Arkham Origins #3: Clowning in Cutscenes

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 21, 2021

Filed under: Streaming 44 comments

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.

In the game, Batman is torturing Falcone when Copperhead jumps Batman and scratches his face in the cutscene, thus poisoning him. Then she sportingly leaves and Batman has to search the room, hoping that she accidentally deposited a sample of her poison onto the environment so he can analyze it. The result is that Batman is blindsided, then his adversary backs off, then he gets lucky. He’s basically a pinball bouncing through this scene, with no direction or agency.

In my Dini-rewrite, the first thing we do is get rid of this bullshit idea that Batman gathers intel through torture and terror. I absolutely hate this and I’m sick of video game writers trying to make the Dark Knight “cool” by turning him into a dim-witted thug. Batman is both a Justice League SUPERHERO and a DETECTIVE. He’s not supposed to act like a bloodthirsty fascist goon.

Instead, let’s have Batman outwit this guy in dialog.

(Batman releases Falcone from his chains. Falcone tumbles to the floor.)

Batman:

Where’s Joker?

Falcone:

Go to hell! You think I’m gonna tell you? After what he’s put me through? Turned my men on me. Stole from me. Murdered my woman. He’s my kill. not yours!

Batman:

(Calm, businesslike.) In all the months I’ve spent taking down your organization, have I ever killed a single one of your men?

Falcone:

(Slow realization.) No… I guess not.

Batman:

Do you think I never got the chance?

Falcone:

(Frustrated.) Okay, yeah. So what’s your point?

Batman:

So you know that’s not my way. (As Batman is talking, we see the door behind him open slowly. We can’t see anything in the darkness beyond.) The sooner I take him down, the sooner he stops ruining your life. You can try to kill him once you’re both in jail. Now where is he?

Falcone:

(Breaks.) Yeah okay. I heard him talkin’ to his men, saying something about a-(Suddenly Batman is ambushed from off-screen. He spins and shoves his attacker away. A clawed hand reaches out and slashes at the camera. We cut to Batman to see he’s got scratches on one cheek. Finally we cut to a side view and we can see our two combatants.)

Batman:

You must be copperhead.
(Copperhead hisses, then coils for a strike. Batman grabs a wooden chair and uses it to block her attack. It shatters instantly. Then he fires his Bat-claw. She ducks it, and the claw sails out the large window behind her. It seems like he missed. She lunges at him again and he catches her hand just before it reaches his face.)

Copperhead:

I’ve already won, Batman. Soon my poison will-AHHH!

(Suddenly Copperhead is yanked out the window. Batman used the Bat-claw thingy on her. Batman has been using this thing all night to grab goons and yank them all over the place. I have no idea how it’s supposed to work, but we’re obeying its rules according to gameplay.)

From here Batman would call up Alfred and explain he’s been poisoned. Alfred will tell Bruce to get a sample of the poison. Then…

Batman:

(To Alfred.) I knew I’d need a sample of her poison, so I used this wooden chair to block her attack. The poison will have soaked into the soft wood. I just need to find where her claw landed.

So then we have a detective vision sequence as before, only now it’s a payoff to something that Batman planned, not blind luck on the part of a Batman that’s making shit up as he goes.

The cutscene has the same outcome as the original: Batman gets no intel on Joker, he gets poisoned, and Copperhead retreats for the time being. But in this version Batman is forward-thinking, clever, and professional. He’s Batman, not some dull brute dressed like a bat.

 


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44 thoughts on “Arkham Origins #3: Clowning in Cutscenes

  1. Dreadjaws says:

    They kinda stole the idea for the batclaw from Just Cause 2. A major mechanic from that game had the protagonist use his claw-rope-thingy to tie two objects together for diverse purposes (like, say, toppling down a statue by pulling it with a vehicle tied to it). It does make a little bit more of visual sense in this game, as here they deliberately show the claw gun releasing two different claws tied with a rope, but logistically it’s still a nightmare. The claws are, for instance, obviously pointing in opposite directions, yet they have no trouble gripping any two targets regardless of the angle they are at, and the length of the rope is always exactly perfect to your needs.

    And to be fair about the torture and fear thing, this is still a bit of a rookie Batman. He’s still impulsive and angry, and while he probably knows he can get better results using his brains he has a bit of a self-control problem. Then again they really could have used this for character development. I had the same problem with Arrow that I have with this game: the fact that torture is shown to be always effective when in reality it seldom is. They should have shown Batman get some dodgy info from torturing someone and using the experience to realize he should try a different approach.

    1. Gargamel Le Noir says:

      Copperhead is the Latina equivalent of a Chinese ninja!

    2. eldomtom2 says:

      A major mechanic from that game had the protagonist use his claw-rope-thingy to tie two objects together for diverse purposes (like, say, toppling down a statue by pulling it with a vehicle tied to it).

      I thought that was 3, not 2.

      1. Alex says:

        You’re correct – JC2 only had the single grapple, not the double grapple.

        1. Sartharina says:

          I distinctly remember using the grapple in 2 to tie Exploding Barrels to cars and helicopters

        2. Dreadjaws says:

          I have never played JC3, I guarantee you JC2 had the double grapple.

          Here’s some evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5dEfDwTYsM

  2. Lino says:

    The stream was really fun, like always. It was fun to see someone filibuster Shamus for a change! I kid, of course, really looking forward to watching today’s VOD (and possibly catching Chris on Sunday).

    I also really like your Copperhead rewrite! As for the character itself, I actually kinda liked her. She’s got a cool design, but why on Earth 52 is she speaking Spanish? Aren’t Copperhead snakes only found in North America? And while we’re on the subject, while I like the fact that she’s using Capoeira (which is a very underrepresented art in mainstream media), do the writers know that Capoeira is associated with the black population in Brazil*? Where the official language is Portuguese? I mean, I get it – South American cultures are really complicated, but can they at least try to get the basics straight?

    * Yeah, I know they didn’t invent it or anything, but I’m talking about mainstream perceptions of it today

    1. bobbert says:

      Aren’t Copperhead snakes only found in North America?

      I am not sure why you phrase it like that. There are no copperheads in Canada, and in Mexico it is only found in a small isolated area on the Texas border. It would be fair to call it a USA only snake.

      I am surprised they made villain named copperhead and didn’t make him a grey-coat sympathizer.

      1. Rho says:

        In this case. The response to both is just that Copperhead is a longtime character (well, several dudes with the same gimmick more or less). The Copperhead in the game is yet another version. The game actually alludes to this when Batman mentions that other reports identified “Copperhead” as a guy. It was a more appropriate nickname for the other versions though as they were American.

        1. Syal says:

          Are the other Copperheads actually cops? It seems really weird to have a name like Copperhead not be a bad cop.

    2. John says:

      There are a lot of Spanish speakers in North America, which I believe technically includes everything from Panama on up. Not only that, there are a lot of Spanish speakers in the United States. I’ve lived on both coasts and now live in the Midwest and I have yet to live in a place without at least a small Spanish-speaking population. In short, there is nothing weird about a Spanish speaker showing up in Gotham.

      1. bobbert says:

        Yeah, but there are no copperheads in Panama et al.

        I kind of like the idea that she was born in Omaha and some Spanish was spoken at home, but the thick accent when she is in costume is all just an act.

      2. Lino says:

        OK, but then why Capoeira?

        1. John says:

          Are we sure that’s capoeira? If so, I couldn’t say. Maybe she took classes. Look on the bright side. At least she’s probably from the right hemisphere. If I remember correctly, Elena from Street Fighter is a capoeira-ist from Kenya.

          1. Lino says:

            Yes, we’re 100% sure it’s Capoeira (mixed with some Jiu-Jitsu in that cutscene). And I don’t particularly have a problem with her using it, or her speaking Spanish for that matter. What I find kind of weird is that even though Copperhead’s sole defining character trait is that she’s a Latina, the writers haven’t gone through the trouble of being consistent about what kind of Latina she is. I mean, it’s OK to have token one-note characters (in fact, that’s one of the charms of the genre for me), but if you’re going to have a token one-note character, the least you could do is nail the basics. Which I feel they haven’t done for Copperhead.

            As for Elena, it actually makes sense that she’s from Africa, and using Capoeira. After all, that’s where the art traces its origins from.

            1. Taellosse says:

              As for Elena, it actually makes sense that she’s from Africa, and using Capoeira. After all, that’s where the art traces its origins from.

              Weeellll….you’re kinda making the same sort of over-simplified broad-brush stereotyping with this comment as started this thread.

              Capoeira is a distinct fighting discipline developed in colonial Brazil by enslaved Africans as a means of improving their chances of survival when attempting to escape. It is heavily based on Engolo, which is indeed a ritual combat discipline originating in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa where the modern nation of the Congo and its neighbors now lie, and Kenya does have a large population of people with a related ethnic extraction. But the Kongo people, who would’ve been the ones practicing Engolo, are not the same as the Kikuyu of Kenya, who do not speak the same language as the Kongo at all.

              So having a Kenyan character that practices Capoeira is kind of equivalent to an Italian whose defining feature is his expertise in Mexican-style bullfighting. Sure, it could conceivably happen that a man born and raised in Italy – and speaking Italian, which is, after all, a language like Spanish – would become highly skilled at a pastime peculiar to a country not his own but which is very similar to one practiced in another country which is geographically close to his own, but it’s nevertheless a bit of an odd choice.

    3. Khwarezm says:

      No, Copperheads are found throughout Mexico and Central America, there’s no problem with her being called as such and still being visibly Latina. And like, whats the issue with her using Capoeira as a fighting style? Are you saying it should be restricted to Brazilian people only? Like that’s such a strange sticking point, Batman himself is meant to be using all kinds of martial arts from across East Asia but nobody ever complains about him not being Korean or Japanese and still doing so.

      1. Lino says:

        As I said above:

        I don’t particularly have a problem with her using Capoeira, or her speaking Spanish for that matter. What I find kind of weird is that even though Copperhead’s sole defining character trait is that she’s a Latina, the writers haven’t gone through the trouble of being consistent about what kind of Latina she is. I mean, it’s OK to have token one-note characters (in fact, that’s one of the charms of the genre for me), but if you’re going to have a token one-note character, the least you could do is nail the basics. Which I feel they haven’t done for Copperhead.

        In other words – I don’t have a problem with her using Capoeira, I have a problem with her having basically no character. I’m just trying to latch onto something to understand what her character’s supposed to be.

        Also, it would be extremely hypocritical of me to say that only Brazilians are allowed to use Capoeira, since it’s a martial art I occasionally dabble in, and I’m definitely not Brazilian*. And even then, they’re not the ones who invented Capoeira, so it would be extremely unfair for anyone to claim that they should have a monopoly on it.

        *Nor am I Asian, which accounts for the gross bulk of the martial arts I do, and have been doing for quite a few years now :D

        1. Khwarezm says:

          Going off the quoted bit, what are the basics then? Are you saying that she should be even more stereotypically Latina somehow and her using Capoeira is intruding on this? Like I don’t even know where they’d go with that, should she be a master swordsman like Zorro to adhere to a more appropriately stereotypical Spanish Latin American fighting style?

          Here’s what I think they were going for, her whole thing is being a snake themed assassin, she already has the forked tongue, slit eyes and literal use of venom in combat, I’ll take your word for it that her fighting style really is Capoeira, I wouldn’t know but in-game I think its more important that her movements are meant to be literally snake-like, as close as possible while still being a human. She essentially ‘Slithers’ around, is able to move in and out of tight spaces easily and her fighting style involves her contorting around her victims to prevent their movement and break bones, in her boss fight her grab attack is clearly meant to be evoking a boa constrictor, and there’s an amusing animation where when she takes a lot of damage she resets a dislocated arm in a way that further brings to mind the almost loose and almost fluid body of a snake. Maybe they thought Capoeira was a good fit for the idea that this is a freaky snake lady moreso than just because she’s vaguely Latina and used that accordingly.

          1. Lino says:

            OK, then we go back to my original point – if they’re going for the snake thing, then why is she speaking Spanish :D

            I think it would have been cooler if she talked more like a snake (more hissing, etc). The accent just seems unnecessary. I think my reaction is more to do with the fact that she just looks like a bootleg version or Catwoman from Arkham City. The model looks very similar, the fighting style also heavily uses Capoeira, but Copperhead’s costume looks much more boring, and her character traits are much less interesting. Actually, scratch that – she HAS no character traits. Apart from being a snake and being Latina. Which is why in my original comment I said if her character trait was being a Latina, they should have leaned more into it. The idea with Zorro actually isn’t that bad, come to think of it! Mind you, I would have rather they went more with the snake route (did you know there’s a Kung Fu style called Snake Style?), or in general given the villains some more development. The reason Asylum is my favourite of the series is precisely this – every villain had their own section of the game, they all felt very personal, and you could really get a feel for what made each of those villains tick. With Copperhead, I couldn’t even tell what they were going for.

            1. Khwarezm says:

              I sort of see the Assassins in the game as being a fairly straightforward boss squad and don’t begrudge them too much for not going all in on their development. The game’s focus is more around Batman, Joker and Bane overall who have a lot more screentime, plot relevance and background detail while the likes of Deathstroke, Copperhead and Firefly show up to have a fun boss fight with a recognizable DC character and thematically appropriate gimmick.

              Maybe I’m going a bit easy on them but it brings to mind a game like God of War or Devil May Cry where you’ll run into a lot of bosses who don’t have particularly important plot relevance and exist to just give a good fight, alongside the more plot important characters who have a fight to go along with it too. It also brings to mind Metal Gear, the bosses in those games are famous but I think that a lot of them aren’t really integral to the plot and don’t get too much screentime, especially a lot of the Cobra unit bosses in 3 or the Winds of Destruction in Revengeance where a lot of the time they show up, reel off a bit about their life and philosophy and you kill them and move on.

              I sort of disagree with you about Arkham Asylum, I think that game dropped the ball with Bane and Killer Croc, I really dislike the portrayal of Bane in the other Arkham games and I think he gets a massive step up in portrayal in this game, with a much better boss fight too, while Croc is just kind of a brute with a particularly bad section associated with him. Most of the other characters are fairly conservative portrayals, like one thing I noticed is that a lot of the Harley Quinn dialogue in her tapes are taken wholesale from the ‘Mad Love’ cartoon/comic but not quite as effective out of context. I will say though, one thing that really helps characterization in Arkham City, Knight and Asylum is the inclusion of the interview tapes, especially in City where they have Hugo Strange talking to people like Riddler, I think something like that would have gone a long way towards fleshing out the secondary villains in Origins, though there are a few for characters like Bane.

              1. Lino says:

                I guess I’m just really used to games like Devil May Cry where the boss squads are full of vibrant, distinctive characters for you to fight. They’ve all got interesting designs, are introduced in bombastic ways, and change up the gameplay (in a way that makes sense) for when you have to fight them. For me, they’re one of the highlights of these games.

                The ones here in Origins feel rather drab in comparison, both in how they’re introduced, and in how relatively little they change the gameplay. While Copperhead offers a somewhat interesting boss fight, to me she really lacks in having a clear design. Contrast it to, say, Berial from DMC 4*. He probably has less screentime than Copperhead, but not only is he an interesting boss with cool patterns, everything about him – from his appearance, to his voice, even to his boss music – communicates a cohesive idea of what that character is about. And as I already said, I feel that bosses like Copperhead lack that sort of cohesion (for the record, I think both Deathstroke and Bane are much better introduced as bosses and as characters).

                I’m really glad that it works for you (and I’m really sorry for spending so much time dumping on a game you like), I just wanted to share why it didn’t work for me.

                *I wanted to use an example from a darker game, closer in tone to Batman, but the only ones I could think of off the top of my head were really obscure

  3. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    Copperhead was such a great and unique fight that I genuinely forgot it happened and was surprised when I saw it on the VOD. I mean, the first time they had Batman fight hallucinations in Asylum under the effect of the fear toxin? Amazing, groundbreaking! Then we did it again with the Mad Hatter in City and yeah ok it was fun looking and it is his shtick. Then we did it for the trial of Ra’s and it was wearing thin. When I saw it happen again with Copperhead my memory just refused to hold on to it.

    1. John says:

      I liked the Copperhead fight because it’s a boss fight that has clear rules and uses the game’s regular combat mechanics. It’s a genuine test of skill in ways that a lot of the game’s other QTE-heavy boss fights aren’t. I suppose that, not having played Asylum or City, I never had the chance to get bored of the idea of fighting hallucinations.

      1. RamblePak64 says:

        I find it interesting you state it has “clear rules” as, while going through the fight, I was uncertain when Copperhead would take the major hit to her health. Was there one real Copperhead I was supposed to target among the hallucinations? Or did I just need to defeat enough of the hallucinations? It seems like neither is the truth, as Copperhead will lose a chunk of health with several hallucinations still present, and will only move onto the next phase when all hallucinations have been dealt with. It’s a bit odd to not have your opponent’s health drop when you’ve defeated all the hallucinations and prepare to enter the next phase. In the end, I felt more like I was just going through the motions and waiting for the fight to finish than I was figuring anything out.

        1. John says:

          To be fair, it’s been a couple of years since I played this game. I don’t remember how Copperhead’s health worked and I don’t think I cared at the time. When I said “clear rules” what I really meant is that, to the best of my recollection, Copperhead and all the hallucinations behave like normal opponents (with the obvious exception that the hallucinations vanish instead of getting knocked out). The fight may have an unclear victory condition, but for as long as it lasts it’s a fair fight run according the game’s normal rules without any irritating “gotcha” moments like Deathstroke’s sudden and arbitrary unpunchability.

  4. Rho says:

    Shamus, what kind of degenerate alcoholic do you think I am?! I’d be in the floor groaning in 30 minutes with those rules.

    1. bobbert says:

      Yeah, we deserve to know how many bottles of brandy shamus goes through in tonight’s stream.

  5. Olivier FAURE says:

    Man, the batclaw is so overpowered.

    After a point I had to stop myself from using it because it’s basically an instant takedown gun. Point it at mook, point at gargoyle, fire, cut the rope to free up some space on the gargoyle, rince and repeat.

    Anyway, I don’t completely disagree with you guys on the Joker reveal scene, but I thought it was really well done myself (maybe because I was the kind of people it was pandering to). The “drop in the middle of armed guys” railroading didn’t shock me, I just saw the indicator say “blow this up to knock out to guys” and went “okay!”.

    1. RamblePak64 says:

      It definitely feels like a classic Joker reveal/shtick, but the sort he’d intentionally do to mess with Batman. This is supposedly their first meeting, and there’s no indication that Joker has been observing Batman with interest as he had in, say, The Dark Knight. Granted, it’s been a while and my memory of the full story is fuzzy, but it seems like The Joker is basically coming in to interrupt all the other criminal masterminds in the city rather than intentionally usurp the criminal plans in order to set up an even greater surprise for Batman.

      As such, it’s perfectly in character for Joker on paper, but in the greater context it doesn’t really make a lot of sense for him to be pulling off this shtick in front of Batman.

      1. Olivier FAURE says:

        I dunno, the scheme doesn’t feel particularly aimed at Batman.

        Like, the Joker says it a few times: Batman isn’t all he wants (yet), he has other plans (eg blowing up tons of buildings), Batman just happens to be in the way, hence the assassins. I think it’s less that Joker aimed the reveal at Batman, and more that Batman arrived just in time when the Joker was done taking over Black Mask’s gang and could stop pretending.

        The point where the Joker starts being personally interested in Batman is when Batman saves his life.

  6. RamblePak64 says:

    I feel like we should include “Wait, what am I supposed to do again?” as part of the game, though more due to my inability to listen to the game because I’m too busy listening to myself talk.

    Though, wasn’t it Black Mask/Roman Sionis that Batman was interacting with? Not Falcone?

    Also also: I’m still frustrated at the pre-Joker cut-scene where they force you to blast through the floor and into the middle of the pack of goons. Can’t even bat-hook back into the grate for no discernible reason. Nope, Batman must be so foolish as to want to blast through the floor, into the middle of a crowd of goons, and patiently wait for the villains to finish talking.

  7. Olivier FAURE says:

    (Calm, businesslike.) In all the months I’ve spent taking down your organization, have I ever killed a single one of your men? […] Do you think I never got the chance? […] So you know that’s not my way. (As Batman is talking, we see the door behind him open slowly. We can’t see anything in the darkness beyond.) The sooner I take him down, the sooner he stops ruining your life. You can try to kill him once you’re both in jail. Now where is he? […] (To Alfred.) I knew I’d need a sample of her poison, so I used this wooden chair to block her attack. The poison will have soaked into the soft wood. I just need to find where her claw landed.

    Man, this reminded me of my experience reading The Other Kind of Life.

    Like, Shamus, you have a very specific writing style and it kiiiiind of doesn’t work for big tough street thugs and intimidation-mode Batman.

    It’s this thing where the characters are all very rational and methodical, even when they’re talking about really stressful stuff. Which I guess is why TOKL is about the world’s most levelheaded street thug, but it’s funny when you transpose it to characters like Batman and Black Mask.

    1. Shamus says:

      “it kiiiiind of doesn’t work for big tough street thugs and intimidation-mode Batman.”

      The dialog from Falcone (actually Sionis, I always get them mixed up) is lifted directly from the game.

      The dialog from Batman was deliberately not trying to be intimidating. I was going for Batman of the Animated Series, who would sometimes stop and reason with people. I’m sick to death of growly intimidation-mode Batman.

      If it doesn’t work for you, then that’s fine. I just wanted to make it clear what I was going for.

      1. Olivier FAURE says:

        Feel free to ignore me if this is annoying, but:

        The dialog from Sionis is lifted directly from the game.

        I think the “Okay, yeah. So what’s your point?” part is original?

        And it’s not really the same tone as the rest of the scene. Sionis up until then is in “snarling rage monster shouting past his broken teeth” mode. A couple reasonable lines wouldn’t be enough to calm him down, even if he listened to the arguments.

        So I think his answer might be more like:

        BATMAN: “Have I ever killed a single one of your men? Do you think I never got the chance?”

        SIONIS: “You want a friggin’ medal? What the hell’s your point?”

        1. Shamus says:

          Eh, that’s fair.

  8. Khwarezm says:

    So, I’ve defended this game’s plot in one of the previous posts here and reading your rewrite of the Copperhead introduction/Sionis (I’m sorry for being a stickler for details but Black Mask’s name is Roman Sionis, Falcone is an unrelated crime family, one of the members of which Penguin was torturing earlier on) interrogation I’m prompted to come to the game’s defense again.

    The thing that I kind of like about the game compared to most other interpretations of Batman is that they lean more into the idea that Batman doesn’t have the experience and confidence that he gains later on, instead he’s extremely stressed and possibly out of his depth. The whole night that this game takes place over is pretty clearly meant to be the hardest test he’s ever had to go through up to this point as Batman, and its causing him to make less than optimal decisions and resort to crude violent tactics that open him up to bad outcomes.

    I don’t really like this rewrite because it loses most of this, what I like about the Copperhead sequence is that Batman gets caught genuinely off guard and seriously messes up in a way I rarely feel like I get to see in a satisfying way, Deathstroke gets the drop on him briefly earlier on but Batman quickly rights himself and is able to gain the upper hand in a one on one fight. With Copperhead instead he’s spends an extended period of time confused and terrified in a way you very rarely get to see and it drives home the idea that this entire night may well be too much for him and he can’t just break out his reality bending Bat-planning ability to be five steps ahead of everybody else at all times. Instead he’s squabbling to find any way to get through the next ten minutes and being the one hunted by an unseen enemy who’s gained a huge upper hand. Its a nice inversion of usual thing you see Batman do, especially in this series, and I think a lot of that is lost if turns out that Batman was in control the whole time and already had Copperhead completely figured out with a plan and pithy one liner to reduce her as a threat essentially the instant that she shows up. Its just so much less dramatically interesting to do it that way, at the very least it would be strange to go from to the memorable bit of Batman stumbling down the hall seeing hallucinations of the people he’s failed to help that night while the crushing weight of the situation bears down on him.

    That’s what I like about this sequence, Batman’s brought down to a real low and is in an exceptionally dangerous situation, but through the skin of his teeth is able to pull through it. To do so he needs some luck, getting Copperhead’s sample, which is usually something Batman would never like to have to rely upon but he takes what he can get, and more importantly he needs to put his faith in Alfred that he can create and deliver an antidote quickly enough to save his life. Its a recurring thing about Batman’s overall arc in this game that he has to learn that fundamentally he can’t control everything and he must come to trust allies like Alfred, Barbara and Jim Gordon to be able to come through for him. Like he has that big fight with Alfred that basically lays all of this down.

    I think that you’re rewrite loses almost all of the dramatic tension of this scene and instead falls back into the same tropes about Batman being hyper prepared and hyper effective in almost every single situation, which I’ve never been fond of since it tends to sap a lot of his stories of said dramatic tension.

    Another thing, his violent, crude approach towards Sionis is completely ineffective, he gets no usable information and while he’s distracted bashing around Black Mask he leaves himself open for Copperhead to get the jump on him. I think that was deliberate to show how Batman’s desperate resort to violence like that in his really stressed state of mind was not working, and as he becomes a better Batman he has to be smarter about how to approach situations like that going into the future. Literally the next thing he does after defeating Copperhead is exploit her desperate attempt to make a deal to deduce Joker’s location, which is in line with him becoming a better Batman.

    Finally, I think that Copperhead’s tactic of poisoning Batman then backing off is based on her snake theming. Real life snakes do the same thing where they get an initial strike in and then let the venom do the work, letting Batman weaken before moving in for the kill makes sense when you consider how dangerous he is head on.

    1. Volvagia says:

      Paragraph two: I think there’s ways to communicate that inexperience without him being a growly torture machine.
      Paragraph three: What’s described here seems more like “Bats thinking on his feet” than the “ten steps ahead” Bat-God exaggeration of the true bottom tier Batman takes.
      Paragraph four: Shame Rocksteady didn’t get the memo on that bit! (Robin into a glass case scene.)
      Paragraph six: Shame Rocksteady didn’t get the memo on that bit either! (Bat-Tank interrogation scene.)
      Paragraph seven: Fair.

      1. Khwarezm says:

        “Paragraph three: What’s described here seems more like “Bats thinking on his feet” than the “ten steps ahead” Bat-God exaggeration of the true bottom tier Batman takes.”

        I think its basically the same issue, there’s a point when he’s thinking on feet so effectively that it starts to break plausibility and saps the story of tension. The point’s more that I don’t want to watch Batman constantly be completely on top of every situation that’s thrown at him and I think that leads to a more boring story.

        “Paragraph four: Shame Rocksteady didn’t get the memo on that bit! (Robin into a glass case scene.)
        Paragraph six: Shame Rocksteady didn’t get the memo on that bit either! (Bat-Tank interrogation scene.)”

        One of the reasons I tend to have a positive view of Arkham Origins’s plot is because I think that it feels different enough that I can sort of compartmentalize it a bit as something different from the rest of the series, certainly it does feel like Rocksteady didn’t really acknowledge its existence in Knight, apart from a few lines from Firefly. Because of that I tend to take the view that what happens in the other games doesn’t really reflect too negatively on this one.

        Having said that, in Knight I can kind of see an argument that for the Robin scene in particular they also show Batman in a state of fear and insecurity he’s not used too, considering what feels like his impending doom from the Joker disease and the fact that this is most serious threat he’s ever had to deal with from Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight. The Robin thing is almost the opposite to his issues with Alfred in this game, he’s so attached to his allies at this point that he can’t bear to put them in harms way, especially after he thinks Barbara has been killed, so he takes extreme steps to protect them and make sure whatever happens that night falls on him entirely. Its kind of the overall theme of that game in my opinion that his fear of his failures damaging his ‘family’ (made keenly obvious with the Jason Todd reveal) pushes Batman to almost suicidal levels of control and self sacrifice, in contrast to this game where it feels like he’s pushing people away from him out of a belief that they’ll just slow him down from his single minded pursuit of justice.

        1. RamblePak64 says:

          It might be a little late for this comment, and I think Shamus and I discuss it a bit more in our next video, but I’ll see if we can address it more in-depth in the stream following. However, I know he’s already vocalized preferring the Animated Series interpretation of Batman best, which is distinctly different from the Christopher Nolan Batman films or many other Batman creations (but not too different from the Burton Batman maybe?) Part of this is that he clearly likes Paul Dini’s Batman best, and for good reason: Paul Dini’s Batman is an admirable professional that is consistent and intelligent. His ability to survive any situation can feel like more than childish empowerment from a good writer, because it both focuses on difficult situations and clever ways to escape those situations. While it’s not the best fight in Asylum, Batman thinking of a way to defeat Killer Croc without resorting to fisticuffs is what makes Batman different from other heroes: Superman would just punch him. Green Lantern would just punch him with a giant green fist. The Flash would run really fast to build up a super-charged electric punch. Wonder Woman would punch him or trip him with the whip or something. Batman is the one that has to find ways to defeat Killer Croc when punches won’t work.

          If Arkham Origins is a learning opportunity, then Batman should try punching Killer Croc, discover it fails, and then be forced to figure out an alternative method of defeating him. Instead, Batman successfully punches Killer Croc into submission.

          And I think this gets into what “a younger Batman that’s still figuring things out” ought to look like, and, when I first played it, I kept getting frustrated because Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween, and Dark Victory handle this sort of thing better. For example, in Year One, he doesn’t even have his suit yet, but he’s making sure to apply certain kinds of make-up like a fake scar so that there are more obvious details for people to latch onto that won’t bring them back to Bruce Wayne. In other words, he’s still thinking and his narration lets the reader knows that it’s more than “disguise to look like a hobo and fit in”. It’s “disguise with enough details that they won’t trace back to Bruce Wayne”. It feels smart, even if he runs into some stumbling blocks and gets injured nonetheless.

          If Batman’s greatest strength is his cool-headed intelligence, then we need to see that strength even in his early days. Additionally, The Long Halloween and Dark Victory combine to develop Batman as a character through his isolation. He has Alfred at first, but… that’s it. In Long Halloween, he puts his trust in Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent to try and accomplish what none of them can individually. By the end, Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face and is corrupted, and in Dark Victory Batman laments to Alfred that he was going to tell Harvey the truth: that Batman was Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne, Batman. Dark Victory then brings in a young Dick Grayson, whom Bruce adopts, sees potential in, and is able to help guide the anger and rage of. If Arkham Origins wanted to tell a “Batman origin” story, honestly, these would have been far better sources to look at and learn from.

          What angry faced Batman does, however, is tap into a new image of Batman closer to what Nolan and some other media were doing, and then they took an easy route of him just being too angry all the time. In addition, Batman doesn’t have to be a jerk to Alfred in order to have the whole “I’m the only one who can do this!” arc (which, again, would have worked better if he discovers a young orphan Dick Grayson or something).

          All that said, I think Arkham Origins was likely also made on more of a time budget imposed by Warner Bros. Interactive than City or Knight were, so I will also give them credit for maybe not being able to create too many unique set pieces for such a narrative to work. Regardless, I think there are ways to meet in the middle, with Batman being far less volatile and foolish while still perhaps having to learn to not underestimate his opponents.

          1. Khwarezm says:

            You’re always running into the problem of gameplay vs story, and I don’t think you guys are keeping this in mind. For the Killer Croc example think about this from the developers POV, Croc is well established Batman foe who’s distinctly physically powerful, which is a bit different from the likes of Riddler or Scarecrow, because of that they presumably knew that he’d make a good boss fight. In addition to that Croc had been used previously in Arkham Asylum, but despite what you are trying to say about Batman using his smarts to deal with him in that game the fact remains that the entire Croc sequence is one of the worst received parts in the entire Arkham series with it being almost universally agreed upon that the segment is tedious, boring, does not utilize the core gameplay essentially at all and doesn’t even use Croc that well either (he feels more like an environmental hazard than a proper confrontation, like the shark in City). Even Batman’s trick to nullify Croc quickly doesn’t involve any actual thought on the part of the player, he does it automatically when you enter the arena. The entire segment is a poorly thought out mess and worst of all it breaks the videogame rule of ‘Do, Don’t show’ (to crib an idea from Campster).

            At the very least the Croc fight in Origins is a perfectly OK boss fight, I remember when I played the game at first thinking that it felt like a distinct step up from every non-Mr Freeze boss in the rest of the series, and it was probably that simple that they wanted to start off with something reasonably solid like that and attempt to wash out some of the bad taste people had about Croc from the other game. Its also not really unusual for Batman to straight up fight Croc like this, for all the talk about this ‘Dini Batman’ that exists in a slightly holy state of being in a lot of people’s mind in most of the actual animated series he usually just ends up punching the bad guy really hard until he goes down, and that includes Croc when he appears in his first episode:
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIRt7z8KT8&ab_channel=TheNightBeyond

            It makes sense to just turn it into a boss fight without many bells and whistles, in the context of the game they try to show that in combat Batman is using his various gadgets and smarts to gain the upper hand, like in the scene from the animated series above, the Croc fight is meant to teach the player the notion of using your cape to disorientate enemies and open them up for a beatdown, and Batman also gets the opportunity to use Croc’s propane tank attack against him since he can use Batarangs to blow them up, which also crops up in the normal fights.

            It’s because of this kind of thing that I think its intrinsically problematic to compare something like Arkham Origins to the likes of Year One. I’ll be honest and say that I think both Year One and the Long Halloween are kind of overrated for a variety of reasons, but I think that’s not really relevant to the fact that both stories wouldn’t really gel with a videogame where 99% of the gameplay involves Batman beating up people directly or sneaking up on people to knock their lights out. I can accept it that this is a rough, dickish Batman who’s in over his head because the gameplay pushes things in that direction, and its not some particular attachment to Christopher Nolan either (heck, if we are sticking to classic Batman stories The Dark Knight Returns shows that a brutal, thuggishness is very much not a new thing at all to attach to Batman’s character, and to Origin’s credit it doesn’t treat this as a particular positive quality on Batman’s part).

  9. beleester says:

    Your Batman feels a little too businesslike. Like, he’s Mr. “I am Vengeance, I am the Night,” he’s supposed to be kind of a mythical boogeyman for criminals. (Yes, it’s odd that Black Mask spent fifty million dollars getting six assassins to hunt down a myth, but that’s how they try to set him up. It’s a story about Batman creating his myth.) He shouldn’t torture people and growl about how many bones he’s gonna break, because that’s boring thuggery and also torture is evil, but he should absolutely be hamming it up a bit. Something like…

    Sionis: You think I’m gonna tell you? After what he’s put me through? Turned my men on me. Stole from me. Murdered my woman. He’s my kill. not yours!

    Batman (coldly): You’ll never get the chance. You’re a third-rate mobster with no money, no gang, not even a mask anymore. The only way you’ll even get out of this place alive is if I decide it’s worth the trouble to save you. So you can tell me where to find Joker… or *picks up Sionis* I can put you back where I found you.

    Sionis (brief look of horror, then bravado): Alright, tough guy, you can have him. But if you put him in jail, I promise you, he ain’t gonna live very long.

    Copperhead: Neither will you. *drops from ceiling.*

    Not my best writing, but it doesn’t involve Batman beating answers out of Sionis and kind of lampshades how pedestrian Black Mask is compared to the crazy supervillains.

    (Also, having Batman physically holding Sionis gives an easy excuse for Copperhead to get the drop on him.)

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