{"id":53443,"date":"2021-12-21T06:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-12-21T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53443"},"modified":"2022-01-04T21:44:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T02:44:59","slug":"arkham-origins-3-clowning-in-cutscenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=53443","title":{"rendered":"Arkham Origins #3: Clowning in Cutscenes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>These streams I&#8217;m doing with Chris are turning out to be a lot of fun. We&#8217;ll be streaming again tonight at <a href=\"https:\/\/everytimezone.com\/s\/58066b20\">this time<\/a> on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/ramblepak64\">RamblePak64 channel<\/a>. I hope you&#8217;ll drop in and say &#8220;hi&#8221;. We even have a bit of a drinking game going on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Drink whenever we accidentally discover a secret while looking for the way forward.<\/li>\n<li>Drink whenever we have to cross THE BRIDGE.<\/li>\n<li>Drink every time Batman fails \/ acts like an idiot in a cutscene.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure more will be added as we progress through the game. And speaking of cutscene incompetence&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s out of character.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t mean Batman can&#8217;t ever suffer setbacks, of course. It&#8217;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 &#8211; written by Paul Dini &#8211; handled this really well. Then the game developers thought they didn&#8217;t need Dini&#8217;s help and tried to write the stories themselves. As a result, Batman gets increasingly incompetent as the games go on.<\/p>\n<p>For example, last week we fought Copperhead:<\/p>\n<p><!-- Add a placeholder for the Twitch embed --><\/p>\n<table class=\"nomargin\" border=\"0\" width=\"100%\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.twitch.tv\/?video=1234125593&amp;parent=www.shamusyoung.com&amp;autoplay=false\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>Let&#8217;s try to Paul Dini-ify this initial encounter with Copperhead. We can&#8217;t change the outcome of the battle, but let&#8217;s see if we can&#8217;t give Batman a little more agency.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIn 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&#8217;s basically a pinball bouncing through this scene, with no direction or agency.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;m sick of video game writers trying to make the Dark Knight &#8220;cool&#8221; by turning him into a dim-witted thug. Batman is both a Justice League SUPERHERO and a DETECTIVE. He&#8217;s not supposed to act like a bloodthirsty fascist goon.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, let&#8217;s have Batman outwit this guy in dialog.<\/p>\n<div class=\"script\">\n<p>(Batman releases Falcone from his chains. Falcone tumbles to the floor.)<\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>Where&#8217;s Joker?<\/p>\n<h4>Falcone:<\/h4>\n<p>Go to hell! You think I&#8217;m gonna tell you? After what he&#8217;s put me through? Turned my men on me. Stole from me. Murdered my woman. He&#8217;s my kill. not yours!<\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>(Calm, businesslike.) In all the months I&#8217;ve spent taking down your organization, have I ever killed a single one of your men?<\/p>\n<h4>Falcone:<\/h4>\n<p>(Slow realization.) No&#8230; I guess not.<\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>Do you think I never got the chance?<\/p>\n<h4>Falcone:<\/h4>\n<p>(Frustrated.) Okay, yeah. So what&#8217;s your point?<\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>So you know that&#8217;s not my way. <em>(As Batman is talking, we see the door behind him open slowly. We can&#8217;t see anything in the darkness beyond.) <\/em>The sooner I take him down, the sooner he stops ruining your life. You can try to kill him once you&#8217;re both in jail. Now where is he?<\/p>\n<h4>Falcone:<\/h4>\n<p>(Breaks.) Yeah okay. I heard him talkin&#8217; to his men, saying something about a-<em>(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&#8217;s got scratches on one cheek. Finally we cut to a side view and we can see our two combatants.)<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>You must be copperhead.<br \/>\n<em>(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.)<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Copperhead:<\/h4>\n<p>I&#8217;ve already won, Batman. Soon my poison will-AHHH!<\/p>\n<p><em>(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&#8217;s supposed to work, but we&#8217;re obeying its rules according to gameplay.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>From here Batman would call up Alfred and explain he&#8217;s been poisoned. Alfred will tell Bruce to get a sample of the poison. Then&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<h4>Batman:<\/h4>\n<p>(To Alfred.) I knew I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>So then we have a detective vision sequence as before, only now it&#8217;s a payoff to something that Batman planned, not blind luck on the part of a Batman that&#8217;s making shit up as he goes.<\/p>\n<p>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. <strong>He&#8217;s Batman<\/strong>, not some dull brute dressed like a bat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These streams I&#8217;m doing with Chris are turning out to be a lot of fun. We&#8217;ll be streaming again tonight at this time on the RamblePak64 channel. I hope you&#8217;ll drop in and say &#8220;hi&#8221;. We even have a bit of a drinking game going on: Drink whenever we accidentally discover a secret while looking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-streaming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53443","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=53443"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53467,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53443\/revisions\/53467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}