a predictable environment in terms of design," Ginn explains.
"But making a city not feel like a generic city, but making it feel like a specific city – when it's a fictional city – is really, really tough. But [in Arkham Knight], I feel like I'm in Gotham, I'm not just in a version of New York or Chicago, it feels like it's Gotham City."
