{"id":56133,"date":"2023-09-18T00:01:17","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T04:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=56133"},"modified":"2023-09-27T18:50:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-27T22:50:59","slug":"batman-video-games-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-arkham-asylum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=56133","title":{"rendered":"Batman Video Games; or, How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love Arkham Asylum"},"content":{"rendered":"

The third part of the Batman home video game retrospective brings us to the modern, and arguably best, Batman video game and its sequels (except for Origins, I’ve heard). Shamus mentioned the Arkham<\/em> series frequently in his writing, wrote up Arkham City<\/em> and Arkham Origins<\/em>, played Arkham Asylum<\/em> on Spoiler Warning<\/em>, and made many comparisons to the Arkham<\/em> games on the Diecast<\/em>. I’m pretty sure it was Shamus’ raving support of Arkham City<\/em> that led me to finally purchase Arkham Asylum<\/em> for PC.<\/p>\n

As previously mentioned, I never made it past that opening slow walk down the main corridor, and the simple fight at the end. Pretty sure it was the weird (to me) camera placement, off-center to Batman’s right-rear. But I knew, as part of my craving to play Batman games, this was where it would end.

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It’s 2009. Batman: The Dark Knight<\/em>, the sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins<\/em> had been released the previous year, but will not receive a video game adaptation like Batman Begins.<\/em> The title, being developed for the 7th Console generation and PC\/Mac, has already been cancelled. And yet, just before Batman: The Dark Knight<\/em> the video game was cancelled, a different Batman property was announced: Eidos had obtained rights to make a Batman video game (in conjunction with Warner Bros. Interactive) that didn’t connect to Nolan’s Batman universe. Per rumor, the title had Paul Dini, best known as a writer for Batman: The Animated Series<\/em> attached.<\/p>\n

Christopher Nolan’s Batman has been characterized many ways: early on people loved saying Nolan’s work was based on Frank Miller’s comics (true, to an extent), but mostly the Nolan movies just tried to present a “real” version of Batman. I think you can make a valid argument that the reason we never saw the video game version of Dark Knight<\/em> was that the movie was a little *too* real, and too associated over the next few years with too many real-world events. And if that was true of The Dark Knight<\/em>, then The Dark Knight Rises<\/em> was cursed from the beginning; receiving protests from various political groups over what they had been *told* was in the movie. (Cards on the table: I think The Dark Knight Rises<\/em> is a better movie than The Dark Knight<\/em>, even allowing that Heath Ledger’s Joker is an all-time classic performance while Tom Hardy’s Bane is…best forgotten about. And it would have been even better if they hadn’t tried to tie it all back to Ra’s al Ghul).<\/p>\n

The idea behind Eidos’ game was to create a Batman adventure that fit into the “darker and grittier” mold currently popular, but while keeping it grounded firmly in the most-popular aspects of the Batman zeitgeist (as expressed primarily by Batman: The Animated Series<\/em>). Thus, the Dini story and dialogue and the voice talents of Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin. Art and setting is drawn from the 90’s and 2000’s comics, which some touches of TAS coloring and design. The look of BioShock<\/em> was a major influence as well. You can see all this in the menus and the saturated colors of the game:<\/p>\n