T w e n t y S i d e d

Thanks to everyone who stopped in for the stream. I’m really enjoying these. We’ll be streaming again tonight at 7pm Eastern (click here for local time) on the RamblePak64 channel. I hope you’ll drop in and join the fun.

And here is the VOD from last week:

For the record, I played through this section this week. And sure enough, the entire Harley Quinn sequence is there.Fun fact: According to Steam I last played the game on Dec 15, 2015. This playthrough started on Dec 17 2021. Like Chris, I have no memory of this section, but I must have played through it back in 2015 and then flushed it down the memory hole. It’s interesting that we both forgot this part.

Also, I guess Blackgate Prison keeps a psychoanalyst on call at all times, even at 2AM on Christmas Eve, just in case any nutters get dropped off and we decide to analyze them in the middle of the night for fun?

And I also guess that Harley Quinn wasn’t slowly turned by the joker after months of manipulation. Apparently she fell for him during a ten minute conversation? Okay then.

And while we’re bitching and moaning about things: This Bane fight SUCKS. Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Origins #4: Grate Move!”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

These streams I’m doing with Chris are turning out to be a lot of fun. We’ll be streaming again tonight at this time on the RamblePak64 channel. I hope you’ll drop in and say “hi”. We even have a bit of a drinking game going on:

• Drink whenever we accidentally discover a secret while looking for the way forward.
• Drink whenever we have to cross THE BRIDGE.
• Drink every time Batman fails / acts like an idiot in a cutscene.

I’m sure more will be added as we progress through the game. And speaking of cutscene incompetence…

This is a problem in a lot of games, but I find it particularly galling when it comes to Batman. His superpower is observation and preparedness, so a cutscene where someone gets the drop on him is a cutscene where he’s out of character.

This doesn’t mean Batman can’t ever suffer setbacks, of course. It’s just that the author needs to take care to preserve his character and not have him blundering from one trap to the next like your typical videogame protagonist. The first Arkham game – written by Paul Dini – handled this really well. Then the game developers thought they didn’t need Dini’s help and tried to write the stories themselves. As a result, Batman gets increasingly incompetent as the games go on.

For example, last week we fought Copperhead:

Let’s try to Paul Dini-ify this initial encounter with Copperhead. We can’t change the outcome of the battle, but let’s see if we can’t give Batman a little more agency.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Origins #3: Clowning in Cutscenes”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Fair warning: My audio is WAY too loud in this episode. Even once I turn it down, it’s still too loud. Sorry about that. I realize this seems like a rookie mistake. “How hard is it to check volume levels?”

The RamblePak streams are a convoluted chain of cobbled-together technology. The whole thing is much more complicated than it probably seems on the surface. Audio passes through a lot of software on multiple computers before it finally becomes part of the stream, and it’s easy for a gain monitor to reassure you that everything is good, only to have another layer muck things up further down the line.

I did this sort of thing for years with the Spoiler Warning crew. The only way to learn how to avoid a pitfall is to fall into it. Eventually you learn about all the different ways that things can invisibly go wrong and how to avoid them. Until then, Chris and I are going to be stepping on rakes.

Anyway, with your expectations sufficiently lowered, here is the stream:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Arkham Origins #2: Bat-Felonies!”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.