Batman: Arkham Knight

No way.

Boss fights are some of the best parts of videogames. Good bosses only make your game better and having none at all it's always disappointing.

AK could've used more bosses definitely. It's one thing I definitely preferred in A.City.

Hey I like a good boss fight as any, but you know I am all for games maturing and coming up with new ways to provide resolution than simply kill Ganon again in a game of Tennis.

Some of the ways they provide resolution will not be satisfying, as I am told Mass Effect 3 is, but you know you also have stuff like Bioshock Infinite, whose finale is so much more satisfying, original and memorable than a boss-fight would be. Then Far Cry 4 is not an especially interesting or challenging game but the finale is pretty cool and a lot more interesting than a Boss Fight would be.

Like Arkham City's final boss fight wasn't especially difficult at all. I mean the only reason it worked is because of the unexpected and ingenious Plot Twist and then the really sad cutscenes that follow. But in and of itself its not very satisfying. Three of the four main bosses of Arkham City rely on the Quickfire Gadgets, Grundy needed Quickfire Explosive Gel, Ra's Al Ghul needed the REC and for the end of Arkham City you need Mr. Freeze's gadgets. So it works in that sense but Mr. Freeze's was the only good boss-fight of the game. The others were stuff that could be in other games really.

edited 1st Jul '15 9:55:45 AM by JulianLapostat

But Bioshock: Infinite basically DID have a Final Boss of Unnamed Vox Forces trying to blow up the Zeplin. It plays like any Flunky Boss.

Until Video Games come up with more convincing ways to resolve things in the story, I'd rather games have a Final Boss than none at all.

...You know, I don't really mind Infinite's ending, but I kind of would have liked a final boss fight - the game felt kind of empty to me without one. I suppose it just bugs me that you never get to fight Songbird. I don't see how the ending would have been lesser for having a boss fight along with all the other stuff.

Can we not go there? Please?

edited 1st Jul '15 10:56:46 AM by KarkatTheDalek

Look the fact is that video games are getting more sophisticated or at least trying to be more sophisticated, for good and bad effect. A game like Red Dead Redemption which has so many interesting and beautiful things is let down because it is too busy being overly deconstructionist about being the "last Western" that it gets in the way of being a Western (and by the RDR attacks the very concept of the Final Boss).

The fact is that audiences are changing, this stuff happens in every medium. Popular music in the 60s and 70s led to stuff like punk rock, David Bowie and others. Classic Hollywood brought New Hollywood, and in comics you had the Alan Moore Revolution. Now do I think video games are really on the same level, probably not but they are catching up to shifts in audience tastes.

The Batman Arkham games likewise have that sophistication, maybe not Arkham Asylum so much, but Arkham City and especially Arkham Knight are very deconstructionist games. The finale of Knight parodies FPS games for instance and its very much an internal Vision Quest like Infinite's ending, its about finding out what kind of person the hero is, a World of Carboard moment really.

edited 1st Jul '15 11:08:06 AM by JulianLapostat

The thing about Bioshock Infinite is that shooters tend not to have super spectacular boss fights in the first place (though there are absolutely exceptions) but we KNOW that the Arkham games can pull off phenomenal boss fights when they want too, which makes it rather jarring in this game which tends to be anti-climactic in certain parts (like Deathstroke).

Which brings me to my next question: how is a game more "sophisticated" for not having a final boss battle?

edited 1st Jul '15 11:14:22 AM by KarkatTheDalek

That is actually a good question. When I say sophistication I mean in the "general sense", not that I think newfangled video games are better than old ones (I think Super Mario 64 is probably the greatest game ever). I am merely talking about sophistication in audience tastes, the kind for whom Wreck It Ralph, say, is made.

Video games are a different medium to say movies and books but at its core they start from similar roots. In movies and books, genre stories lets say, the finale will always have the hero confront the bad guy. That is where the Boss Fight comes from. In movies, the good guy kills/defeats the bad guy in the finale. Then you have The Godfather, where the gangster is the Villain Protagonist and he orders a hit that simultaneously destroys all his enemies while he attends his nephew's baptism, his hands are clean and he lies to his wife and walks away.

Now no gangster game, not even GTA has ever really done something like that. They simply do variations of the first formula, where criminal heroes personally mow down their enemies in the dozens. The second kind of story where the climax and plot resolution shifts away from the external threat to the internal change of a person is a natural progression in stories. You can see this in Zelda Wind Waker where you have the most emotional and powerful Ganon Boss Fight, where you actually feel sympathy for a guy even as you know that he has to be defeated. The finale has these mixed emotions of tragedy and hope. Then Shadow of the Colossus, well the Final Boss of that game is really You and the true hero is an NPC who locks you up forever. And that's a game which has nothing but Boss Fight, so there its about the internal story.

For Arkham Knight, especially when you have a villain like Scarecrow who is a psychological threat who forces you to confront your fears, that is a natural direction for the finale to take.

edited 1st Jul '15 11:35:35 AM by JulianLapostat

Well reasoned, I think. I suppose it really depends on how you want players to feel upon finishing the game.

The other thing, I said this before, as hard as it is to do good Boss Fight, it is harder to do for a superhero like Batman. The best Boss Fight put an underdog against a big threat, Batman is not an underdog. He is the odds-on favorite to walk away from any fight you put him against. Put Batman in a room against Titan Monsters and you know he'll win.

In Shadow of the Colossus, if Batman were to fight those monsters, how would that go down? Batman would basically grapple up the furs and do a beatdown at the different sigils or most likely grapple at one of the ruins and glide attack them. Naturally Batman won't travel the landscape with a horse, he'll summon the Batmobile or Batwing. Naturally Batman's grip on those furs won't be as bad as the kid in that game. Vulnerability of the hero is the main reason why Boss Fight work dramatically. Its Gordon Freeman against the Striders, Mario against Bowser, Link and Ganon.

To make a Batman game you need different stakes. So in Arkham City, the drama is about finding the cure, saving Talia or the like. So even if Batman wins, he still loses. Arkham Knight takes it a step further, its about Batman trying not to lose his mind and in the end even if he wins, he loses his Secret Identity forever.

edited 1st Jul '15 12:13:33 PM by JulianLapostat

Okay, first I gotta disagree on vulnerability being absolutely vital to a good boss fight. Some of the best boss fights of all time, like just about anyone in Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, Nelo Angelo and Virgil in the Devil May Cry series or even Deathstroke in Batman Arkham Origins are based around opponents who are more or less on the same level as the hero.

Also, frankly, I think the lack of any real boss fight ruined the Arkham Knight himself. With no truly amazing gameplay to anchor him to, he's just a loud, jilted fanboy who's gameplay claim to fame is...driving tanks. Similarly, I found the Reapers in Mass Effect 3 pretty boring as villains because they have little effect on gameplay outside a couple of sequences.

Sophistication is all well and good, but action games really aren't the place to further cut down the player's interaction. Boss fights are a way to let the player actually confront the villains, while taking them out completely disconnects the villain from the experience. It's some nice smoke and mirrors the first time you play, before you know the truth, but I know I rather deal with Bio Shock 1's final boss again than put up with the sequels' waves of enemies I'd already killed countless times already.

Are you sure that they're on the same level, from either a story or gameplay perspective? Story-wise, even if they're roughly equivalent, it's possible there might be mitigating factors that hinder the protagonist.

Gameplay-wise...well, if both the player and the boss decided to forgo things like blocking, dodging and healing, and just whaled on each other, who would die first?

edited 1st Jul '15 12:36:15 PM by KarkatTheDalek

In a game solely about action that would be true. But even action games are about a lot more these days. Like in Bioshock Infinite, I think everyone's favorite level was the first one, where you could walk around the gorgeous sky-city with the amazing art-direction and look at all the details and enviromental storytelling. Then it becomes this relentless shooter and while the shooting is great, it was kind of excessive after a while and ultimately you wonder if all this lovely art direction is all the trouble if you are going to just shoot stuff up. The parts of Bioshock Infinite that I really like best is the one where you are in that Mental Ward, where reality shuffles around you, its this dark grey area and its like time is in-flux and you don't know if you are too late to save Elizabeth or in time, and it gets spooky.

In the Assassin's Creed games, the architecture and the history is probably as important as the gameplay. Or Dishonored which is kind of like the Arkham games, its as much about exploring the environment and observing the environment and art direction as anything else.

In the Arkham games, you had satisfying stealth and action yes, but the Art Direction made the Island a star in itself, there was this cohesiveness to the area. Those small touches where you could track Zsasz' movements throughout the night on the grounds, you had how the environment kept getting transformed in the course of the night. So that became part of the story. In Arkham City, the entire dilapidated area told a story, each part was attached to some lore of Gotham, you had the alley where Batman's parents got shot down, you had Ace Chemicals, you had Harvey Dent's DA office, Penguin's factory. That stuff is there in Knight too (And it wasn't there in ORIGINS to a significant extent), like you have Batman seeing Joker's face on statues, billboards, photos and signs and the like. There are loads more touches I bet.

I really don't know why you'd say that the end sequence in FPS is a PARODY of FPS' in general. I... I have no idea where you'd get that from. The FPS is used to keep things close (on uncomfortable level compared to the rest of the game's TPS) and to play mind games with you a lot better where a TPS would be significanty less creepy/jump scare/harder to pull scares on the audience.

I like a good deconstruction, but there a limits to doing that. Namely, you shouldn't do a deconstruction for the sake of one and the SECOND your deconstruction starts being used to trump gameplay, storytelling, or just generally having a fun good time with the game, you walk a VERY tight line.

I can tell a fantastic story deconstructing the idea of the Quest system and how every quest you follow the instructions of gets you into even worse and worse situations and the only answer is to not listen to the advice or instructions of strangers, but that would most likely be a very boring and miserable experience.

edited 1st Jul '15 12:44:33 PM by InkDagger

See, I was low on ammo and salts for most of the mental ward, and combined with the dark, claustrophobic setting (as well as being separated from Elizabeth), it meant I wasn't really having a good time.

I mostly preferred the more wide open, brightly lit areas - they were very nice to look at and really felt alive, while also contrasting nicely with all of the bloody violence, as well as the horrific racism of Columbian society.

edited 1st Jul '15 12:45:20 PM by KarkatTheDalek

Assassin's Creed and Dishonored, while not traditional "boss fights", still have you confronting the villains through gameplay, especially in Dishonored's case. The latter also does have a genuine boss fight, and a well-received one at that.

I really ought to play Dishonored, especially after seeing the trailer for the second game. Any series that has a Badass steampunk female protagonist (even if she's not playable in the first game) is worth a look in my opinion.

Well of course you walk a tight line, if you try and do something different you don't work with a safety net. There are no rules to do these kind of things.

In any case, Arkham Knight is only deconstructionist on a story level. It doesn't deconstruct the Batmobile for instance. There its, "Rubber Bullets, honest" (a line from a deconstructionist comic by the way). It fully says that the Batmobile is awesome and fun, that it makes sense for traversal and other stuff. What it does take a look at is Batman's relationship with his allies and friends.

Well Zelda games are (Majora's Mask, Wind Waker) already quite a takedown of the Quest system you know. They aren't boring and miserable experiences. Neither is Shadow of the Colossus which attacks the concept and foundation of the quest structure on every level and is actually a bit of a critique of Zelda games.

Then Braid attacks the structure of Mario games and other clones in a variety of ways. Not boring or miserable.

edited 1st Jul '15 12:56:25 PM by JulianLapostat

I really ought to play Dishonored, especially after seeing the trailer for the second game. Any series that has a Badass steampunk female protagonist (even if she's not playable in the first game) is worth a look in my opinion.

Its a terrific game with some of the best level design since Super Mario 64. The thing is it has a very simple overall plot but what really makes the game work is the smaller stories in each level.

The first game does suffer, much as I like it, for being a little sexist but overall the story and characters are done well enough that its still compelling. It's also really stylish. I recommend the DLC its one of the few times the DLC is as good as the main campaign

Ooh, there's a second one coming out? I consider Dishonored the true spiritual successor to the Dark Engine Thief games.

But like Julian said it has it's problems. In one mission the nonlethal option is to hand a woman over to her stalker. One of the few targets I killed.

edited 1st Jul '15 1:12:36 PM by KarmaMeter

How are Majora's Mask and Wind Waker such games (especially Wind Waker, which doesn't have a lot of focus on sidequests as far as I can recall)?

I'll definitely give it a go, then.

How are Majora's Mask and Wind Waker such games (especially Wind Waker, which doesn't have a lot of focus on sidequests as far as I can recall)?

Well in Majora's Mask, its Groundhog Day the game, you keep replaying the same day again and again until you get to where you were trying to be in the Final Boss Preview at the start. Its basically commenting on the repititive nature of these quests, which you need to put down in a notebook to keep track of. Its similar to how players play games, they do multiple tasks and activities but all of them have repititive gameplay and they likewise consult guides online or their friends to keep track of various events. Then in the finale, you surrender all the masks you collected for a simple, disposable Boss Fight and the real satisfaction is seeing the lengthy cutscene in the end where all the side stories add to a whole.

In the Wind Waker, the quest structure is parodied in another way. The hero is a simple ordinary kid who is not the Chosen One who gets entangled into a richly mythic world and story. So once he finishes all that quest stuff he finds out that he's still leaving his family behind for another quest. Majora's Mask is about the repetitive small-scale drama of daily life, the side-quests, the NP Cs you meet are the heart and soul of the games whereas Wind Waker is about change, about the inevitability of it. There's no final quest or adventure, no grand villain whose defeat will solve your problems.

Games being sophisticated doesn't shield them from being criticized for dropping the ball on a mechanic, or on anything else really.

The problem with most of the Arkham series bosses is exactly what Dr Dougsh said on page 67, the only flavors to pick from are Damage-Sponge Boss and Flunky Boss. If there were like 1 or 2 of each that wouldn't be a problem but it gets old when that's all there is. Mr. Freeze and Deathstroke are good because they both do different things from the Arkham series norm.

All a Boss Fight is, is a challenge for the player to overcome. If the boss itself sucks for thematic reasons that's fine and it can be done well, as Demon's Souls and Dark Souls proved. On the other-hand, the important thing to remember here is giving the player a suitable challenge, so it's not as simple as saying a Cutscene Boss is better when you want to be artsy.

Bioshock Infinite didn't have a traditional boss fight, but the Tower Defense segment was the ultimate challenge the game could offer.

edited 1st Jul '15 2:12:38 PM by VeryMelon