Batman: Arkham Knight

I'd love that actually, to help set up a possible Justice League game.

Origins, taken as an isolated game and not in comparison to the other games, tells a fantastic story of the beginnings of Batman and the Jokers rivalry. In addition it builds the beginnings of trust between Batman and Gordon.

The story of Asylum and City are very much Excuse Plots to put Batman in a Closed Circle with his Rogues Gallery, the reason it works is because it captures just the right tone and the gameplay was atmospheric and dynamic.

The gameplay of Asylum and City is better polished and the pacing of the story is slightly better, but Origins actually has a cinematic story that ascends typical video game plotting. If anything what hurts Origin is the video game structure upsetting its pacing, how 2 of the 8 assassins are side missions instead of being part of the main plot.

I like Asylum better because it's far more linear with its storyline.

That's... a little hard to do, other than different studios I suppose.

"A cinematic story that transcends video game plotting?" Joker hires 8 of Batman's worst enemies to hunt him down, and you get to 5-6 of them. Joker is part of the final confrontation and the final battle turns out underwhelming, or a total shift in mood. Same as Asylum and City.

• You spend all of Asylum hunting down rogues, rescuing staff, unlocking areas, and then Joker roids up out of nowhere, and you punch him out, which is certainly a badass Bat-moment, but cartoony overall.
• You spend all of City tracing clues to criminal whereabouts, evaluating crime scenes, facing down villains, and searching for a cure - then Clayface pops up out of nowhere, Batman freeze-punches him to death, and Talia and Joker get Killed Off for Real.
• You spend half of the game with a bullseye on your back, then Joker shows up out of nowhere, coordinates a few of the remaining assassins, and Batman beats him up, leading to a psuedo happy ending with nobody left to go after Bruce.

Other than Joker's flashback, did any particular cutscene or gameplay instance really stick out? Asylum had Scarecrow and the Wayne's murder, City had Freeze and Protocol 10.

The boss fights were certainly better, and I suppose the Executioner's was rather funny. Bane was a huge improvement from Asylum and City. In the former he just charged headfirst into walls, and the latter he was an NPC mission contact, and an ally for all of a minute. Here he was a fleshed-out antagonist and got two or three boss fights to himself.

edited 19th Nov '14 9:18:24 PM by FOFD

How does Joker roid up out of nowhere? 1. Titan is pretty well established. 2. Joker actually injects BATS with Titan, and tries to roid HIM up.

Video Game plotting tends to be about facilitating the gameplay, while there may be an overarching story it's designed to take you from one level to the other, one boss fight to another, one elevator key after another. Both Asylum and City ensure through their stories that you have to fight against a good number of Batman's rogues in a deliberately (and conveniently) orderly manner. Such as in City that Mr. Freeze was working on a cure for Joker's condition but was captured by Penguin, then you need Ras al Ghuls blood to make it work. Or in Asylum Bane's venom was used to make Titan via Poison Ivy and the antidote can be found in Croc's lair. If you were to adapt that narrative to a movie format it would come across as very "chapter" based storytelling.

In contrast, Origins keeps the main plot about Batman trying to bring down Black Mask, get him to call off the assassins and finding the Joker behind it all. The assassins you face are enemies that get in the way of that, the story is not structured so that you have to find them to move on with the plot (you don't fight Deathstroke so you can get the plot coupon to move on to the next part of the story). If you were to adapt that narrative to a movie format it feels more unified in action and allows Batman to be more proactive instead of doing a bunch of Fetch Quests.

Joker doesn't really roid up out of nowhere. He wanted to fight Batman and literally become the monsters that he knows society sees them as.

It's just that Batman took the antidote, so the symbolism was ruined but in-universe and out of universe.

Hmm. I see your point.

Alright, it's spontaneous. Joker hits Batman, Batman hits him back, Joker gets angry and shoots himself, cut to TITAN Joker throwing him across an oddly arena-like rooftop.

I suppose the arena you fight him in suggests that Joker had planned for things to end with a bare-knuckle TITAN brawl between him and Batman, but I remember getting there and being like, "Well, that happened." All that build-up, all of Joker's murderous plotting, the battle with Poison Ivy, finding Joker sitting underneath that television - all for Joker to sic two TITAN's on me and then TITAN himself.

edited 20th Nov '14 8:33:09 AM by FOFD

One-Winged Angel is also very predominantly a video game plot trope. That's another thing Origins did was, like The Dark Knight, it made the Joker fond of simple and uncomplicated explosives instead of using psuedoscience as part of the threat. It made him scary in part because it felt like something that could realistically happen.

As for City I think the imagery of Protocol 10 was great but the reasoning behind it extremely obtuse. Strange talked about expanding the Arkham City idea to other cities, but what did it really accomplish besides create a lot of chaos? If you wanted to kill off a bunch of criminals, sending in the Tyger team to make calculated assassinations is far less convoluted and expensive.

To be fair, Ra's thought he was an idiot and never had much if any faith in his plan.

After all, he tries to recruit Batman as his successor, which, had it been successful, would've made Batman Strange's boss.

R'as is also very big on society self-destructing, so he can replace it with his own.

There might be something from Arkham Knight at the Game Awards(re-branding of the VGAs, for those not in the know).

Anyway, if the Joker were to come back it would probably be some kind of hallucination/series of hallucinations, induced by fear toxin naturally, that leads to Bruce finally getting over the Joker.

I mean, with Scarecrow being the supposed big bad and the Harley DLC from City showing how the Joker's death has effected Bruce it's the most likely way to have Joker included in the story.

edited 21st Nov '14 2:08:50 PM by JotunofBoredom

I would like to see a Chessmaster as the Big Bad, but they already blew it with Hugo Strange and Ra's Al Ghul.

Story-wise my only problem with Origins is that Shiva and Deadshot where side missions. There had to be some way of incorporating them more directly into the story.

x2 Calender Man has to do something now. They've been hinting at him in every game and it's high time they delivered.

All the assassins, save Bane, were glorified cameos anyway. I don't see what shoehorning them into the main plot would do.

Oh, did anyone hear this?

If you set your system calendar to December 13 2004 (the date Rocksteady was founded), Calendar Man has a special conversation in Arkham City that hints at his involvement in Knight.

Its been three years and we're still not done discovering stuff in Arkham City? Sounds about right.

That was known...maybe not widely known, but it was known.

Oh. Still, it's something you'd have to go ridiculously out of your way to discover. That's why I love these games.

Yeah, I knew about that for a week or two now.

Ace Chemicals Infiltration Part 1.

They got all meta with it in a promo for Shadow of Mordor.

This game gets sexier every time I look at it.

After being mildly disappointed with the last entry, this looks... just wow. And thesibly no Joker, just Batman going toe-to-toe with a private army and the Arkhamverse's version of Owlman and Red Hood.

Thats.... beautiful.

Seriously, amazing. So, it'll be Rogue, then this I think. I was skeptical about the batmobile but it looks shiny in this. And the enemies... oooooh the enemies.

Looking forward to how they play it out. Venuzualan Mercenaries though? I thought Bane'd be the go to for that? Maybe it's bane but de-Venomed and needing a suit? And they said "Vengeance".... hmmm.

Bane is from a fictional Caribbean island, not Venezuela(neither are any of his mercenaries, they're all from the same prison as him), but Venezuela is relatively close to the Caribbean, so maybe there's a connection. Though, considering the Arkham Knight has an American sounding accent, he likely isn't from the Caribbean or South America himself.

Other than that, he could probably have connections to Ra's or Dr.Strange somehow... but who are we kidding, he's gonna be connected to the Joker.