The thing is, though, City especially made it really easy to ignore the open world. Arkham Knight had a few points where it encouraged you to do side quests before continuing the main story, but City was pretty straightforward if you wanted to focus on the campaign (which was far better than Asylum and Knight in terms…

So many critics have come out now around Arkham Knight's release and argued that City was weaker than Asylum, but I have no idea what they're talking about. I thought City was superior to Asylum in literally every single way, and I believe most scores/critics and fans at the time supported this.

Would've been a better movie if both the cave and farm were cut.

Just because people are higher in the hierarchy doesn't mean they always know the nitty-gritty details of each terrorist act. I'm sure there's plenty of plausible deniability or need-to-know practices.

*(which is a thing that exists in the world)