Game - Batman: Arkham Origins

Batman pulls another dark all-nighter

Batman: Arkham Origins is the third game in Warner Brothers' successful Arkhamverse Batman games, and a prequel to Rocksteady's stellar and genre-defining stealthy-beat-'em-up-platform-riddlers that proved once and for all (even if no-one else has successfully followed up on it) that you can make excellent licensed games. Once again, Batman manages to accomplish a frankly improbable amount of things over the course of a single night, as the story sees a younger iteration of the Dark Knight on the run from an elite cadre of assassins hired by Black Mask competing for the million dollar bounty for his head on the longest Christmas Eve of all time.

It's heartwarming to see that being over fifty years old with
one eye and no depth perception is no barrier to a successful
career in contract killing.

Taking his vocal cues from Kevin Conroy's practically definitive take on the character, Roger Craig Smith  is a younger, rougher-around-the-edges Batman who doesn't quite know his own strengths and limits yet - witness him giving into his anger and knocking out a henchman before he's actually finished interrogating him  - and this is reflected in his design: more aggressive and less confident in his ability to avoid harm, Wayne opts for a more heavily-armoured look than the streamlined appearance of his wiser, more confident self in Arkham Asylum.  The game meticulously shows the inception and development of the qualities of morality, stubbornness, determination and trust that will go on to characterise him and his relationship with his allies in all future games of the series. As Origins is set before Batman was more-or-less endorsed by Jim Gordon and the Gotham City Police Department, and Gordon still very much wants to bring him in, even considering him the police's highest priority in a city swarming with much more dangerous whackjobs and psychos, it falls to Wayne's stalwart valet Alfred, voiced by noted English actor Martin Jarvis reprising his role from Arkham City, to act as the heart and steadying conscience of the impulsive, angrier Wayne that Origins portrays. Origins puts Alfred's almost parental role in much greater focus than previous games, showing an Alfred still unconvinced of the wisdom of this 'Batman' phase that his young ward seems to be going through, who disagrees with the danger Bruce puts himself in and sometimes flat-out tries to stop him, but ultimately comes round when convinced by the danger posed by the criminals running Gotham and the strength and resilience of the young man he's watched grow from a small, lonely boy.

"Screw the rules, I have green hair!"

As ever, the Joker dominates proceedings once he shows his pasty face, but unlike the previous two games it doesn’t feel justified. Even in City, the Clown Prince’s predominance rather short-changes Hugo Strange and Ra’s Al Ghul from their main villain roles, even though the Joker is really only the villain of the B-plot. However, in that game it was mostly justified by the history on show between the characters, the extension of their relationship in the previous game, and the fact that it’s the character’s swan-song – or at least Mark Hamill’s, who as far as many people are concerned is the character. The Joker is written very well in Origins, and Troy Baker does an excellent job as a slightly younger Hamill-Joker, maintaining all of the psychotic humour and mood swings while also demonstrating that the criminal, like Batman, is still finding his feet in Gotham at this stage. However, once again he is essentially a B-plot villain here who hijacks the A-plot away from its real villains and, unlike in City, he does it in such a way that it is detrimental to the story rather than complimentary. “Eight of the world’s best assassins hunt Batman on Christmas Eve” was the oft-repeated elevator pitch for Origins, and it just brimmed with promise and potential, but once the Joker shows up that story is mainly forgotten. What could have been an insightful examination into The Long Halloween’s conception that it is actually Batman’s presence in Gotham that allows the colourful rogues and psychos to crawl out of the woodwork and dominate the more regular criminals like the Falcones and the Maronis, is instead just an excuse to show Batman’s first encounter with some recognisable B-listers from his Rogues’ Gallery, and most of the resonance of these meetings is squandered as they have to be swiftly dealt with to move onto the next celebrity guest. 

Roman Sionis prepares to re-enact his favourite scene from
Saturday Night Fever.

Black Mask is a character that creates a lot of potential, as he represents a sort of transitory phase between the ‘legitimate’ criminals like Falcone and the gimmicky loons like Joker, but once it’s revealed that this Black Mask was actually just the Joker in disguise, the genuine article isn’t used at all except in a missable side-quest. The first assassin, Killer Croc, is dealt with in the prologue at Blackgate before Bruce even knows he’s being hunted. Electrocutioner, a D-list (at best) Batman villain even I hadn’t heard of before this, is used fairly well but essentially as comic relief, going down to a single hit after a hilariously overblown ‘boss fight intro’ cinematic and later being killed by the Joker in a fit of pique without ever being encountered by Batman again. His main impact on the game is simply to provide the ludicrously broken Electro-gauntlets that make virtually every fight you get to use them in about as easy as putting on a hat. Deathstroke is fairly effective, although that’s mainly because he gets the honour of the first Arkham series boss fight that’s actually good, and after that he is imprisoned and forgotten. Garfield Lynns, aka Firefly, turns up at the end after a protracted mysterious absence from the plot to drag out the third act and provide such a long interruption to Batman’s attempt to return to Wayne Manor as Bane attacks it that I refuse to believe Alfred isn’t dead and the Manor isn’t ashes by the time he finally gets back there – his bossfight, sadly, returns somewhat to the repetitive grind that was Poison Ivy’s battle in Asylum. Deadshot and Lady Shiva can be easily missed here, only fought in well-hidden side-quests, even though the whole reason they’re here is specifically to kill Batman (except Shiva is only really here to assess Batman for her master, Ra’s). 

"Oh God, oh God, my back is snapped like a pack of uncooked
spaghetti! You just walk up and break my back without saying
a word!? Boo! Boo on you, sir!"

Only about two of the game’s main villains that aren’t the Joker are well-served by the script: Copperhead and Bane. Copperhead stands in for Scarecrow in the now-standard trippy hallucination sequence that the games haven’t really bettered since the one in the first game where the game makes you think it’s broken before Bruce finally grabs the Scarecrow through a haze of hallucinations and kicks the stuffing out of him. She is, however, a competent and interesting female villain who, unlike most of them, can actually stand up to him in a fight and is only defeated by Batman’s trademark iron refusal to just die. Bane, however, very nearly steals the show from the Clown Prince, practically assuming the villain spotlight at the start of the third act. His motivations are barely hinted at and not explored, but if they had been he’d even have a decent character arc – frightened in childhood by recurring nightmares of a giant bat, he works his entire life to become the strongest and most powerful figure in the criminal underworld, gaining a dependence on Venom to maintain his edge and graduating to TN-1 (the progenitor of Dr Young’s perfected Titan formula from Asylum) when he is first defeated by Batman and desperate to gain an upper hand, transforming him from a large, burly, coat-wearing tactician a la The Dark Knight Rises’ Bane into the Hulk-like, intellectually-compromised but still threatening and devious monster of the earlier games. 

Pity no situations ever arose in the later games where these
gloves could have been useful.

In fact, the plot itself doesn’t especially stand up to scrutiny, mainly because the game seems confused about who its main villain actually is. Initially, Black Mask is clearly the villain because he’s hired assassins to kill Batman, so either Batman will need to fight through them to bring down Sionis’ criminal empire, or he’s just using the assassins as a distraction while he does something even more heinous. But no, Black Mask is actually the Joker and he’s doing all of this to rob a bank – something he accomplishes more or less without a hitch about a third of the way into the game. So why did he hire those assassins at all? The game itself makes explicit, in quite a good scene where Joker meets Dr Harleen Quinzel for the first time and flashbacks to his origin story, that the Joker has only become fascinated with Batman this night after the Dark Knight rescued him from a fatal fall from the Royal hotel, so what benefit to him was there in hiring a load of assassins to kill someone he doesn’t care about? Come the two-thirds mark, though, and it seems like Bane is the main villain now: he effortlessly towers over and dominates the Joker, he tries to have the insane clown killed after he proves a liability – almost succeeding except for Batman’s intervention – and attacks Wayne Manor after the dramatic reveal that he has deduced Batman’s identity. And, to top it all off, he provides the game’s final and genuinely different stealth-based boss fight reminiscent of – but never quite reaching – the heady heights of City’s duel with Mister Freeze. Unfortunately, he is dragged down from True Villain status by two fairly large setbacks. First, he takes his mask off (yes, yes, I know, it seems like nothing but this is Bane we’re talking about here, and he very pointedly never ever does this in the comics) and second, for some reason he seems happy by the end to be working as the Joker’s stooge again, serving as the muscle needed to enact Joker’s plan. Ultimately, it is him and his trained mercenaries that are the most dangerous and competent figures Batman encounters in the game – and it is a particularly nice touch that his men look up to him like a Ché Guevara-type revolutionary figure – but as with Arkham City’s League of Assassins and Strange’s Tyger guards, they are overshadowed by the Joker's omnipresent leering grin and manic behaviour.

Pleasing as it is to hear Nolan North's surprisingly convincing
East End gangster voice spitting "wanker" and "prat" everywhere,
someone should tell the writers that "numpty" isn't an adjective.

A truly satisfying climax to the game would have been a showdown with Bane in a burning Wayne Manor, as a beaten and disadvantaged Bruce uses his speed, smarts, stealth and surroundings to overcome his vastly superior opponent. But, Firefly provides the worst-timed interruption in history and prevents Batman from stopping Bane's assault on his home. Instead, the final thirty minutes of the game are spent thwarting another prison break at Blackgate (note to writers: returning to the game's first location for its final one does not give an epic sense of fulfilment, or circularity, or foreshadowing, it's just a bit cheap) that only seems to occur as an afterthought because Warner Bros. Games Montreal needed a way to get the Joker back into the plot because we'd gone more than ten minutes without seeing him doing something crazy and awesome and funny and kooky and showing what a truly devious and cool villain he is (The Dark Knight was great and all, but it's got a lot to answer for). This being said, Joker and Bane's joint plot to force Batman to break his One Rule is actually pretty smart - Bane's ludicrous decision to risk death teaming up with a criminal he admits to despise and distrust notwithstanding - as is Batman's way of getting out of it, and it's pleasing to see Wayne's determination to be better than the criminals he fights finally winning over Captain Gordon and laying the groundwork for the mutually trusting relationship they will show in the later games. In addition, the final confrontation with the Joker in the prison chapel is a brilliantly written examination of the characters' never-ending conflict, as Batman refuses to kill the Joker because of his morality and the Joker refuses to kill Batman because he's just so much fun - and the way this relationship stacks all the advantages on the Joker's side - even as Batman subjects the Joker to a beatdown so brutal and drawn-out that it becomes funny, then painful, then funny again (seriously, someone who gets punched in the head that many times in the face by a six-foot martial artist with kevlar gloves is dead, One Rule or no One Rule). It's a good ending, but not a great one, and that slightly disappointing inability to reach true greatness is a hallmark of Arkham Origins' overall quality.

Ah, a teenage Barbara Gordon. Give her an inch, she takes
a foot, soon she doesn't have a leg to stand on and she's
only half the girl she used to be.

As usual, the game has a wealth of side quests to add length and replayability. Predictably, the largest and longest side-quest here is the one that sees Batman trying to deal with Edward Nashton - here calling himself Enigma, in a sort of prototype-version of the final Riddler persona he's developing for himself - in a protracted collect-a-thon to prove the Caped Crusader's intellectual superiority. This time, Enigma positions himself as an information broker, and isn't really interested in smugly proving his cleverness to Wayne, and while he still taunts and dissuades you over the radio, he's much more interested in his own agenda of releasing all of the city's dirty little secrets online and bringing Gotham to its knees. Unfortunately, Nashton isn't the Riddler yet, and so doesn't actually riddle you. Whereas the previous games' Riddler trophies were a small but satisfying collectible to pick up in between the more enjoyable and interesting riddles that tested your ability to spot the games' welter of Batman lore hidden in the scenery - and your tolerance of awful puns - here Enigma's collectible blackmail files and destructible network relays, as well as his usual green-tinted informants, are the be-all and end-all of stopping his scheme in the usual off-hand Batman manner that typically involves putting his fist through a computer screen. At least the blackmail tapes do a double duty as the game's 'audio diaries', similar to the previous games' interview tapes, and you have an actual in-story reason to be collecting them other than Wayne's magpie-like fascination with glinting pick-ups. Further bolstering the cast is Occupy Wall Street meets Anonymous style revolutionary Anarky, who sets bombs throughout Gotham while hacking into TV screens and projections to broadcast his message of liberation and violent revolt against The Man. When you finally confront him and his small band of helpers, though, Anarky is basically just a regular stun baton-wielding mook with a bit more health, who automatically drops like a sack of potatoes once you take out all his helpers anyway.

Alfred is shocked, shocked, to discover bats in the batcave.

One thing that does improve from game to game is the soundtrack, and here Christopher Drake supplies the most Batman-sounding score the Arkham games have had yet. While there are no individual pieces that stand out as much as Ron Fish's credits music for the first game, or Nick Arundel's fantastic main theme for the second game, the overall quality of the soundtrack is much more consistent across the board and truly fits the organic fusion of Nolan's realistic grittiness and Burton's gothic weirdness that the Arkham games seem to have chosen as their tone, and there are some very good pieces that perfectly fit the mood of the game - especially Deathstroke's battle theme and the incorporation of 'Carol of the Bells' into the Joker's theme.

On a scale of ‘burn it and sterilise the area’ to ‘venerate it as the standard by which all others will be judged’, Origins falls uncomfortably between ‘good’ and ‘great’: easily as competent and well-written a character study as City was, but never quite as inspired or structured as Rocksteady’s game. In some ways, it feels like an extremely large piece of DLC for Arkham City: instead of building upon the game that came before it like City did, Origins is content to give you more of the same with some slightly different outfits and more snow. There's nothing wrong with more of the same, of course (More Arkham City? Yes please!), but while City's trade of Metroidvania-style structural tightness for a larger expanse of Gotham was ultimately to the game's benefit, Origins' reheated gameplay and even larger setting are just spreading the same amount of butter over a bigger slice of bread.

7/10 - The series isn't on the Wayne just yet.