The Batman Canon Coundrum

 Did we end up in the wrong timeline?

With the dropping of the preview period of Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League, I'm pretty sure it's open season on spoilers given the breakdown of the story- so if you are someone who cares about the events of the much maligned menagerie of mistakes that is 'Kill the Justice League'- I would recommend giving this one a miss until the floodgates have opened a bit more. And for everyone else- let me ask you a question- do you think that Suicide Squad and Gotham Knights ended up in the right places? Lore wise? I came across a Gamerant article that put a very decent argument for why both games should have been switched, but I want to take that even further to a systems level as we compare and contrast two desperately undervalued sectors of the Batman mythos. How could we have avoided the shame we share today? Switcheroo!

So the Gamerant article made the very sensible case that Gotham Knights should have been tweaked to be canon to the events of the Arkham franchise whilst Suicide Squad wanted desperately to be free into it's own fresh canon and would have benefitted much from the freedom. Gotham Knights literally bills itself around a world where the Dark Knight has died following a eye-wateringly stretched out cutscene against Raj Al Ghul in which the game leaves no doubt that Batman is fully dead. Not only does the Batcave literally explode- we find Batman's corpse among the wreckage- he is definitely dead. But what if he wasn't? Arkham Knight ends with the Batman's identity getting revealed to the world and then blowing himself to smithereens alongside Wayne Manor- all to disguise himself going underground to continue his campaign as a 'Demon Bat'. Who's to say that Gotham Knights couldn't have instead followed a Batfamily thrown into that situation? Left in the dark about Bruce's deception and left to grapple with a world where their mentor is either dead or left them to grow up quickly?

As for Suicide Squad? Well for some utterly bizarre reason, that takes place in a world wherein Batman has unceremoniously stepped out of the shadows and joined the Justice League- making his flashy pretend suicide at the end of Arkham Knight functionally perfunctory. That big and memorable ending had absolutely no impact on his story whatsoever. He just came back out as the Batman to the public, cowl and all, despite everyone knowing exactly who he is. How is he meant to resume duties as the 'embodiment of fear' now that everyone knows him to be a flesh and blood man? Some playboy douche with too much money and free time? Potentially interesting questions that don't get explored at all as Batman is relegated to villain in his own Arkham franchise. Beyond ingame summations of the events of the Arkham series, there's no narrative link between the two periods of game whatsoever- which boggles the mind a little.

And then there is the 'taste' angle to take into account. Arkham Batman is special to a lot of people out there for establishing the defacto combat system that all action adventure games have just adopted from that point onwards. It was a lovingly crafted and detailed exploration of the wider Batman mythos that weaved a complex and resonant journey wherein Batman came to confront his most challenging foes and overcame the extremes of his own limits in order to save the world. And then he was just chucked into the 'what if good guy bad' machine and came out a surly, thug who literally falls for the trope of 'we couldn't figure out how to make a boss fight out of this guy so here's a big monster fight with his face on it' cliché! The most embarrassing failure of a design team! Which is doubly insane because he is actually the one hero boss fight I could see genuinely fitting into a shooter-style game; maybe if you played up the gadgets angle and the cat-and-mouse predator style of Batman...

But what I want to really talk about, is how Gotham Knights could have better utilised it's systems if it committed itself to being a Live Service like it clearly already was. That story about the Batfamily coming into their own would neatly fit into the 'villain of the season' style narrative presentation that Live Services demand- we could have actually conclusive finales to plotlines whilst building up the meta narrative of each character becoming the heroes they were destined to be. Of course, Gotham Knights gameplay couldn't live up to that amount of sustained content, but we're living in a world of concepts right now- bear with me for a bit. Besides, in this very same merit- wouldn't of Suicide Squad been a lot better off as an ex-Live Service turned good?

Just as how Gotham Knights lost it's terrible Live Service elements and told a single contained story, Suicide Squad would have benefitted much more from reducing it's scope and shoring up the content they already had instead of desperately trying to stretch what little is available over a thirteen season period. Not least of all because no complete story exists meaning that the majority of the players who are going to drop off will remember this game as the one that didn't really have an ending and merely stretched on forever recycling the same one bad guy forever. If we actually let Suicide Squad be a normal game instead of a monetisation platform, we wouldn't have to wait months to here the stereotypical 'everyone gets resurrected nullifying the events of the entire game' plotline which has already been leaked from unreleased files. (Great job, WB. You never learn, do you?)

From every logical angle there's no reason why we ended up with the games that we did, both of which are a total betrayal of the franchise that made Rocksteady great. In fact, Suicide Squad feels like an active assassination attempt against everything they stood for as a company. As WB Montreal didn't have much of a reputation to lose! And to think that this is the trash we're being fed in place of genuine quality such as the rumoured follow up to Arkham starring adult Damian and old man Bruce! Gah! And you know we're still not going to get that legendary game, even with Batman getting resurrected before the year is out, simply because the original studio directors up and left when they saw what a mess Suicide Squad was shaping up as! (Why is there no justice in this screwy world of ours?)

At the end of the day, Rocksteady and Warner Bros are both guilty of the most shameful thing any game can fall to- obstinance. Of course it pays to be have confidence and stick to your guns- but there nothing about the Suicide Game worth sticking to except the promise of an easy cash cow that became less and less viable as the years ticked by as more and more like-minded would-be franchises crashed and burned around them. Now people are looking at the moderately healthy player numbers and noting how easily their dwarfed by others of the genre type and everyone is already counting the days until the game slinks away with it's tail between it's legs to be roundly forgotten. And it's all a damned unfortunate shame.

Gotham Knights Review

If you're watching this, I'm dead.

Once upon a time there a video game. And it was a damn good one. Batman's Arkham franchise revolutionised third person action adventure games with it's every refined breath and quirk, bringing a startlingly comic lean gothic world together with one of the most influential hand-to-hand combat systems ever devised by man. I'll bet that if we track the strings of 'influence' that the punch-and-counter blueprint of Arkham has had on gaming, we'd map ourselves webs stretching to just about every single genre game with specific character controls in the past decade, outside of dedicated shooters. Arkham was such a staple icon of what video games even are that anyone with the sheer hubris to exist within that shadow would have themselves one heck of a legacy to overcome. Such was the unenviable position that Gotham Knights volunteered for.

While not actually a sequel to the Batman Arkham series in any significant fashion, Gotham Knights was a Batman themed Warner Bros. Published open world hero crime fighting game set within ostensibly the same city- and yes, with a combat influenced, at least in some small esoteric way, by the foundations that Arkham laid all that time ago. The connections pretty much made themselves, even if the team of developers themselves were not Rocksteady. WB Games Montreal are not a team as big as Rocksteady, nor as celebrated or resourceful, and thus throwing them in a cage fight with the kings of the genre was never going to turn out favourable in their direction. It would be like trying to compare the Mafia games with Grand Theft Auto- of course one side is going to show up worse, the comparison dooms the other. What Arkham presents and represents, however, is perhaps an idealised version of everything Gotham Knights wanted to be ontop of itself.

But enough beating around the bush, what is Gotham Knights? Well, it proposed to be the first Batman game to discard the scowling brooder and place his extended Bat family in the spotlight for a change. Well, four of them at least. In a narrative that threatened to touch on one of Batman's most significant modern era villains, the freemason/illumnati-esque 'Court of Owls', we would be presented with a murdered Batman which would set a grieving combo of Barbara Gordon (Batgirl), Tim Drake (Robin), Dick Grayson (Nightwing) and Jason Todd (Red Hood) on a justice seeking journey to avenge their fallen father figure. As the concept would regularly present, this means a co-op centric adventure tale sprawled across Gotham as you and three friends struggle to- huh? It's only 2 player co-op? But... but there are four heroes... why would- okay, already starting to see the cracks...

Co-op was always going to be a deviation from what people expected from a successor, spiritual though it may be, to the Arkham franchise- although any potential controversy or support it might have gained was soon washed away when trailers and gameplay revealed the real serpent hiding in this garden. Enemy levels, gear drops, rarity colours- this was another damned Looter Game! They're like a black plague sweeping across game design, sucking the life and hope out of everything they touch! God, I'm so sick of these awful games and endless integrity compromising design decisions and mindbending systemic concessions always bent in pursuit of keeping people playing for as long as possible, rather than in making those moments in which they are playing as good as they can be! Seems WB realised this too, because the final game isn't actually a live service like all these systems would prelude. Instead it feels as though such a corrupted heart had been ripped from the game sometime late into production and it's jagged, gore-strewn scars mark the rough edges of the imperfect package which is Gotham Knights.

Now, when I said that Gotham Knights was inspired by Arkham in an esoteric manner, what I meant to say was despite sharing a publisher with the Arkham games, Gotham Knight's gameplay shares about as much DNA with it's spiritual predecessor as any other action adventure game on the market does. You have basic and heavy strikes, dodge markers and counters. It all- functions. There is none of the effortless fluidity and dynamic situational depth of what Arkham achieved, but there is a basic serviceable flow that you might find replicated in any pretty good action adventure combat system out there. There is even a little bit of input depth sprinkled atop with stringent dodge time windows and a damage boosting 'perfect hit' mashing system which I could never quite get down right. And then you'll start unlocking momentum abilities that present flashy group attacks or heavy beatdowns or power support abilities. It's all above average stuff, which makes it a full head above the barely functional trite modern Assassin's Creed presents as 'RPG gameplay'.

Perhaps the greatest compliment to this system that the development team made were to invest heavily into the uniqueness and number of their combat animations, because they make a lot of the difference. Having every character animated in a totally distinct fashion with all of their own popping strikes and takedowns makes their combat feel more distinct and fresh than perhaps it might actually be. And though Red Hood might be the only Knight who actually plays genuinely differently from his comrades, (to debatable success. I found him way too slow to enjoy but I know some people like his gun-kata stylings.) the rigid judo of Batgirl's takedowns compared to the flipping acrobatics of Nightwing's knockouts tickle the thirst for combat variety in the most basic pleasure centres of the brain, providing the most basic illusion of distinction. (Devil May Cry this is not. But it's no fumbling trainwreck either.)

On the other end of combat, however, is the actual gear system which influences the damages and stats of your chosen Bat-vigilante as they patrol the streets in the night-by-night setting of this game. You'll end up in the Belltower before missions, crafting yourself new sets of 'bigger number' armour using a bevy of totally forgettable coloured materials that you picked up off the bodies of beaten thugs for some reason, and slap them on so that you can keep up with arms race of ratcheting levelling which plagues the early game of all level based gear games. This is the reason I hate this design. It always devolves into slapping together new gear with a higher arbitrary 'combat rating' in order to keep the same basic damage output you did the night before when enemies were a slightly lower level. And sure, when you start messing around with the hilariously unsophisticated modding system you'll slap together gear that trivialises most enemies- but does that really sound like ideal power scaling to you? And don't even get started on the way that, unless you b-line the main story, you'll find your character out-levelling the instance-based story mission areas in a matter of a couple hours. Either barely scrapping by to keep up or dominating over everyone with ease? It's a mess of an output scaling problem caused solely by the existence of the gear system in the first place.

And all of that is assuming you manage to last with this game long enough to parse it's ugly mess of menus to being with! Gotham Knights features an exceptionally messy flood of crafting menus, resource windows and tabs that will leave the newcomer fumbling and head scratching at every junction. I couldn't even reliably tell what equipment I even had equipped when I first started playing the game, which made me check out of the gear system pretty much immediately. And though I like the idea of the 'day by day' patrol framing device which characterises the game, there's a strange disjointed narrative flow which arises because of it. Forcing the player back to the Belfry in order to equip field-crafted equipment kind of feels annoying when doing so automatically ends the night- even though you're incentivised to clear the map of crimes every night so that you gather enough clues to generate crimes to solve for the next night- meaning that you'll likely craft an upgrade when you need it, but then suffer through the rest of the night grinding away at frustrating content with suddenly spongy enemies that have outpaced your gear for the rest of the night before you can equip it. A bizarre cycle there.

But let me not slide too far past the concept of dynamic map crimes which generate at the start of every patrol night, because they are a concept worth talking about. There is an array of possible crimes that pop up across Gotham as decent little side activities to keep the aspiring vigilante preoccupied between the larger investigation to solve Batman's last case. For the most part the variety of possibility scratched that same 'crime fighting itch' you look to resolve in any superhero game, even if there's a systemic similarity in a few of them. For example, stopping an illegal hack and saving a witness are conceptually distinct, but in practice they both involve fighting off waves whilst protecting a single point- all that really changes is the venue. You'll also find the same indoor locations repeated as crime spots, but I realise there's only so much possible variety in locations. We can't have everything. (At least there's more variety than in Watch_Dogs Legion, as faint praise as that is.)

The narrative of Gotham Knights promises a dive into the machinations of the Court of Owls, and in that pursuit the game does an admirable job of piling on the mythos and mystery of the secretive cabal of blue bloods who guide the powerful of Gotham from the shadows. They build up their mystique and the fear that those who know of them have of running their mouths, and they lay the foundations of a detective story the likes of which even Arkham never quite committed to with it's focus on cinematic eye-popping set pieces. And then Gotham Knights squanders all of it's own work by spitting out a half-digested 'bad big org' that feels no more interesting or nuanced than all the other thugs who roam the Gotham streets.

There really is no understating just how painfully self-sabotaging this is to the story they were building. The power of the Court is in their influence and connections, their memberships consist of the oldest and most powerful families in Gotham- and yet they don't seem to be anything more than goons getting in scuffs with Martial Artists in Bat costumes. Their grand plans are easily, almost accidentally, unravelled by the Knights barely a mission after stumbling upon then, and then the story gets tired and decides to swap them out for the League of Assassin's at the end. Another ancient order that is trying to influence Gotham through the use of monsters created using the Lazarus pit- making the switch utterly meaningless from a narrative perspective.

The death of Batman is intended to be treated with the weight such a loss would have, primarily by giving each of the Batfamily their own interpersonal side missions that touches on how they step up to fill the void that Bruce left by leaving for the milk one day- I mean dying. They are all fine nudges at the characters of the Knights, although I found some of them a little undermined by the fact that a few of the back and forths with Alfred only change up the Knights dialogue, not his. Which means that if you're switching between the heroes in order to hear ever story, you can have the same conversation with Alfred four times where he responds exactly the same to each individual Knight. It's kind of like how Saints Row does it's multiple voices, except these are supposed to be emotionally interrogational scenes wherein Alfred reaches inside and pulls out the inner hero of all of these traumatised heroes- except he's recycling his own material, the cheap bastard!

If you go in expecting a decently deep interrogation of the various Knight's personalities, as one would hope for in a story of these heroes 'coming into their own'- well, prepare for disappointment. Most of these characters are given surface level arcs that mostly chalk up to 'I'm having trouble being a member of a team despite the fact I've been doing this for years now', and these issues are dealt with exclusively in exclusive-to-the-main-plot optional cutscenes that feel entirely divorced from the central events of the game. Slightly missing the point of having character development, by declaring quarantine around all the actual 'development'. And when the Knights are actually working together for the core plot, they are written to the level of your average Dick Wolf cop show. Everyone gets their say, surface level characteristics are pandered to and the most simplistic conclusions are stitched together with such a song and dance you'd have thought the group had just finished decoding Dan Brown's DaVinci Code at the end of every conversation. I may never forget the 'brain rush scene' which required every Knight developing on each others ideas in order to come around to the startling, cyclical, conclusion that the Key one of them discovered last mission- probably opens a door. They just need to find the right door. I kid you not, someone wrote that. With all the preppy, quirky ghosts of overtold, cop-com jokes glittered on to salt the wound. (Just call this 'Law and Order: Gotham Knights'.) 

The end of the story achieves precious little to resolve the events of the story, given that the Court are still active (albeit wounded) and the League are still hopping about- (albeit sans one Lazarus pit) almost as though someone was hoping this game would just be the framework through which they could stick on additional narratives with new factions ad nauseum. You know, like in a Live Service. (Which is another example why Live Services jeopardise the integrity of their games.) The only real event of impact is the very definitive death of Batman who is now very dead for good. And that... pretty much means the game starts where it ends. I suppose that given the ending speech wherein your chosen Knight monologues about their dedication to the city, in a bizarrely singular fashion as though the other Knights don't exist, you might also say that the Knights came into their own as heroes but... they each had years of Vigilante work under their belt before the beginning of the game. Committing to continuing exactly the same sort of work they'd already dedicated their lives to is semantics as best, redundant at worst.

There are exactly three side-quests to keep you busy outside of the main content, and luckily they are decently beefy quest chains. Although to justify their length that means in this game about the Gotham Knights stepping up to face the duties of protecting Gotham, only three villains from the Rogues Gallery bother show up. Harley Quinn is promoted to gang boss in an attempt to show her 'growing up' from the Joker in the evil direction, whereas she's usually portrayed becoming a sort of anti-hero. This Harley retains the basic air-headed sillyness you know whilst touching up the psychotic menace just a little- and there might have been something to her where her overall plan not so... flimsy. The content is serviceable and her set-piece moments rival some of those from the main missions, but I would have expected a bit more of a substantive plot from the girl's grand major villain debut.

Mr Freeze was a mistake. I believe that well and truly. In an attempt to 'evolve' the character, the writers made the inspired decision to just pluck out his humanity. You know, the one thing that made his character more compelling than your standard villain-of-the-week nobody? Yeah, they just got rid of that. Totally arbitrarily, too. It's not like they establish that Nora died, or Freeze's condition is worsening or the Blackgate dinner lady got his lunch order wrong one day- he just woke up one day and decided he was fully evil. He might as well go around with a heavy Austrian accent making 'Freeze' puns, at least that would give me some interesting aspect of his personality to... well, mock- but... that's something! And thus was born the most boring iteration of Mr Freeze ever conceived. Good Job, Gotham Knights?

And finally there's Clayface, who I'm certain was conceived of in reverse. No one in the writing room had a compelling reason why this would be a perfect villain for the new Batkids, rather the animation department thought they could pull off a really sick looking clay webbing effect and wanted to show it off. And it does look good, those set pieces shine! but Clayface's entire narrative is based around a traumatic injury he suffered facing Batman and how he blames him for the incident. And without Batman there to be confronted with the consequences of his actions, intentional or otherwise- or even to defend himself, it just sort of goes nowhere? It's also the shortest questline too, by a considerable margin, as though the team genuinely couldn't come up with a complete narrative for the guy. (Shame too, his story was the most interesting that I wanted to see explored.)

As for the actual boss fights that round out all of these side quests? Yeah, they're pretty generic. Just simple attack cycles and huge health bars. There's no mechanical thought put into the construction of any of these battles beyond the occasional need to grapple up in order to avoid Freeze's AOE attacks. And there couldn't really be, could there? Because these battles had to be made possible to be completed by every Knight, alone or in pairs, limiting the scope of mechanics the team could work with. Which isn't to say there's nothing they could have done- MMOs pretty much present blueprints on how to create interesting fights that aren't just 'mash attack until the thing is dead', but Gotham Knights doesn't have that patience and it doesn't expect it's player to either. Which is probably wise, I probably wouldn't have the mental fortitude to withstand a Harley Quinn raid boss. 

Gotham itself is a huge wasted opportunity in Gotham Knights, offering up a generic city scape that lacks all the gothic personality of practically any iteration of Gotham that has ever existed. From a distance, atop rooftops, it can look a little atmospheric (although not a patch on the Arkham games) but the streets are barren, the city interactions surface level and the spread of content agonising. I don't think any serious consideration went into the placement of generated crimes during the daily patrol, for the actual minutes worth of pointless downtime you'll have to endure just going between objectives.  Traversal options are pretty pathetic aside from Batgirl's glide and Dick's paraglider and the mini-activity for unlocking fast travel points is so mind-numbingly pathetic I'm convinced it was created as a sole example of everything not to do in game design. It's a  'scan the drone' objective that has you wait around, without moving, for several minutes as you watch drones go about pre-programmed paths and land in front of you in order to recharge. I don't know what genius conceived of a gameplay mechanic where you do literally nothing, but they might have finally topped the 'Ubisoft tower' as the most tedious open world-side activity. They must be so proud.

As you push on forth towards the latter of the game and start hitting level plateaus at significant junctions- or the cap nearer to the end- just as is the case with every gear-score inspired game, the actual build crafting can begin. And this is actually where Gotham Knight's combat starts to feel pretty good. There aren't really a comprehensive list of abilities or effects for the gear you equip, it's just damage scores and elemental bonuses, but the bonuses themselves are really visually fun to proc and satisfying to match up. Changing up your elements towards an enemies weakness, such as switching to a full pyro kit to burn out Freeze's regulators, builds into the fantasy of the equipped well-planned hero, and mixing and matching so that your Batarangs freeze whilst your baton stuns with electricity can evolve small fights with just enough tactical variety to feel fresh again. 

Unfortunately late game is also where the variation enemies start appearing, and unfortunately the team did not seem to borrow from the legacy of it's spiritual predecessor here. The first variation that all the factions get, the heavy, is simple and comprehensive. Large health pool, heavy windup attacks, they're about as fun to deal with as your build is tight. If you have a solid build, they're the highlights of the battle, if you're just winging it, they're painful timesinks. But every other variant is a pain in the ass. The Assassin's from the League hone in far too much with their attacks stealing your situational awareness to only focus on them during sword flurries. The Owl Talons can only become vulnerable after hitting them with a charged range attack, as opposed to Arkham variant enemies who would typically feature a range of options to make them vulnerable, most of which flow into general combat. (But then, flow was a lot more important to the design philosophy in Arkham.) And the super special talons they introduce in the late game? I literally only fought them in that introduction fight. I don't know if the team just forgot to insert them into the remaining few case files or if spawn rates are random and I got unlucky- but that felt like a missed opportunity. Ultimately, combat enemy variety was attempted, but to a sad and unimpressive presentation.

For it's endgame content, which also doubles as the only worthwhile multiplayer content beyond just general city wondering or double teaming missions that don't feel like they were especially designed to challenge two people at once, Gotham Knights proposes only it's raids that skewer the gear level system up a bunch of levels and teases a special something new that is never quite lived up to. When I read the teaser email from Wonder Woman presenting the Raid as taking on Starro- I got a little excited. The giant Starfish of legend would surely be a crazy fight, and I was only sad the game's playerbase had dropped off so much there was no way I'd get to play it. (Unless I was crazy enough to grind the dozens of floors to get there solo. Assuming that's even possible.) Thankfully the Internet saved me this embarrassment by revealing that the final Starro encounter is merely a Starro-controlled Manbat. Manbat being the same painfully overused miniboss the game throws at you four times in it's last two chapters. Shameful. The only other raid just delivers a boss rush of all the main game villains at the same time. Neat concept, but uninspired content recycling.

Conclusion

Gotham Knights suffered under the weight of its design philosophy, which sacrificed so very much in order to be a Live Service back for the very brief years when that was in vogue. Though we were saved from that dark reality, the scars of that design foundation haunt the final product to this day. And yet, even if we were to exorcize all those elements and take the final product for what it is- Gotham Knights is solidly average. It's combat can be pretty solid when everything comes together, with the majority of the game already behind you, but Gotham is empty, the story is a mess and the writing is both bland and inauthentically quirky in the same breath. Oh, and did I mention that this game starts with a twelve minute cinematic? That's right! Rag on Kojima games all you want, but at least he progresses the story in his belated cutscenes! Knights drags out the death of Batman into a 12 minute slog of fighting and explosions before you've ever even touched the controller, and expects you to be blown away from the admittedly high quality animation. I was starting to get Kingdom Hearts HD collection '358/2 Days' flashbacks from that intro, what in gods name where they thinking?

The game drags itself down to the territory of mid so solidly that actually don't think I can recommend this when everyone of the Arkham games eclipses this title in all but Netcode. Because none of those games had it. Wait... actually, Origins had a kickass asymmetrical multiplayer which was supremely underrated- so I guess Arkham even had better online services than Gotham Knights. So go buy the Arkham series. Seriously. They're so much better. Gotham Knights is one of the most middle of the road games you can buy, but for the glimmers of something better here and there I managed to dig out- I can just about eek out an extra third of a mark in my ultimate score. Which means Gotham Knights earns a C+ grade in my arbitrary rankings. Lets hope this is the most mediocre that a modern Batman game can be- although I'm seriously starting to wonder given what's on the horizon...

When developers make the wrong game

Whoops, I did it again!

Game development is never done in a vacuum. Unless you're Toby Fox, in which I case I can only assume you not only build games alone, but harvest your own home-grown food crops to stew in a naturally formed volcanic spring stove inside your hand built wooden log cabin home. There are numerous eyes, ears, voices and ideas that get sprinkled in the development dish in order to whip up that final finished product; ideas that will touch on everything from what sort of visual design standard fits best, how the implementation of this certain feature can be coded in a manner cohesive to systems around it and the ever-elusive; how can the cycle of fun in gameplay be extended over the length of our game? None of these are small questions, and all change the face of the product. Although the wrong fundamentals choice can actually be quite difficult to do when you've an entire team behind you for support. So if that's the case, how are entire AAA games being made so fundamentally wrong recently?

I ask because we've recently had the Superhero dud, Gotham Knights drop on our doorstep and, surprise surprise, the game isn't great. (Who could have possibly seen that coming?) And irrespective of that one technician complaining that the Xbox Series S was holding back the entire generation, this isn't a hardware problem as much as it's a conceptual one. (Unless the Series S grew sentience, crept into WB offices and personally recoded the game to be head-scracthingly badly conceived.) I think we all sort of knew this was going to be the case the very first moment we saw health bars above enemies and went "Uh oh; is this a live service?" Only for the team to turn around and promise it wasn't a live service, and then carry on talking about gear stats. Clearly a game that was born from the potent DNA of an incredible series that demonstrated exactly what a Batman-set superhero game needs to be wouldn't screw up the fundamentals; would it? 

But outside of story and dialogue, for which I heard wildly distinct perspectives, Gotham Knights focuses on everything it shouldn't and ends up being the wrong game it needed to be. Focus is put on the repetition of boring dynamic fights, (which are supposed to be the garnish on top of the world, not a gate to progression) the crafting system, (which lacks any ingenuity whatsoever) stats and level numbers (which clash with the superhero fantasy) and a horribly dumbed down fighting system. (Galling when fighting is literally the main way of interacting with the world.) Essentially they needed to make an action adventure game that expanded on the basics of what the Arkham series made and let several players enjoy that experience together; instead we got a live service skin stretched over an entirely single player game! All the downsides and concessions required to make it a live service, none of the benefits and positives. It's as if the team spent their years making the wrong game. 

And it's all very similar to how Marvel's Avengers turned out, only at least that game was designed to be a Live Service and actually was. But still, the resounding take away from the Avengers game was that it, too, was the wrong game. People of the time were hungry for a cinematic and linear high-quality narrative featuring the famous cast of the movies. Maybe the casting was a bit out-of-the-question, but the high-quality set-piece strewn exciting video game narrative could have been the slam dunk that the hopeful wanted. It would make sense. Popular Superhero games of the past, the Spiderman games, the Arkham games, Ultimate Alliance; all nailed that sense of overbloated comic-book scale narratives, empowering the user with small units they can crush with their flashy powers and impressive set-piece fights against huge roosters and familiar super villain faces to punctuate the excitement. The basic framework of a solid super hero game is actually fairly formulaic and straight forward.

Instead what we got was, yet again, a power levelling RPG system that made certain units annoying and unintuitive to fight against, strings of copy-paste cookie cutter 'smash the thing' missions that served only to pad out the run time as you grind for gear that is only good for taking on slightly harder variants of those same missions and, worst of all, a campaign which featured only three Super villains which the open world game recycled constantly. All that effort which could have gone into making the ultimate superhero team-up game instead went into calculating gear stat tables, designing grind EXP curves, setting up the players for endgame content that could be added onto, and basically doing all the things that don't improve the fantasy of being a superhero. And when you're making a superhero game, prioritizing the fantasy is a fundamental objective, any design decision that gets in the way of achieving that needs wrought-iron justification for it's existence and if you can't provide that; then maybe the game you're making isn't a superhero game!

And from a very different angle, we can look at another game which wasn't what it was supposed to be with the recent Saints Row Reboot. Now people who were fans of Saints Row would, in turn, be fans of the gangbanger fantasy, even as that vision got slowly watered down as the franchise went on. At the heart was always a focus on irreverent action and, arguably dated, scenes which attempt to depict the player character as the prototypical, cigar smoking gun-toting, embodiment of your pop culture 'badass'. Whether that image was pursued with straight-faced seriousness or ironically, that was pretty much the heart of Saints Row. 'The Playa' is a badass, and at times when they aren't being a badass they're not being true to themselves and need to go through a journey to remind themselves how to be a badass again. That is the moral peak that overrides all else; and within the fiction of the game world that alone makes them superior to the various colourful gangs and existential threats around them even if the Saints are just as murderous and destructive. The game doesn't even conceive of viewing the Saints performances as morally questionable, because the rule of cool is idolised by Saints Row.

Which is all to say that Saints Row Reboot isn't a Saints Row game. It might carry the name, emulate some of objectives and copy the gameplay, (badly) but it lacks that very important ingredient of Saint's Rows 'heart'. (Or any heart, by some critic's accounts.) For the Reboot, the Saints are driven by half-digested morals of anti-capitalism that are explored about as well as Star Wars dives into astrophysics, the protagonist's key principals are togetherness and loyalty to his friends, which is so empty-souled and basic you wonder if anyone was behind the keyboard writing this script at all, and that edge of the player's selfish desire being, even ironically, moralised above bare basic standards of decency is entirely, intentionally, absent. Just like with Ubisoft games, the protagonist has to be the good guy, even if that's in a strangled way, and that sanitation rubs off onto the wider open world itself in a plethora of bizarre and lazy 'censorships'. By trying to distance themselves from the abrasive past of Saints Row's presentation, the Reboot distanced itself from being a Saints Row game. Whatever lukewarm open world romp that Volition created, it wasn't Saints Row but something else entirely.

Making the wrong game is in some ways worse than making a bad or broken game. Because with a bad game at least one can recognise how you knew what was supposed to be created and simply failed on that execution, and a broken one can feasibly be fixed to one-day be great. But a 'wrong' game is symptomatic of a fundamental divide between what the concept of the game demands and the direction you sought to develop. The final product might work and function just fine, but the concept and gameplay will never slide together in that perfect synergy which forms a product that achieves it's vision. Essentially this blog is a treatise on exactly why effective and precise planning is, in many ways, the most important stage of video game development; because anything else that goes wrong can be rectified, but bad schematics underline everything. Always make sure you're making the right game, everybody.

'Gotham Knights Harley Quinn'

 'Is a very interesting case study'

Revolving around the types of circles that I do on the Internet, it's inevitable that the same stories are going to float your way every now and then. But the wide and vast world of entertainment is so ever changing that I never really let it annoy me, because I know that story is just a spark on the stove shimmering for a little longer than it's peers. In basic: It'll be gone before I have a chance to care about it. But thanks maybe to Youtube Shorts, or the fact that the Internet seems eager to push this on me, I've seen again and again that snippet from the developers of Gotham Knights trying to big-up their own design team work to the point where's it's actually become something of a headache. How many times do I have to hear the words ''Gotham Knight's Harley Quinn is a very interesting case study in..." before I lose my mind and explode? Turns out that threshold has already been reached because that's what I'm talking about today.

So Gotham Knights is already a game I have a bias against thanks to the nakedly misleading marketing in it's naming convention as well as the game not really being what I want out of a Batman game. If it's your jam that is entirely fine, I don't think there's anything inherently distasteful about the game they're making, it's just not my ideal Batfamily scenario. But it's because of this that when I first saw and was introduced to their new reimaging of Harley Quinn, alongside the various other villains, I squashed my gut grimace and did my best to try and accept these new iterations. It's not that I have an aversion to reimaginings, I think the Arkham series has consistently pulled off increadibly cool reimaginings time and time again. it's just that what Gotham Knights has feels... dull and not very creative. Mr Freeze has robot limbs now? Okay. Not sure what that really adds to his character but sure...

But Harley Quinn in particular is the one that the team is trying to push the hardest, probably due to the popularity of the character and their staunch belief that this is the magnum opus of their 'taking a character you know well and reworking them' ethos. Afterall, they're so insistent about how 'interesting' this 'case study' of a character design is, why shouldn't they shout their creative successes to the rooftops so that all the world can become bored by them presently? They need you as the viewer to agree about how clever their decisions were and why this Harley is definitely not a dull cookie-cutter fan edit, and they're willing to start fights to prove their point. But you know what? The more I see of her, the more I find myself underwhelmed by a new look that seems about as creatively vibrant as a photoshop colour swap.

Okay, I'm being a bit melodramatic there; it's not quite that basic; but the Harley Quinn redesign for Gotham Knights seems focus on three central points that I feel are mostly all underexplored. First, they wanted to show off what Harley looks in post her love-affair with the Joker, commenting about how we've seen her go from that world to an independent confidant of heroes, what would we see if she had instead leaned the other direction and became a villain? Secondly, they want to highlight the 'independence' angle of that split. Losing the Joker as a source of influence has allowed Harleen to blossom as a villain in her own right with her own motifs exemplifying what she brings to the table as a super villain. And finally, they wanted to depict an older Harley Quinn who wears those years of experience on her as a confirmation of talent and resourcefulness. Which basically means no more pig-tails; after a certain age that's just sad.

So let's take a look at the 'Harley after the Joker' side of this equation. Harley Quinn was invented to be a foil for the Joker to play off during his scenes in the animated series, a reoccurring thug with a bit of a personality around her that evolved into something of a sensation. We've seen in other stories what it looks like when she breaks free from the Joker and in all of those stories she is still, fundamentally, the same person only without the crushing pressure of being obsessed with pleasing a megalomaniacal sociopath. She's pretty much still the over-the-top garish person even without the predilection to cause harm upon innocents, but the Gotham Knights team seems to believe that isn't the case. I think justifying a radical shift in personality is really going to come down to the method by which Quinn split from the Joker. Unless it was a really shocking affair, such as his violent death at the hands of a lethargic Batman or something, the drastic change is going to come across as forced and inorganic.

Then there's the independence angle. They wanted Harley to be her own villain, finally free to do her own brand of evil. Now how that actually shapes up in the whole 'evil schemes' category is yet to be seen until we get our hands on the game, but we can see this philosophy painted over her face. Literally. The team's idea to symbolise how distinct Harley now is to her abusive Clown Prince is to keep the white face paint and just put a Club over her face. As in, the playing card Club. Umm... wasn't the playing card aesthetic literally the basis of the Joker? I know there's the court jester interpretation, but he was never far away from playing cards either. That was his calling card once or twice. I get the idea of showing her past on her new form, but the way they've gone makes it look like Harley has become so drowned in that past that it's washed away all her individuality and left her looking like a generic Joker henchman. She doesn't even standout in colour or style to her new crew, she looks oddly uniform.

Which brings us back around to that final point; depicting her older age. This one I can actually see very abundantly and justifiably within their redesign. Harley has put away the provocative fancy dress and a more lean power-suit that demonstrates a shift from what I can assume were her carefree twenties to her responsible thirties. Maybe mid to late thirties. The duller suit, toned down hair and generally monochromatic colour scheme depicting the distinct drain of personality and vibrancy that hits all as they sink deeper into adulthood and lose touch with that light of happiness. Life becomes monotonous, they become monotonous. Or at least... that's what I got from their redesign. Was that what they were going for? Kind of a morose direction for a superhero character to evolve in but, you do you Gotham Knights.

I'm not going to tell you that Gotham Knights Harley is bad... just that she seems far enough removed from her source material that without a name tag you'd probably be forgiven for mistaking her for a low-effort replacement character thought up over a weekend. And I'm imagine the original Harley was conjured up as just as much of an afterthought, but I think it's clear the minds working on that show were a damn bit more expressive and fun than that dour heads knocking about on this upcoming game.  And I don't want to sit here dissecting the dull muscle man that Red Hood has been turned into, or the equally generic faces of Barbara and Nightwing, partially because I think their blandness is due to engine limitations but partially because I don't care about design when the whole package should come together to sell it. I just can't have another week of IGN trying to gaslight me into how 'interesting' and 'inspired' this deviant art-level redrawn of an iconic character is. Miss me with that crap.

Delay your game

 This one simple trick will solve 90% of broken games! Publishers hate it!

Is your game shaping up to be a bit of a disappointment, or even an outright humanitarian disaster the likes of which could sink the income of a third world country? Are you beyond the help of 6 or so months of touch ups, but are clutching to the vague promise of 'this does not represent the final game' as though it's a study chunk of flotsam you can ride out of any and all troubled waters? Has your fanbase taken a look at the work you've been doing, turned around and said "This looks bad, I don't want to play this."? What can one do in such a scenario, heading towards the lips of a waterfall with no embankment to save them? Well, you could grab ahold of that jousting rod of saviour that's constantly jabbed in your face at all times, and delay the game. That's right! Just take a critical assessment and say "This could use an extra year in the oven and we've evolved enough as a society that the public are going to be okay with that, and once I tell investors how much more they stand to gain with the release of a finished product; they'll be okay with it too. So what's actually stopping me?"

I think too many developers lock themselves in on a deathmatch to a disappointing release even when every sign on the walls, on the their palms, in the blinking and glittering of the Stars themselves, prophesises a catastrophe. It doesn't get much more blatant then uploading that all important 'first look' trailer less than half a year until launch and facing the resounding feedback of "This isn't good and you can't fix this by the release date you've offered". As a triple A studio, or at least a studio with triple A backing; there really shouldn't be a point where such a proclamation doesn't offer itself as a life line to get you out of bother. You can afford to delay the release, you can afford to get better talent to spruce up the wanting areas, you can afford to act upon criticism before the release of the game in order to shore up those chances of success; you just need to have the humility to recognise a brick thrown at your presentation as a clear indication that things aren't going to plan.

 

First I'll call to the stand 'Gotham Knights', to serve as a relevant witness that some games just aren't there yet. Gotham Knights had it's first extended gameplay trailer since the reveal just recently and the feedback was decently unanimous; widespread mocking and condemnation. Although this game itself isn't a direct sequel to the Arkham games and I don't even think the same team is working on it (That team is handling 'Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League') there's no doubt that this new team are trying to springboard off the Arkham success in order to launch their title. It's called 'Gotham Knights' for goodness sake, they knew what they were doing! But when you piggyback off another brand for recognition, that springboard becomes a static state for comparison, and if you end up looking wanting people are going to crucify you for it.

The Arkham games were triumphs of storytelling, of combat action gameplay, of exploration and of visual design. Gotham Knights looks good so far, and the story they're stealing from is said to be a good one, but everything else is up in the air. The combat and exploration doesn't hold up to a game from over half a decade prior, and that should be something you'd be ashamed of. The animations don't flow as well, the movement is clunky, certain characters have slow and wanting movement suites, the enemies don't have complimentary diversity to them, the world navigation is ugly and disconnected from the makeup of the world layout- it's just a unfocused jack of a few trades and master of absolutely nothing so far. It needs a delay to polish up the gameplay significantly, and we're past the point of saying 'Oh well they've already done the movement and general feel of combat so there's only so much the team can do.' No, that's not good enough anymore. There's way too much choice of games to play for a triple A title to rest on the 'this is the way things are, take it or leave it' bed it's made for itself. Delay, rework; rip out the animation framework and start from scratch if you have to; otherwise this coming downfall will be your fault alone.

Cyberpunk 2077 is apparently living rent-free in my head, but so it should when it exists as such a prime example of why delays can be helpful. Now Cyberpunk never had the possibility of living up to it's own embarrassingly high expectations. It set itself up to fail, that much is a given. But the product we got could have least have arrived with some polish if CDPR had gone the highroad and delivered the game 'when it was ready' like they posited all those years ago with all the gall of a proud pelican with crossed talons behind it's back. Fast forward all these months later and CDPR have just about managed to squeeze the thing into semi-working shape, and now it seems their extended DLC plans have had to be scrapped in favour of a single questline DLC which will be the last project on that engine before they switch to Unreal entirely. (unless they remake Cyberpunk entirely in Unreal, that means fans are only getting the one DLC.) Now perhaps the broken early launch was strategic in order to give CDPR a problem it could 'fix' whilst conveniently forgetting how the breadth of the game they promised isn't even possible with the tools at their disposal, but I'm no conspiracy theorist so I'm just going to chalk this up to bad management who don't know when to pull the breaks on the hype trains.

Sonic Frontiers presents itself as another very topical example of exactly what I'm talking about here. A game that very much is not even approaching it's ready state and yet is due to land before the end of the year. It shouldn't, it isn't ready. Everyone can see that. But does Sega acknowledge our scepticism? Hell no, they throw more fuel on the fire whilst the community stands there aghast waiting for someone to do something. This is an opportunity to totally rewrite the Sonic landscape and create a new era of the franchise. Now it's pretty obvious from what we've seen that Sonic Team lack a game director imaginative and/or competent enough to actually go that distance, but at the second place prize would be an alright enough game that we can waste some time with; and what we're seeing right now isn't even going to scratch at that. Sonic Frontiers needs a miracle, and miracles take time to conjure, time which can be earnt with a delay.

And it's not as though delays are unheard of in the modern triple A space. Halo Infinite was a game that looked rough as all heck when it was first revealed to the public in a congested gameplay snippet and you know what- the team actually acknowledged the roughness of the game and went back to the drawing board. What they came back with was a Halo good enough to be considered the best of the current era of Halo games, which maybe doesn't mean all that much since there really isn't that much stiff competition to the title; but it's an accolade nonetheless. And whatsmore it proves that delays do happen and they can work! Starfield is also getting delayed as it was apparently heading for a disaster, and we don't yet know the outcome of that push back but we can safely say that whatever we eventually get is going to be better than what we would have had.

There simply is just no sensible reason to zoom into a rush job in the modern age of game development, not when the market is as flush with competent alternatives to literally every genre of game in existence. Fumble up on your face and people won't stick around to see the trainwreck, they'll move onto the next game which stuck their landing. Timing a release is important, no doubt; but we're past the age when releasing a mess and nursing it to working condition is a viable avenue to success. It's time consuming, reputation destroying and isn't even a guaranteed success. (Remember Anthem's execution) So game companies need to normalise the practise of delaying their games when it's needed, taking the time where they can and dropping the best possible first day product they can muster. Just like how I delayed dropping that Miyamoto quote which is apparently misattributed. (I have the restraint of several saints.) 

Gotham Knights looks kinda meh

Arkham, this is not

'Batman is Dead' reads the hook into WB Montreal's upcoming 'Gotham Knights' video game, now coming exclusively to the elusive current gen consoles. (What an announcement to make just a few months out from the prospective release, guys. Very not-cool.)  And with this game comes on of the most lauded comic book storylines in recent DC years, that of the Court of Owls; another story in which Batman 'dies' only to not really die, so I guess we all know the twist coming in this narrative long before it can even be teased. Gotham Knights borrows what it can in order to set it's narrative in practically the same place that Arkham Knight left it, with Batman AWOL and the Batfamily coming back to Gotham to keep it defended, without actually being a direct sequel in anyway. (I believe 'Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League' is the direct sequel to the Arkham franchise. It's all needlessly confusing.)

What this means is a rooster of the Bat family available for us to pick through, but with enough caveats that this is in no way the 'dream Batman game' that fans of the deep Batman lore have been asking for. I mean for one we're only getting to play as the core members of the Batfamily, I'm talking 3 robins and Batgirl. (Not even Stephanie- but Barbara.) We have at our disposal a Robin, (One of them) Nightwing, (Because that guy can't keep himself in Bludhaven for more than a weekend) Red Hood (To give us that moody gun-toting edge to the group dynamic) and Batgirl. (As the smart-one stereotype of the group.) No Batwoman, no Huntress, no Orphan, no Azrael, No Batmite, No Ace the Bathound. It's a lean group, which I suppose adds all the more room for the team to focus on the diversity behind the playstyles of each individual member; right? Everyone should feel totally different to play, in combat and city traversal: the two major vertices of play, right?

Good thing we have ourselves a brand new character trailer in order to test that theory! Yes, the reveal gameplay trailer only had the chance to show us gameplay of Batgirl, enough to let us know that although the story wants nothing to do with Arkham, the developers will more than happily knick it's playstyle to be the backbone of their game. (Steal from the best, right?) This time around we get to see Red Hood and Nightwing in action, two characters who have also appeared in previous Arkham games (not that this is another Arkham game- it's something different, I have to keep reminding myself.) so that the distinctive playstyles have a chance to shine. Or at least that was the intention behind this, I think. Allow players to see why it is that they'll want to switch between these characters and play alongside them with their friends, oops I mean 'friend'; because bizarrely this game still only has 2 player Co-op planned despite the cold-turkey split to next gen only consoles. (What, is Next Gen not powerful enough for 4 player Co-Op yet?) I'm not entirely sure about the success of the thesis, given the footage that we saw. 

Immediately the problems with the gameplay seem clear; the combat feels weak- which feels astounding to say given the obvious connections this game has to a DC game series with excellent combat in the Arkham games. Why didn't they just copy that standard? Everything seems to mimic the Arkham series, what with the high-angled perspective shift in fights that allows situation awareness for the player to pull off counters and dodges and general group-dispersal tactics- but the actual pace of the action bears a noticeable slow-down in terms of pace. Hits feel slow, there's only a little bit of feedback impact, attacks don't appear to flow into one another as they did in Arkham, it just doesn't look as satisfying to see our hero kick a group of thugs into submission. And I actually watch a decent number of Arkham videos in my spare time because of how satisfying the game looks as well as plays, so I can pretty easily identify when something is missing here.

But there are obviously going to be concessions in the way that the game plays when we're focusing on 4 animations sets that are totally distinct rather than just the one, so the floaty punches are conceptually forgivable. The bulk of the focus here is going more into the RPG stats behind the combat, or at least it was that case when the game was first revealed, I've noticed that since the backlash enemies don't have their levels floating above their heads anymore. However, they're still going to be focusing on craftables (yawn) with different stats on suits and rarities and... is any studio capable of making a game of their own volition anymore? One that doesn't fill the classic 'looter' checkboxes? Why can't we get new suits that just look cool? Or maybe that have one special power like Sony's Spiderman did? Why does it feel like this game's biggest influence was freakin' Avengers? You know, the game that was a failure!

And while we're talking about non-combat gameplay, during the demo's break in the Bellfry, the homebase between missions, we got to see a little bit of how the game will take advantage of the multiple protagonists. Namely, by allowing them to interact. And the interaction they chose to show off in this footage? A laughably stilted dialogue between Dick Grayson and some malformed 'star quarterback' iteration of Jason Todd that bares no small resemblance to one of the Capcom's many failed Chris Redfield clones. (His design was rightly mocked) And whilst we're on the topic of Red Hood; each hero has their own method of world traversal, don't get excited- they didn't come up with anything clever or interesting and just gave Nightwing a slow powered glider and Batgirl the same wing glider that Batman had. But Jason Todd's Red Hood gets a magical green smoke cloud double jump. Why? Because he resurrected by mystic assassin's or something, I dunno, read a comic. Sort of takes away from the gritty, gun-toting image of Red Hood when he flies away on green wings like Tinkerbell.

Luckily, as this is an Arkham game in all but name, we still have stealth as an option in gameplay which is sure to add some bare basic action variety. Does this mean we're going to go the distance and have proper predator sections like the Arkham series did? With vantage points and cat and mouse mechanics that got more fleshed out as the games went along? I don't know. We saw about thirty seconds worth of stealth and it was all crawl and backstab like you'd see from any cookie cutter action title. Which in itself does not give me much hope. (If they had Predator mechanics, why would they deliberately not show them?) Oh, and to put a cherry on top of the cake, some people seem to think the enemies are too tanky, as consequence of their new RPG stats. I personally don't see the problem myself just yet, but this gameplay reminds me how that absolutely will be an issue in higher level tiers, because otherwise why have level gated enemies at all?

I really did put out the benefit of the doubt for Gotham Knights when it first launched and we some small nagging problem points, but now we're closer to launch and the game has settled itself on being firmly next gen- the rough edges are becoming wholly less excusable. Maybe if the game was balanced to allow full four player co-op they'd be some inane fun to be had jumping around the city and bashing heads, but with the limitations this is really starting to shape up as a bargain-bin version of the Arkham series which is going to be competing with an actual proper successor to those games in the near future. Every mechanic borrowed from those games has been done worse and all the 'new' ideas are tired industry trends. In short, this gameplay made the game look average at best, mediocre at worst. Maybe the Court of Owls are better off running things afterall...

Is Arkham's driven narrative it's biggest problem?

Maybe Batman needs a rest every once and a while...

It's been a very long time since the Arkham series of Batman games have been relevant, so I haven't really had the excuse to talk about them; but with the impending release of two new Batman games, one directly related to the series and another inspired by it, I feel it's time to talk about the little bits which made up the greatest Batman games of all time. Although this wasn't all that inspired this particular blog, for you see I came across something which made me critically think about a key feature that all Arkham games share in a new light. It was actually a article covering some details about one of those new games in fact, Gotham Knights, which will change up a great many staples one has come to expect from their Batman games. As the article put it, the game would be 'fixing a common criticism of the Arkham games' by setting it's gameplay over a series of days rather than across one hectic night, and that got me to thinking; is Arkham's pacing one of it's biggest problems?

First let me specify what I'm talking about; in every single one of the popular Arkham games all of the action of the game, from the tutorial through to the post game, takes place on the same night which in which the game started. Of course, the series does shift days with different entries (and even years for some games) but every event in the main story will occur in roughly the same six hour stretch, with some games even noting the progression of the narrative as being concurrent with the progression of night. The developers play this up too, by having the battle damage system on Batman's suit which I positively adore, wherein the further you go into the game the more the Batsuit gets scuffed up. The wear and tear of this one particularly crazy night for Batman is written all over his person and although the legend never becomes tired (how could he, he's Batman) the bruises, scratches, bulletholes, popping poisoned veins and just destroyed gauntlets, all convey that sense beautifully.

But when we actually compare this to the way Batman's antics usually go in his many depictions on TV, film and in the comics, this is actually rather stand-out. Batman isn't usually the one to go duke out with every-single one of his villains in a single night of pugilism. I mean it does happen sometimes, sure, but for every single game to take place on that premise it does stretch the idea a little thin now that I come to think about it. The idea of having to fight one's entire rogue's gallery simultaneously is a pretty momentous one, but when you're literally doing that every other week it certainly does make Batman look a little overpowered, which has never been the idea when it comes to the Caped Crusader. But then if this is the case, why do all the video games thusfar circle around this idea? Well there's a few reasons.

Firstly come the convenience of it all, as Rocksteady themselves voiced when making Arkham City (as I recall) they weren't making a Bruce Wayne game, they wanted to make a Batman game, and Batman famously only usually comes out at night. Thus if the game takes place in the same night then there's no logistical transition that the team needs to figure out. Then there's the fact that with gaming, and the ability for adventure games to be as long as they really need to be, the team have the time and space to fit in these several villain storylines without the story feeling stretched at all. In fact, for gaming audiences we usually defer to the ideal of 'the more the merrier', as it were. Finally, and most resoundingly, when every single event is concurrent and not broken up by the passing of the idea, it creates a pace and rhythm that rides out to the final beat of the game. Pacing is a huge tool when it comes to storytelling and learning how to master it can be the difference between a breakneck adventure and a chilled stroll across action set-peices.

In fact, I keep coming back to the idea of the 'Pace' as likely being the key reason behind this design choice, maybe not even consciously, but it's influence is there. When Batman starts his night, whether that be through rolling up to Arkham Asylum or being thrown into Arkham City, a rubber band is set into the ground. From that point forth, as he unravels the mystery of his environment and get's deeper into the various factions involved or enters the sights of yet another assassin, the elastic band gets stretched, and for every moment Batman is active that tension is wound back. Breaking that up at any moment, even through a quick cutscene which shows of Bruce doing his day-to-day so that the player can get back to the action, immediately let's that rubberband snap back and makes it so that the narrative has to build up that tension and pacing all the way from the beginning again. Turning away from that and doubling down on the chaos of the one night allows for the tension to build into a towering crescendo where Batman's ultimate duels feel as weighty as they should, because they've been appropriately built up.

On the flipside; Gotham Knights approach of turning the events to more of a day-by-day affair does a good job of evoking the episodic nature of Comic books and really make the player feel like they're setting into the everyday life of a hero. As the overall story literally frames itself with Batman's protegees rising up to take his mantle, this neatly fits that mould as we see Barbara Gordon, and the Robins fill that mammal-shaped hole. This also allows the developers to simulate the daily lives of the citizens of Gotham which is something that we have, inexplicably, never got out of a Batman game before. Arkham City took place in an entire chunk of the City turned into a prison, Arkham Origins was on the same night as a blizzard warning, encouraging citizens to stay indoors, and Arkham Knight took place at a time when the city was getting bombarded with threats from a lunatic in a scarecrow costume; I wouldn't want to poke my head out the front door either!

Now to be clear there is no single better way to tell a story between the approach of many different days and a single night, in fact the 'man on fire' style of storytelling generally isn't done too much anymore, as it was done to death a while back. I'd say that John Wick was probably the best recent iteration of "All the events happening within a breath of each other." I think that Gotham Knights approach does fit the game a lot better, given that our villain appears to be The Court of Owls; A mysterious cabal of Gotham elites who specialise on being in the shadows and behind other schemes. Treated right this could even be as climatic as the Arkham games, it's all just a matter of execution.

In conclusion, I don't think that the narrative design of the Arkham series is at all one of it's problems, like that article would suggest, but rather one of it's strengths. But as this upcoming new title isn't even an Arkham game, why it's hardly the end of the world if that game frames it's narrative a little differently. (I welcome the diversity) When it's all said and done I will undoubtedly miss the whole 'progressive suit damage' as the story goes on, as well as the way that the environments you traversed seemed to become more chaotic as everything falls apart, but it's not going to ruin my day or anything. I yet remain excited for Gotham Knights and reverent of the Arkham series that helped spawn it.

Gotham Knights; What aren't you telling us?

Enter the Knight

What a knight we've had. (See what I did there? Knight?) In the vein of all events like these, DC fandome has come and bombarded us all with an absolutely nauseating amount of filler with a slant few actual trailers and announcements thrown in there. And As someone who as never been the most out-and-out DC fan I must say, everything I saw actually did seem at least somewhat cool. That teaser for The Batman looked great, Synder's Justice League cut looks intriguing enough to give a shot (Fool me twice...) and the two games they announced seemed pretty solid and interesting. That's right, as you'll probably have known by now, DC announced two new games in the near-to-far future and I intend to talk about both of them in great detail in the months to come. For now, however, I want to address the rollercoaster of emotions I had when hearing about 'Gotham Knights'.

So here was a game which was apparently leaked the night of this event, so most everyone knew it was coming, but I was a rube who was still waiting for 'Suicide Squad' and thus I was pleasantly surprised to see that Warner Bros. Interactive were hard at work on a whole other game inbetween. Whatsmore, this game is set in Gotham and was dealing with the Bat family! And the trailer even started with the chilling announcement that Bruce Wayne, and through him Batman, is dead. "Oh my," I immediately thought, "Are they picking up the Arkham-verse? Is this a direct continuation on from 'Arkham Knight'?" To which the answer is a pretty decisive, 'No'. The trailer then went on to show us that Commissioner Jim Gordon was also dead (Something which never even happened in 'The Dark Knight Returns') and that his daughter, Barbara, was suspiciously non-crippled. Evidence if ever you needed it that this was not an Arkham-verse game. Despite the fact that Warner Bros. literally own Rocksteady so what would the actual harm be in borrowing their storyline? And why have your game set-up be so oddly similar to the last Batman game's leaving off point? And why not hire Kevin Conroy to do Batman? (So it's safe to say that 'immediate disappointment' was the first emotion I associated with this product.)

As it happens what this game is actually about is another version of Gotham city wherein Batman is presumed dead under mysterious means and thus he's called upon his extended Bat-family to take up the mantle in his stead. That means Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing and- Red Hood? Have joined the fight. Hang on, Batman called up Red Hood before calling on Kate Kane? Doesn't Batwoman operate out of Gotham too? She wouldn't even have to relocate! (This some straight bull.) And, once again, this is proof that Arkham's storyline is not being considered, because despite the odd character shift that the Arkham Knight went through in the last few minutes of the story, I doubt Batman would give him the keys to protecting the city. In fact, even without the whole 'Arkham Knight' story this still rings odd to me; Red Hood kills people, no? Isn't that adverse to Batman's entire ethos? But hey, maybe he'll need that sort of hardline willingness to break the rules given the fact that these Gotham Knights are set to go up against The Court of Owls.

That's right, afterall this time of speculation we're finally getting a Batman game featuring The Court of Owls, and it's not being made by Rocksteady. I mean, not to knock on Warner Bros. Interactive, but that's a big shame. Rocksteady proved for years that they had that special eye for capturing the heart of the Batman's rogue's gallery, and I feel like no matter how good The Owls are bought to life, Rocksteady would have done it better. But I should probably spill in case you're unaware. The Court of Owls was a rare example of a newer comicbook hero storyline that introduced a brand new enemy and yet still proved to be neither overly derivative nor lazy. It introduced a new criminal organisation into Gotham that was formed off of some of Gotham's oldest and most influential families, all dead-set on playing the 'shadowy cabal that guides the hand of politics'. And they also happen to dress like owls, a natural predator of bats. (Apparently these guys have secretly been around for generations, so that was just a coincidence.)

So there we have it, a new Batman to get all riled up for. Except; Warner Bros. were nice enough to give us a little bit of a Gameplay demo so we could see exactly what this game has in store for us (Isn't that nice) and what we saw was instinctively troubling to some. Before I address this I must say, this perception is in no way WB's fault, they were just a victim of bad timing and the industries' bad habits. The second any of us saw that this game would feature 4 heroic main characters and multiplayer, the Avengers game popped to mind alongside those accursed words 'Live service'. Now I don't have the strength to get into why a live service Superhero game sounds pretty crappy, but judging by the dubious reactions around the Internet I don't even need to. Matters were only worsened bit way through the trailer when we saw enemies with level numbers above their heads, and splash text with damage indicators. In short; Warner Bros. did everything in their power to make this game appear to be a Live Service, thus putting the fear of god into all us Batman fans who just wanted a good game, not another second job. And the funny thing is; I don't even think this game is actually a live service at all. Actually, I think it sounds like a pretty cool little game.

Now I'm not going so far as to call it a worthy successor to the Arkham games, but even without that title this footage did work to scratch my Batman itch somewhat. Set in an openworld of Gotham, likely adapted from Rocksteady's work on Arkham Knight, 'Gotham Knights' feels like 'Middle Earth: Shadow of War' bought to the world of Batman. Which is strange, as 'Shadow of War' actually adapted it's gameplay from the Arkham games. (Funny how cylindrical things can be.) So whilst the combat lacks the impact of previous Arkham titles, there's still that level of fluidity and agility which made Arkham such a great power trip. Throw that base ontop of the fact that all the hero's of the game seem to have their own movesets and gadgets, and there's a solid foundation right here. Speaking of those other heroes, they can join the player through the co-op system which ,strangely, is said to consist of only one to two people, making for some great dual takedown opportunities.

So this isn't some hub-based mess like Avenger's is shaping up to be, that's good, and it appears to just have some RPG mechanics and systems thrown in rather than turning out to be another soulless Live Service, that's great! But that doesn't automatically mean the game is any good, and indeed some of what we saw did sort of hit my 'mediocrity' bone a little bit. First off, the mission we saw in the trailer depicted Batgirl racing on her bike in order to stop >sigh< a portal shooting up into the sky. Really guys? Isn't a meme by now for how lazy a plotpoint this is for Superhero stories? Fan4stic, Suicide Squad, Avengers, Man of Steel, Ghostbusers, Star Trek and I think Justice League, (I forget) it doesn't really bode well for your narrative ingenuity. Then there is Batgirl, who was the focus this gameplay, (and who's likely my future main.) she just felt off. Not to say that every version of a character should be a carbon copy, but there are a few running personality traits characters keep in order to make them recognisable. Batgirl is one of those that has changed considerable over the years, not as much as Supergirl has (in the comics, not that abominable CW show which I still watch. Send help.) but enough to be a great character capable of holding their own story. Thus it's not as though there's no precedent for Batgirl to play the wise-cracking aloof hero, but when that's the stereotype for every screen hero ever, (such to the point where DC is literally re-releasing Justice League in order to pivot from that stereotype. Along with other things) it makes all of her witticisms stick out like poor, unfunny, cringe-soaked, thumbs. And then finally there is the boss of this encounter, Mr Freeze. His bossfight just looked super generic from what we saw of it, a far cry from his depiction in the Arkham series as one of most ingenious and memorable encounters from 'Asylum' and the 'Origins' DLC 'Cold, Cold Heart'. It's just more fuel for the fire which says that Batman license was in better hand with Rocksteady, they knew how to play to a villian's strengths beyond his apparent powers and make a setpeice worth remembering.

Yet even with my criticisms, and they go on beyond the three I mentioned, I haven't written this game off nearly as hard as I've written off Avengers. In fact, I haven't written off Gotham Knights at all. I like the idea of a co-op adventure with the Batfamily, and am glad for the small miracles coming out way such as the open world aspect and the ability to play solo. The RPG aspect coming to the game has, if done well, the potential to really throw some growth into the gameplay and though I've already picked Babs as my goto, there's not a hero on offer here that doesn't appeal to me on some level. I want to play as them all and that's one of the most important desires to establish off the bat. (I did it again! Didn't even mean to that time.)Who knows what this game could be capable off once it fruitions? Individual character narratives as they each undergo their growth into becoming the sorts of heroes they need to be in order to live up to Bruce's name? Will we get some interpersonal drama as Red Hood clashes with the others over his penchant for killing? Probably not, but I can look to that great batsignal in the sky and hope.