{"id":37585,"date":"2017-05-04T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37585"},"modified":"2017-05-04T13:05:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T17:05:01","slug":"arkham-city-part-15-sniper-no-sniping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=37585","title":{"rendered":"Arkham City Part 15: Sniper, No Sniping!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Batman emerges from the GCPD building and heads for Joker’s Steel Mill to recover the cure for t-NOPE! It’s time for another distraction!<\/b><\/p>\n

Helicopter<\/h3>\n

The news helicopter, just before it takes a missile.<\/div>
The news helicopter, just before it takes a missile.<\/div><\/p>\n

Vicki Vale is just outside the police building in a helicopter, shining her spotlight in Batman’s eyes like a dingbat. Joker has got his hands on some rocket launchers by this point, and so he has his men shoot her down. The tail is blown off of her helicopter and she goes spinning out of control, flying out of the player’s view.<\/p>\n

Judging by where she lands, the pilot evidently flew this half-a-helicopter over several rooftops, gaining altitude in the process. He was then able to descend straight down and land on a patch of highway in a small canyon of crumbling buildings. And then it exploded, burned to a crisp, disintegrated the pilot, and left Vicki Vale with black smudges on her face and very slightly disheveled hair. The aircraft and all of her gear exploded, but she’s still holding her cell phone which means she can still somehow maintain her live feed. <\/p>\n

Snipers have converged on her position. I have no idea how Joker’s goons got here. This part of the city is flooded, so the only way to get around is by either swimming in the freezing water or gliding overhead using your superhero cape, and I’m going to assume those options aren’t available to Joker Goons #151 through #155. <\/p>\n

It’s silly, but this segment serves a purpose. Several actually.<\/p>\n

First, we need to slow Batman down a bit. The player thinks that Joker has the cure and that Batman will die without it. Naturally the worry is that he won’t leave any for our hero. The next time we see Joker it will be Clayface-Joker, looking healthy. It might feel a little strange if we go directly from the Freeze Fight to our confrontation with Joker. The writer needs to create some space in the minds of the audience for the Joker to be “cured”.<\/p>\n

It bugs me that we get a button prompt for this. I understand the game needs to make it clear to the player if they're about to take down both guys or just one, but I'd rather the game just did that by highlighting the guys in yellow or something. Outside of the tutorial, I dislike being told what button to press.<\/div>
It bugs me that we get a button prompt for this. I understand the game needs to make it clear to the player if they're about to take down both guys or just one, but I'd rather the game just did that by highlighting the guys in yellow or something. Outside of the tutorial, I dislike being told what button to press.<\/div><\/p>\n

More importantly, this is our sniper tutorial. Rescuing Vicki Vale from the snipers allows the player to deal with a small handful of snipers in a confined arena before they fly off to the steel mill and have to face them in a more open area where they are able to cover each other.<\/p>\n

And finally, Vicki is here to give our hero an audience. It’s a common trope, although I’ve never seen it properly documented<\/a>. When our hero defeats the bad guy, we want it to happen on a grand stage in front of the world, not in a side-room where it takes place without public notice. It’s why so many movie showdowns happen in the middle of the big city. The Ghostbusters defeat Gozer from on top of a building while a huge crowd is gathered below, looking up. Captain America foiled Hydra’s plans directly over Washington D.C., not in a military base in the middle of the desert. The Avengers have their big showdowns over cities, not remote wildernessException: When the good guys fight each other they generally DON’T have a civilian audience.<\/span>. The Guardians of the Galaxy finished off Ronan the Accuser in front of the local populace, not in deep space. <\/p>\n

When the dust settles we want the rest of the world to know that something happened, because the alternative is for the hero to drive home alone and unappreciated, and that doesn’t usually make for a happy endingThere are always exceptions of course. The point is that public finales are far more common than private ones.<\/span>. If we can’t have a crowd of people, then the next-best thing is to have a news reporter there. It tells the audience “The world knows what’s going on here. This is a big deal. People care.” <\/p>\n

Hey Vicky, didn't your pilot just die in a horrific crash? Maybe you ought to worry more about that and less about who I've been punching in the face.<\/div>
Hey Vicky, didn't your pilot just die in a horrific crash? Maybe you ought to worry more about that and less about who I've been punching in the face.<\/div><\/p>\n

This might also be a good point to talk about those 2,000 people who are going to die of Joker toxin, or Titan poisoning, or whatever it’s supposed to be. But apparently a citywide epidemic is not as important as who Batman might be punching in the face. So Vicki Vale flew her news helicopter over a prison (I’m pretty sure this is a crime) so she can play looky-loo.<\/p>\n

We probably can’t blame Ms. Vale for not covering the hospital situation. I honestly think the writers lost track of this plot thread or cut it for time. That’s unfortunate, since it makes kind of a mess of the themes at the end. <\/p>\n

The Lone Knight<\/h3>\n

Batman punches his way back into the steel mill. Alone. Like a loser.<\/div>
Batman punches his way back into the steel mill. Alone. Like a loser.<\/div><\/p>\n

Batman wants to keep following leads to figure out Protocol 10, but Oracle insists that he’s only got hours to live and he should focus on getting the cure back from Joker. <\/p>\n

Batman has two very important goals and he can only pursue one of them. This is exactly the kind of situation where some sort of sidekick-type guy would come in handy. Which would be fine, except earlier in this story they revealed that such a character exists, and that Batman sent him away because he didn’t want his help. Why have a sidekick if you’re not going to use him? Now that you need him, why are you not calling him in? Why is nobody even thinking about him? <\/p>\n

Why did the writer add this character to the story, then have them do nothing, then create a situation where their help was desperately needed, then completely ignore them? At the bare minimum, make up some emergency on the other side of the city that’s keeping Robin busy. <\/p>\n

This is the kind of problem that can’t be waved away with the “it’s a comic book” or “it’s a videogame” excuse. There are a bunch of strange structural flaws like this in the story, and they all come to the surface in this penultimate chapter.<\/p>\n

Getting back into the steel mill involves riding ice rafts through an obstacle course. It's a long story.<\/div>
Getting back into the steel mill involves riding ice rafts through an obstacle course. It's a long story.<\/div><\/p>\n

As Batman works his way into the Steel Mill, Oracle reveals that “Protocol 10” is the name of a contingency plan. She doesn’t know the details, but if things get out of hand inside the prison then Hugo Strange will be authorized to initiate the plan. <\/p>\n

As we’ll learn in about ten minutes once Protocol 10 begins, Strange’s plan is thus: He creates this massive prison in the middle of the cityShit, the NIMBY<\/a> opposition to Arkham City must have been epic.<\/span>, throws all the psychos in it, and then surreptitiously gives them all guns. Once the shooting starts, he tells City HallOr whoever runs the local government, the game doesn’t waste time explaining local politics.<\/span>, “Oh no! Somehow the prisoners got guns and now all of these nutjobs are armed and might escape into the city at any moment!” So they authorize Protocol 10, which is to send in a bunch of gunships to blast Arkham City into rubble and kill all the prisoners.<\/p>\n

Oracle is presumably learning about this through her computer hacking. Also, it turns out Commissioner Gordon has already heard of Protocol 10. The authorization for Protocol 10 is given just as Batman is learning all of this, on his way to fight Joker for the cure. It’s a huge exposition dump that reveals the entire plan, while Batman is in the middle of working on a completely different problem<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The World’s Latest Detective<\/h3>\n

It's been over ten hours since this conversation where Hugo Strange told us about his plan, and Batman has accomplished exactly nothing regarding it since then.<\/div>
It's been over ten hours since this conversation where Hugo Strange told us about his plan, and Batman has accomplished exactly nothing regarding it since then.<\/div><\/p>\n

This is a pretty shitty night’s work for the “World’s Greatest Detective”. The nemesis of the day told him the plan at the start of the night. His close ally Gordon was actually somewhat familiar with the plan. The name of the plan was part of the public records that were drawn up when Arkham City was founded. Instead of talking to Gordon, or having Oracle look into those records, he went and asked Catwoman. And then Joker. Once he got himself poisoned, he spent the entire night dividing his attention between these two concerns and never making use of his supposedly capable sidekick. Instead he gave Robin a job that could be done by anyone and then promptly forgot about him.<\/p>\n

It would help if Batman at least acknowledged this in dialog. “I lost focus because I didn’t take Hugo Strange seriously.” Or maybe, “I just assumed Joker had to be behind this.” Or perhaps, “I knew Catwoman wouldn’t know anything about Protocol 10 but I wanted to look at her tits and this seemed like a good excuse.” Something. Just acknowledge that he’s screwed up. It will patch over all of these problems and it will kind of feel like character development.<\/p>\n

Even setting this aside, this reveal is unsatisfying because it feels unearned. Batman hasn’t been working on this problem. He hasn’t been following leads, finding clues, putting the puzzle together, thinking about the problem, or even typing random shit into the Bat Computer. Oracle hasn’t been giving any indication that she was doing those things. They’ve all been ignoring the problem for most of the running time so far, and now that we’re ten minutes from Protocol 10 we’re getting all the answers essentially handed to us. That would be bad enough in a normal superhero story, but in a story where the hero is supposedly a great detective it just falls flat.<\/p>\n

I doubt most players will notice this on their first trip through the game. (I didn’t.) It’s not that this is wrong in the sense of being “impossible” or a “plot hole”. It’s that it whiffs on one of the central themes of the character. This problem doesn’t create a bad moment, but it does deny us a moment of satisfaction where all of Batman’s hard work pays off. If this had been handled better, we could have enjoyed one of those scenes like the ones in Arkham Asylum where Batman feels capable, clever, and heroic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Batman emerges from the GCPD building and heads for Joker’s Steel Mill to recover the cure for t-NOPE! It’s time for another distraction! Helicopter Vicki Vale is just outside the police building in a helicopter, shining her spotlight in Batman’s eyes like a dingbat. Joker has got his hands on some rocket launchers by this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[607],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-batman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}