A YOUNGER, ANGRIER Bruce Wayne | Batman: Arkham Origins Retrospective Review

[Music] so [Music] it's all still with me [Music] by the end of 2011 rocksteady studios had released two largely successful and critically acclaimed batman games batman arkham asylum and batman arkham city still they weren't done yet and had ambitious plans for a third game to really cap off their arkham series this game would later be known as batman arkham knight however rocksteady knew that in order to fully realize their plans for arkham knight they'd need three years of development time which would mean that there would be a long gap between arkham city and arkham knight knowing this ahead of time they informed parent company warner brothers interactive entertainment to see how they wanted to approach this arkham gap warner decided that the best approach would be to have another company take the reins on a separate arkham game while rocksteady worked diligently on arkham knight this brings us to wb montreal the team tasked with taking on this new arkham game wb montreal was an unexpected choice though because they were such a newly established studio having only been founded by warner brothers interactive in 2010 however they did have some experience with the arkham franchise since their first project was to develop rocksteady's arkham city for the wii u titled batman arkham city armored edition this edition was largely the same as the original arkham city game with some minor additions for the wii u such as a reimagined functionality of batman's gadgets to utilize the wii u gamepad the experience developing armored edition was beneficial to wb montreal because it gave them extra familiarity with rocksteady's code base which also provided an easier transition into creating this new game the decision was also made to have this new arkham game be a prequel which provided them with some additional creative liberties this attracted creative director eric holmes to the project and in the same interview he describes why he preferred the idea of a prequel over something taking place after arkham city if you're issue 600 of a comic it's very hard to tell a new story you know the challenge for us coming in after rocksteady is to do something which hasn't been done and do something which isn't a retread and isn't copy paste of their game it has to add value has to be new to me that's the key to that prequel is that invigoration that it adds to things this new game would be titled batman arkham origins and wb montreal were eager to tell their own batman story set in the arkham universe rocksteady was very supportive of wb montreal's endeavors as well giving them all of their code and assets from batman arkham city and asylum in an interview with game informer arkham knight game director sefton hill explains what the handoff to wb montreal was like to be honest mainly we said make the game you want to make we wanted them to be really passionate about the game they wanted to make the main involvement was take our code make the best arkham game that you can make sefton goes on to state that the only story limitations that were given to wb montreal were that they were asked not to step on the toes of the arkham knight story rock said he had that story outlined fairly early on and were able to provide it to wb montreal making sure that there wouldn't be any conflicts other than that rocksteady gave wb montreal free reign over their story and sefton confirms that rocksteady considers the story of arkham origins canon speaking of which the story of arkham origins takes place two years into bruce wayne's career as batman roughly eight years before the events of batman arkham asylum at this point in time it's said that batman has been establishing a name for himself in gotham but has really only had to deal with low-level crime like drug dealers and thieves that all changes during the events of arkham origins though when black mask puts a bounty worth 50 million dollars on batman's head inviting some of the world's deadliest assassins to hunt him down this is a whole new level of threat that batman has never dealt with before meaning he'll be facing noteworthy super criminals for the first time in origins such as bane deathstroke and the joker this was an exciting premise but fans still had some concerns namely how wb montreal would handle the gameplay of the tried and true rocksteady systems would they make a lot of changes or hardly any at all in an interview with the girls on games ben mattis describes how they approached making changes to the core gameplay mechanics of the arkham series as well as adding new things of their own so um i mean obviously you mentioned there is the the content layer right the the narrative and that sort of thing but that's a given as you said we we have that we've talked a lot about that the the the strategy we took in this game is the if it's not you know if it's not broken don't fix it model so we did not say oh we're going to do a better fighting system than free flow combat which by our biased opinion is is an industry-class hand-to-hand melee fighting system um but what we did do is we looked for special opportunities to what we do called move the needle like invest in that one key area those key gadgets those key enemies that is going to make a significant impact on the player's experience ben further goes on to state that they heavily invested in expanding the open world the open world of arkham origins is over twice the size of arkham city featuring a new area south gotham also called new gotham with pioneers bridge connecting the two they also added random events in the city allowing you to stop crimes in progress as you roam around gotham one of the most noticeable differences though is the christmas aesthetic of the game since the story takes place entirely on christmas eve night gotham is full of snow and christmas decorations and creative director eric holmes tells game informer that a christmas theme was chosen due to how the prettiness of christmas contrasts with the ugliness of gotham here's the quote it's a beautiful thing in an ugly place it adds an ironic humor to things without breaking the seriousness of the theme which is really fun for us the voice cast was also changed up for arkham origins since wb montreal wanted these characters to sound similar but younger compared to the voices we've heard in the other arkham games most notably kevin conroy has been subbed out for roger craig smith as batman while troy baker takes over the role of joker from mark hamill although kevin conroy and mark hamill are legendary voices of batman and joker respectively i do think it was the right decision to bring in some new voices for this prequel however we'll discuss how these new actors did when we get to the audio section of the video there were also some really incredible cg trailers released to promote the game one in particular shows a fight between batman and deathstroke and it's honestly my favorite cg trailer that i've ever seen for a game it's pretty long so i don't think i can show all of it but i'll show the best part the deathstroke fight during the chapter break for the gameplay section batman arkham origins released in october 2013 to ps3 xbox 360 wii u and pc for this video i played the pc version of the game which is where all the gameplay clips that you'll see came from i should mention that i also played the game using a gamepad specifically an xbox one controller so if you see any xbox button prompts appear that's why also if you enjoy this video i'd appreciate it if you gave it a like since it helps the channel and you can also subscribe if you'd like to see more retrospectives like this one my goal for this video was to be as comprehensive as possible and as i'm sure you've already noticed this will be a much longer video so kick back relax and let's start by delving into the story of batman arkham origins so the intro cut scene of this was actually getting copyright flags for the score so i'll have to describe it a bit which is a shame because it's actually a pretty badass cutscene to start it opens with a lot of frantic cuts as the bats run from bruce as he enters the bat cave i like this a lot since it immediately gives us a sense of fear associated with bruce we also get a lot of story background in this one cut scene as bruce watches the news from the bat computer the news states that gotham is under a severe winter storm warning urging the citizens to stay in their homes until everything is cleared this provides a story reason as to why gotham city is free of innocent bystanders but full of criminals and corrupt cops the news also announces the arrest of julian day aka the calendar man a killer whose murders are associated with various holidays calendar man has been given the death penalty with the execution date set for tonight which is ironically christmas eve giving the announcement is gotham's commissioner loeb not james gordon this is so early on in batman's career that gordon hasn't even become commissioner yet and currently holds the ranked captain gordon does respond on the news regarding batman though denying his existence batman is seen as more of a mythological figure at this point with gotham unsure if he's good bad human or if he even exists we next get news of a breakout at black gate prison led by roman scionis aka black mask black mask has reportedly taken commissioner loeb hostage so it's up to batman to rescue him we get the suit up sequence as bruce goes into batman mode and we take the batwing to blackgate prison to stop the riots and save commissioner loeb as soon as we enter the prison we rescue warden joseph from one of black mask thugs understandably terrified by this whole ordeal he panics and takes a swing at us too once he calms down he points us in the direction of black mask if we talk to him more we'll find out that he was complicit to a degree with this breakout apparently black mask threatened his family requesting that he clear his men out of one of the wings in blackgate out of fear the warden obliged we'll later see a clip of this which indicates how he lost his eye as we continue through the prison we spot a random drone flying through but we don't know who it belongs to yet we also come across news reporter vicki vale and need to save her from some of black mask thugs one of our first combat encounters in the game regarding the combat it's pretty much the same as the other arkham games you'll have your basic attack button causing batman to strike enemies and you have a counter button that you'll press right before the enemy attacks you as indicated by the glowing lines above their heads stringing together combos is important since you'll get progressively faster and gain the ability to take an enemy down immediately once you reach a combo of 5 or higher based on the skills that you've unlocked you're also incentivized not to button mash since improperly timing attacks will often reset your combo counter back to zero hindering your effectiveness it's a relatively simple system but it's fast paced and tests your reflexes which makes it a lot of fun eventually we encounter black mask as he parades commissioner loeb through the prison and towards the execution chamber with the meta knowledge that one day gordon will become commissioner it's safe to say things aren't looking too good for loeb right now along with them is killer croc and this is batman's first encounter with him croc appears to be the muscle of the breakout brute forcing his way through the prison as we continue our pursuit we have to make our way through calendar man's cell which has a couple interesting details there are of course a ton of calendars scattered within it but julian has also etched a to-do list into the wall the top one with a big circle around it is judge harkness in the audio files we learned that harkness was highly against julian pleading insanity for the trial he wanted julian tried as a sane man so he could give him the death penalty it was also judge harkness who decided on christmas eve as the execution date calling it poetic justice so this is likely why he's on calendar man's hit list we can also see a note on the wall that reads happy holidays julian with the initials hq i believe this is a note from harleen quinzel who will later know as joker's girlfriend harley quinn she hasn't gone full clown princess at this point in time and is instead a psychiatric intern at blackgate she was tasked with giving the initial psychological evaluation of calendar man who she deemed insane however at the behest of the judge warden joseph ordered her to re-evaluate him but this time mark him as sane if she didn't he threatened to fire her she reluctantly agreed but managed to talk her way into evaluating all new criminals as they enter the prison which will be important later there's also another audiophile where she's calling a patient on behalf of the office of psychiatrist dr hugo strange a villain will become very familiar with in batman arkham city furthermore we can even find strange's office called strange minds as well as a poster for his self-help seminars continuing through the prison though we eventually make it to the execution chamber as black mask frees calendar man and replaces him with commissioner loeb before batman can make it into the room they flip the gas chamber on and loeb is killed even though loeb was an extremely corrupt cop batman is pissed that black mask murdered someone and continues to pursue him along the way we come across that drone from earlier smashed by killer croc batman removes the memory card for future analysis and continues to the roof of the prison by the time we catch up black mask and his men have already boarded the helicopter and made their escape however killer croc has an enhanced sense of smell and was able to tell that we were nearby so he waits to handle us himself leading into our first boss fight of the game croc is incredibly quick and powerful so we can't beat him head on instead we'll use our cape to stun him and then pummel him while he's dazed after a while he'll pick up an explosive canister to throw at us but if we launch a batarang at it it'll explode on him instead croc will also occasionally grab us and attempt to bite our head off which is really terrifying i feel bad about this but i wanted to see what would happen if i didn't push him off and you can rest easy knowing that he doesn't successfully bite your head off instead batman uses his gauntlet as a defense for first boss fight though kroc is pretty solid he tests your basic combat skills and also requires you to use your quickfire batarangs which will be handy in later fights as well he's challenging without being too overwhelming and i think he was a good introductory battle but after doing enough damage to croc we get the upper hand and interrogate him for info on black mask instead kroc reveals that mask put a bounty on batman's head calling in different assassins to kill the bat for a cash prize gordon shows up attempting to arrest batman and croc but batman manages to escape into the batwing leaving croc to be apprehended by the police we then returned back to the bat cave to analyze the memory card from that drone and learned that it's been spending a lot of time spying on black mask recently giving us info on the bounty as well as the specific assassins that are after us the best in the business black mask isn't messing around slade wilson death stroke former military subject of a failed medical experiment failed you see garfield lens aka firefly burns on 90 of his body his obsession is going to be his end how unlike anyone i know here's a face i don't recognize copperhead strange these reports reference a male not a female 14 escapes huh well you won't forget not what the [Music] floyd lawton aka deadshot says here he's an expert sharpshooter yeah suspected of many assassinations dangerous but reckless street tough named lester bachinski calls himself electrocutioner shocking shiva her skill is unmatched [Music] vayne here and gotham why would he be taking money as a hired killer there are a couple details that i thought were interesting during this cutscene as well the first is that wb montreal used a location from arkham city for deathstroke's introduction the museum where we face penguin batman also mentions the records for copperhead reference email which is a sly nod to the fact that copperhead was a male in the comics while we're in the bat cave we can take a moment to explore and see what batman's been up to one of my favorite details is batman's crime board the first column of investigation seems to be based on the various crime families in gotham specifically the falcones and the moroneys who are often going to war with each other there's a post-it note reading case closed moroni so it seems the trial is in motion for the morones at least as far as the falcones we won't see much of them in the game but we will see alberto falcone a bit later on son of crime lord carmine falcone the third column on the board is for calendar man which was kind of resolved up until black mask set him free lastly is the middle column focusing on the red hood gang this is separate from the future character red hood who we won't see until batman arkham night instead this is a gang whose leader is often seen wearing a red helmet and a red cape we'll talk about this one a lot more as we get deeper into the story though so keep that in mind also in the batcave is an incomplete batmobile with blueprints and parts around it we'll later see the same batmobile completed at the beginning of arkham asylum there's also a workshop where we'll pick up new gadgets and we can see that bruce is working on building the line launcher a gadget will have access to in the later games there's also a medical center and a training area in the bat cave and it's really cool being able to roam around the cave and explore i also like how you can pop in and have conversations with alfred occasionally too i feel bad for him though he'll often mention how he's concerned for bruce and how he wishes he could just stay home so they could have christmas dinner and open gifts together he'll also occasionally mention how he's being harassed by a giant bat in the cave who he calls king bat i've seen a rather large bat in the cave sir do take care not to anger it i wasn't planning to good with everything occurring tonight the last thing we need is a pest problem i'm sure it's harmless alfred you haven't seen the creature this is likely the bat we saw during that opening cut scene but despite alfred's wishes that we stay home we continue our investigation into black mask this time heading to jezebel plaza the location where the drone was meant to return after spying on black mask when we get to jezebel plaza we discover an arms deal going down led by penguin's crew batman wants to question penguin about what he knows and decides that the leader of this arms deal is the best one to interrogate that's this guy with the santa hat ricky loose lips leblanc after taking out the rest of his crew batman takes a crack at interrogating him [Music] where's the penguin i don't know where is he i swear damn batman goes a little too hard here and accidentally causes ricky to pass out this is a good example of how wb montreal tried to show batman as more of a novice at the vigilante thing in an interview with game reactor ben mattis describes how they approach batman making mistakes early in his career it's not cool to trip over your cape it's not cool to get stabbed in the leg when you're trying to save someone that's not a heroic empowering batman we like to say when our character makes mistakes they're awesome mistakes this is definitely an awesome mistake since batman was a little too badass in that moment but he still has to find a way to make ricky talk when ricky finally wakes up he's in for an even worse interrogation than before wake up what happened time to talk where's cobblepot let it go if you insist as he's dangling from the building ricky's phone starts to go off and it's a message from the penguin ricky is willing to talk now but batman no longer needs him since he can just trace penguin's location from the sim card instead of reeling ricky back up he just drops him onto the christmas tree below which i think is hilarious also i just want to mention how incredible some of these shots are in these cut scenes they really did an excellent job of lining up the perfect angles and i especially love how batman looks with the moon as a backdrop he really does look terrifying in one of the behind the scenes videos we get a glimpse of how these cutscenes were directed and they used a device that operates as a virtual camera which was really interesting we're using all in-game assets for sure and we're filming them with a virtual camera it's like a joystick with a screen yeah and the screen shows me what i see in the virtual world yeah so if i move around it's like being in that world it's given us a bit of that handheld feeling so it's giving us some realism now that we have penguin signal we're able to track him to an old cruise ship that's been transformed into a hideout upon arrival there's a pretty cool easter egg on the wall a flyer for a psychological study conducted by jonathan crane crane later becomes the villain scarecrow but starts off as a psychologist interested in the way the brain processes fear his study is likely on this topic and foreshadows his eventual rise to villainy inside the final offer we learn this is also the same night the penguin is conducting a fighting arena on the boiler deck with the winner getting a chance to go up against his prize fighter the electrocutioner one of the eight assassins tasked with killing batman batman drops in on the boiler deck and electrocutioner comes out to handle him just saved me a lot of trouble coming here batman he's set up to be our next boss fight and he's ready to rumble he's incredibly arrogant but it turns out that he's all bark no bite and batman takes him out with one hit who wants to show me where the penguin is i thought this was pretty funny and i like how they even gave him a full health bar as he entered the arena it reminded me a lot of the mysterio fight from spider-man 2 the way the player is made to think that this will be an intense fight only for it to end as soon as you press the attack button but with electrocutioner down penguin's right-hand woman tracy tells all the henchmen to rush batman and take him down after taking them all out we can continue our hunt for penguin as we progress through the ship tracy sends us a message over the intercom telling us that electrocutioner has woken up and escaped this is another mistake on batman's end and he acknowledges that he should have tied him up and sent the cops to retrieve him however in the theme of batman making awesome mistakes he's able to turn this negative into a positive by having alfred scan the city for energy signatures matching electrocutioner's gloves while alfred gets to work on that we continue to pursue penguin continuing through the ship we also find an easter egg based on this replica penguin's voiceover of the ship mentions that it was at one point called the olivia be meredith which is a nod to the 1960s batman show where the actor portraying penguin was named oliver burgess meredith we can also enter penguin's office which has a few other easter eggs within it first in one of the cases we can see a bunch of umbrellas which is his trademark weapon in the comics penguin has umbrellas that conceal various weapons usually a gun but sometimes a knockout gas or some kind of propeller he can use to fly we can also find a newspaper on the wall stating that gotham is now the second most dangerous city which makes me nervous for whatever city is the first we can also find blueprints for the iceberg lounge which will end up being penguin's new base of operations later on there's also a list of planned hijackings naming three noteworthy companies there's ammertech which used to employ the character john henry irons who later becomes the hero steel if that sounds familiar you might recognize him from his unfortunate movie where he's played by shaq there's also lex corp the company owned by superman nemesis lex luthor last on the list is queen industries owned by oliver queen aka the green arrow next to this list is another one for weapon orders from the various assassins in gotham like deathstroke and deadshot bane even has his own special box down below full of rockets and rocket launchers something we'll see him using later in the story eventually we track down penguin as he tortures alberto falcone penguin's goal is to convince alberto to talk his father into leaving the weapons business leaving it open for penguin to take over batman interrupts and starts to beat on penguin for information about black mask he's successful as penguin tells him to investigate lacie towers black masks penthouse hideaway before he can tell us more we're interrupted by another assassin deathstroke this brings us back into the fighting pit against an extremely skilled opponent deathstroke is a weapons expert and highly skilled martial artist batman is as well but deathstroke matches his skill making him a major threat and he's commonly considered to be one of the deadliest assassins in the dc universe so this is going to be a big step up from the enemies we face prior to this this is also potentially my favorite boss fight in the game since it feels like a really tense one-on-one battle you won't do well button matching against deathstroke since he can block your attacks and take advantage of any openings you give him even with the attack indicators over his head you still need to stay on your toes as he'll attack quickly often multiple times the fight itself is pretty straightforward attack when you can encounter strikes but it's a fairly long battle and too many errors can be your downfall as the fight progresses he'll become more aggressive and attack more frequently eventually batman will break his staff and he'll pull out a sword giving him new attack animations that you'll have to adapt to i love this though because both of them feel evenly matched and it feels like you really have to focus during this entire fight i think wb montreal really nailed the feeling of a deathstroke boss battle and i go so far as to say that it's one of the best boss fights in the entire arkham series not even just from origins by the way just a fun detail about deathstroke is that he was the inspiration for marvel's deadpool deathstroke was introduced to comics first nearly a decade before marvel would use him as the baseline for deadpool both are skilled mercenaries and you can see similarities in their costumes marvel didn't even play koi about it naming their characters alter ego nearly the same thing as dc's deathstroke is slade wilson while deadpool is wade wilson but anyway after finally taking down deathstroke batman takes one of his gadgets for himself the remote claw a unique gadget to this game although it has similar components to the line launcher meanwhile penguin has taken advantage of deathstroke's unintentional distraction reaching higher ground to taunt us before heading inside his locked room with the ladies we can't get to penguin now but we can still use the lead he gave us earlier which was to investigate black masks hideout in lacey towers when we arrive we see that it's a murder crime scene there's a woman hanging from a chandelier and a dead body on the floor who appears to be black mask using our detective vision we can scan the room for evidence to start to piece together what happened we also find the woman's phone showing text between her and roman cyanus where she's worried about someone named the joker at this point in time batman hasn't encountered the joker so he's unsure of who that is after analyzing the rest of the clues batman is able to get a decent idea of what went down at the crime scene but needs to access the gotham city police department's criminal database system in order to run some dna samples this means we'll have to break into the gcpd and access their server room to complete our investigation that's where we head next and begin our infiltration of the police department even though these are all police officers batman shows no mercy in taking them down alfred is clearly distressed by this asking him to take it easy on them since they're just city employees batman declines stating that they're all incredibly corrupt and in his way in a lot of superhero games you won't beat up cops but in this game they're one of your main enemy types the game goes to a lot of effort to prove that the gotham city police force is incredibly corrupt and violent though everyone except for gordon just in these next couple rooms we'll see cops beating up on the homeless and large blood stains in the interrogation rooms just a couple small examples of how cruel this police force can be to further emphasize that the police are batman's enemy we'll overhear a meeting where corrupt swat leader brandon informs his men that he struck a deal with black mask to include them on the bounty for batman's head if any of them kill the bat they'll all split to 50 million so batman has no friends on this police force while we're in this room though batman says to himself that he won't stand a chance against this many armed men and that we should sneak past them i wanted to test that out though since i was curious to see if there were any easter eggs for beating them all up it was tough but i was actually able to do it unfortunately nothing happens if you do but it was still fun though nevertheless our journey through the gcpd brings us into contact with our old friend lou slips again by the way that is not a nickname you want in prison anyway loose lips is under interrogation and reveals the cops have locked up a gadget of his an electronic disrupter batman decides to interrogate him again to learn more about the device and we take a detour to evidence lockup to retrieve it along the way we also overhear an argument between gordon and his daughter barbara it seems that barbara believes that batman is an ally and what he's doing is justified gordon disagrees barbara storms off and gordon follows her we can actually then investigate his office but there's not a lot of interesting details in it there are criminal boards of the people gordon is hunting as well as his degree from chicago green university i never knew his middle name was worthington though there's also a photo on his desk of who i believe to be his wife barbara keane since that looks to be red hair to me however barbara keane and james eventually get a divorce in the comics and he later remarries a woman named sarah essen so it's possible that it's actually sarah in this photo and not barbara but i couldn't find any confirmation either way eventually we make it to the evidence lockup and retrieve the disrupter to help us continue through the precinct as we're leaving though a huge riot has begun in the holding cells not far from us we immediately jump in and take down the rioting convicts containing the riot before it's able to spread through the building we weren't quite fast enough though since it seems one cop was severely wounded and paramedics are attempting to defibrillate him back to life playing through this the first time i thought it was odd how the paramedics were here and seemingly given a spotlight by the game for no reason you can't interact with them and they pay no mind to the giant bat running through the hall but the seemingly inconsequential moment is actually setting something up in the future so more on that later but now that we have the disrupter we can enter the server room and gain access to the national criminal database to our surprise gordon's daughter is also in the server room and we have a brief interaction with her she points us to the server that will gain us access to the database and she shows a lot of interest in batman's tech we also learned that she's very tech savvy with advanced hacking knowledge if you're unfamiliar with the character barbara gordon later becomes the heroine batgirl and also has a stint as batman's tech expert at the bat cave going by the code name oracle unfortunately our interaction with her is cut short as brandon and his men shoot a gas canister into the room to weaken the bat barbara rushes over to cover for us and buys us enough time to escape as we're leaving we can hear brandon communicating over the waukee with one of his men arguing over whether batman has a gun on him this could be a slight reference to the early days of batman comics where he actually did carry a gun it wasn't until later that dc decided that it was best to remove that from his arsenal as we're leaving the gcpd via elevator we inadvertently run into gordon my side works within the law my side doesn't leave suspects with broken bones and missing teeth we've earned gotham's respect if that were true i wouldn't believe it gordon clear the line of fire hold your fire if he moves take him down you've got nowhere to run move gordon i'm taking him down we take out brandon and his men but gordon was incapacitated from when we threw him against the wall we'll have to leave him there for now and continue our investigation of the murder scene with access to the criminal database batman is able to solve the murder someone spooked zionist's girlfriend so he sent her to his safe house which was anything but safe zionists showed up later ready for trouble and found it or so it seemed roman's always been paranoid that's probably why he's lasted this long he'd sent him a decoy giving himself the element of surprise but it wasn't enough there was a fight zionist lost the killer didn't hesitate to shoot the decoy but he wanted roman alive to access the cash door to the gotham merchants bank with zionist under control all that remained was to tie up loose ends but it wasn't the fire that killed cyanus girlfriend [Music] what kind of monster forces a man to kill the ones he loves the joker he's the shadow i've been chasing and now i know where he's going next gotham merchants bank with the murder solved we next head to gotham merchants bank in hopes of thwarting the joker's heist and rescue roman cyanus by the time we arrive though joker has already done a ton of damage killing all of the guards and some of black masks men displaying them all around the bank a few of them also have a tv smashed over their heads calling back to a similar gag joker used in the arkham asylum game i also like how on this desk you can see some magazines from the gotham informer which i think is based on the real-life national enquirer with inflammatory headlines meant to get you to impulse by them one references bruce wayne being drunk and out of control while the other mentions that gotham will be receiving 400 inches of snow there's also a sub headline about a crocodile in the gotham sewers which is a reference to killer croc even though joker has caused a lot of destruction here it seems he hasn't left the building yet so we decided to drop in for the big reveal i think you can just waltz under my bank huh roman i'm here for the joker the joker never heard him how about you dog no the joker the who and you sir name joker ring a bell you son of a you think you can steal from me and get away with it you're a dead man dead you shall play in along it's been you this whole time you hired the assassins you've been running zionist's operation well technically it's my operation now isn't that right boys you've got me now let her go oh life would be so simple if you were all i wanted no no you're just a teeny little distraction compared to what i've got of my sleeve here have a laugh on me you hear that sounds like eight tiny reindeer so let's talk about this reveal for a moment because i know there are a lot of different opinions on it and i personally feel split on it myself on the one hand i see why wb montreal would have joker impersonating black mask most of the game it sounds like a very joker thing to do and it quickly gives him access to a lot of money and henchmen however it comes off feeling very lackluster and i think there are a couple reasons why firstly i think in general twists involving a character taking off a mask and it turns out it was someone else the entire time rarely feel earned it feels like an easy twist for some quick shock factor secondly my other problem is more on a meta level and it's the fact that it's joker yet again at this point in time it felt like the joker was the lead villain for everything batman including the last two arkham games when arkham origins was announced it was exciting to hear that a new villain would be receiving the spotlight especially a more obscure character like black mask this would give wb montreal the opportunity to provide some fresh character development and background to an underutilized character in the arkham series and introduce black mask to new fans that have likely never heard of him when this reveal occurs and you learn that it was joker all along that strips all the character development away from black mask and gives it to a character that has been arguably overused throughout recent years so on those two fronts it feels like a disappointing reveal for me since this is an origin story though i know it's inevitable that the joker has to be introduced since he's such a prominent figure in the later games but i think he could have taken a bit of a back seat in favor of a different villain at least for the first half of the game also i hope i'm not coming off as a joker hater i actually really love the character and enjoy seeing him pop up in various games movies and comics but i like a lot of other batman villains too so i would have liked to have seen the joker introduced here in a way that didn't detract from another villain however i do still appreciate that wb montreal took a few steps to tease up this fake out for example as you're cruising through gotham early on in the game some thugs will mention how black mask has been acting differently lately and joking around more more subtly they even gave black mask different eye colors based on when he's the joker in the character files it lists joker as having green eyes and roman cyanus brown eyes when joker is black mask we can see he does in fact have green eyes additionally i think they had troy baker voice black mask during the scenes where it's actually joker under the mask brian bloom is credited as voicing black mask but i think that's specifically for roman cyanus since the voices do sound slightly different with ciana's sounding more gruff and you sir name joker ring a bell you son of a you think you can steal from me i got away with it you're a dead man i couldn't confirm that troy voiced these scenes but it sounds different enough to me and troy baker definitely has the range to pull it off i bring this up because i definitely feel more cheated if they had a separate voice actor playing black mask during scenes where it's supposed to be joker so i'm glad they didn't go that route continuing on though joker is now officially the main villain from here on out and we have to hunt him down batman wakes up to a truly horrific sight as we learn that the bank manager injected with joker toxin is dead to make matters worse joker has sent more of his henchmen to double check that we're dead as well we take them out but save one for last to interrogate him on joker's whereabouts he tells us that joker has taken over cionus's steel mill and is using it as a hideout batman presumes joker is likely to kill cyanus at that location so we head there next once inside the steel mill we can find folders for some of the rejected assassins that joker considered for the bounty there's david kane a master assassin that actually helped to train young bruce wayne for a time david also had a child with shiva one of the assassins that was approved to hunt us the child is cassandra kane who has held the mantle of batgirl in the comics there's also cheshire she's often a rival of the teen titans but ended up falling for one of its members and having a child with him that teen titan member was roy harper also known as arsenal the last assassin is black spider who sees himself more as a vigilante often targeting the drug trade unlike batman though black spider is willing to kill to achieve his goals which regularly pits them against each other i don't think it's ever stated why these assassins were rejected by the joker but i have to imagine it's because joker might have viewed their backgrounds as unreliable making him unsure that they wouldn't just switch sides and team up with batman but that's just my own guess as we infiltrate the steel mill we noticed some of the henchmen using a hidden door to a concealed room we break our way in and come across a joker thug screaming for help only to then die in an elevator after scanning his body we learned that he was poisoned somehow prior to entering the elevator that's certainly strange but we have to continue our hunt for joker and cionus after taking the elevator down we discover a hidden drug lab where sionis is being held captive inside one of the rooms we find cyanus chained up after freeing him batman interrogates him but still hasn't learned to mind his surroundings allowing another assassin to sneak up on him mid interrogation this time it's copperhead an incredibly flexible and poisonous assassin during a behind the scenes video we're given some insight into how copperhead's motion capture was accomplished and the team needed two different specialized performers just for this one character so it quickly became evident that with the kind of skills that were necessary we really needed two different stunt performers specialists in their field one was more of a circus performer because we needed there to be contortionists and move in a really slinky sexy way [Music] and then when it came for the fighting we went with a stunt actress that specializes in fighting action we used a combination of various things including some acrobatics and some capoeira like moves and as soon as that goes let that teeter-totter you straight into the handstand it'll look really good and with a bit of assistance with wires and stuff she made these amazing moves which were quite brutal it's really interesting seeing how they were able to bring copperhead to life and it's even more interesting seeing these actors perform these intricate moves for the game in real life going back to the game itself though copperhead gets the upper hand on batman for a moment poisoning him the same way that the thug was poisoned in the elevator copperhead retreats to the rafters again assuming we're a dead man walking we scan the room for any remnants of the neurotoxin and send our analysis to alfred so he can immediately develop an antidote in the meantime bruce tries to muster enough strength to reach the main level again along the way he starts to experience hallucinations personifying his internal turmoil and guilt kind of reminiscent of the scarecrow levels in arkham asylum one hallucination is of alfred telling bruce how his family would be disappointed if they could see him now and how he's only a spoiled brat with too much money another is how he failed to save commissioner loeb from the gas chamber the last and certainly most creepy one is of the bank manager how many more must perish before you realize savior you're a curse upon this city a plague on all of gotham leave us alone we were better off without you as we make our way to the exit copperhead returns to stop us but we're still hallucinating and see multiple versions of her at once this leads to our boss fight against her as we have to fight off all the hallucinations of her as well as the real version she's not too difficult compared to the other swarms of enemies we faced before and we mostly have to outlast her until alfred is able to send in the antidote once we have that we're easily able to handle copperhead and subdue her to keep her contained batman ties her up and throws her inside the back of a truck as a last-ditch effort to earn her escape she decides to give up the joker's location she mentions that all of the assassins are meeting tonight and that she knows the location unfortunately for her that's enough info for batman so he locks her up anyway if all of the assassins will be meeting tonight with joker then batman can track the energy signal of electrocutioner's gloves to pinpoint the location of the meeting this brings us to the gotham royal hotel and it seems the meeting is occurring on one of the higher floors however we'll need to break in from the basement and work our way up eventually we make our way into the security room and watch their meeting take place friends assassins welcome to our first quarterly performance review as you can see here batman deaths are coming in far below projections we are really gonna have to turn this around and by we i mean you got that mr kushner just who the hell are you i'm the guy with the money and the gun so when i hire you to kill the batman you should shut the hell up and kill the batman so do you have anything else to contribute i didn't think so [Music] this fruitcake is fantastic anyone want a piece all right meetings adjourned get out there and kill the bat move it along big boy no he's coming for you now and when he gets here i'm going to kill him so you wait well this should be interesting electrocutioner really feels like the taser face of arkham origins extremely arrogant but seen as a joke every time he shows up he gets one-shotted by someone too he's legit dead now as well but waste not want not batman takes electrocutioner's gloves and applies them to his gauntlets this allows us to power up certain terminals gaining access to previously inaccessible locations in this case we power up the lift to get us within range of an open window to the hotel eventually we make it to the hotel's ballroom the joker is converted into his own makeshift amusement park over the intercom joker describes how he acquired all of the equipment for it where did i get all of this you well i got a great deal on an out of service amusement park oh you should have seen the look on the real estate agent's face when we shook hands on the deal [Music] this is likely a reference to the killing joke graphic novel a story we'll be referencing a few times in this video in that story joker meets up with a guy selling an amusement park and tells him he'll buy it for more than it's worth as they shake hands on the deal it's revealed that joker attached the device to the palm of his hand pricking the cellar and transmitting joker toxin into him the last we see of the seller he's dead with that classic joker grin also in this area we can see a poster for a cancelled show at the circus starring the flying graysons and their trapeze act this is in reference to the flying graysons in the comics a family who performed death-defying trapeze acts one of the family members is dick grayson the sole survivor after his parents were murdered leaving him orphaned and later adopted by bruce wayne dick grayson later becomes robin until he decides to rebrand himself as nightwing the rest of joker's mini amusement park contain his own twisted carnival games where different thugs lives hang in the balance for example popping balloons in the proper sequence to prevent this henchman from being electrocuted to death after successfully completing his different trials and beating up more thugs we make it out of joker's carnival and continue through the hotel once we make it to the top we find an area littered with explosives the joker rigs to explode in a matter of seconds meaning we'll have to dive out the window to survive arkham city has a very similar setup where you have to dive out a window before being blown up by the joker but in that one if you wait past the countdown you get some additional easter egg voice lines from the joker i thought maybe it was the same case here but no you just die i guess that makes thematic sense though because the joker isn't infatuated with batman yet and doesn't care if he dies where in arkham city joker has a different relationship towards him and is more playful in a way but after we actually dive through the window we hitch a ride to a news helicopter housing vicki vale as she reports the crime in progress as we approach the building you can also see two statues referencing the horde of owl's villain group from the comics specifically talons a group of assassins that serve the court on the rooftop are also a bunch of criminals so we jump off to face them while vicky's news helicopter records the whole thing this leads to a brief sequence where we control batman through the perspective of the news cameras which i thought was pretty cool it was also so seamless that i didn't even realize the cutscene had ended and that i was back in control this is also the first time that batman has been caught on camera and broadcast to the public meaning that the world will now know that batman is in fact real vicki vale eventually leaves and we're left to the rest of these henchmen after taking them out we continue through more of the hotel at which point alfred radio's in concerned for bruce sir i've just seen the explosion of the gotham royal on the news of the hotel guests are they safe not now alfred sir are you all right your voice i'm fine alfred i've dealt with psychopaths before but this i strongly suggest you call in captain gordon he could be a valuable ally for you i don't need any allies throughout this game bruce will often be really rude and unappreciative of alfred and this is another example bruce also has it in his head that he has to do everything alone and either out of stubbornness or arrogance he refuses the need for additional allies a mindset that alfred is getting increasingly tired of in the next room we stealth fully take out more of joker's men and then enter the elevator to the penthouse the location where joker is waiting with bane batman knows that they'll immediately check the elevator when it arrives so he cleverly decides to hide on top of it instead so that he can easily sneak up on whoever oh nice of you to drop in and just in time [Music] remember you gave your word [Music] you have one minute do they even have manners where he comes from you see it's a tradition in my house to open one present each on christmas eve how about [Music] this one a construction site blocking my view [Music] but this one isn't i've long waited for this moment with your death i will find peace now that we're on to the fight against bain i want to take a brief moment to discuss him because i think wb montreal really excelled with his portrayal in the last cut scene alone they demonstrate just how imposing he is both physically and mentally i think it was clever to have him yank batman down from the elevator showing that batman can't easily outsmart him and the sound effects of bane's punches land with a thunderous weight that always makes me wince he's really scary in this game with not only his intimidating size and strength but also intellect to match and i always prefer smart bane compared to the dumb brute we often get [Music] [Applause] bane is legitimately both smart and strong in the comics with his main weakness being the drug venom that he takes to increase his strength this is why he has those green cables attached to him since they're pumping the venom directly into his body although this drug gives him immense strength bane is highly dependent on it and it can offer debilitating side effects as we'll see later in the game for now though bane is a challenging fight we'll start off fighting in this hotel room until bane launches us out the window back onto the balcony alfred is nervous for bruce and decides to call gordon for back up against his wishes until gordon arrives we have to hold off bane and attempt to take him down but that's a lot easier said than done he's hopped up on venom and is incredibly strong allowing him to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time his ability to charge attis is also a lot harder to dodge this time compared to when he does it in arkham asylum in that game you can just dodge and let him run into the walls here he won't run into the walls and has a great turn radius so he can chase you down very rapidly you also can't vault over him or else you'll take damage so he can be tricky to avoid his character model is also incredibly creepy and i felt legitimately scared of him during this fight i think it's the giant mouth with the exposed teeth that look unnatural as well as the glowing green eyes he's legit terrifying and i love it he's scary like this in the comics too with bruce appearing visually worried to face him in the nightfall comics so i'm glad this game was able to emulate that feeling for me in order to beat him though we have to dodge his attacks and perform takedowns to strip the tubes from his back the shot gloves also give us an edge since we can attack him more directly while they're powered up after a while though gordon and his men finally arrive with the overwhelming amount of police now on the scene bane decides that a retreat is best joker thinks he's being a coward and fires his gun at bane's escape helicopter in retaliation bane fires a rocket launcher at him bane misses but the explosion launches joker off the building sending him free falling towards the pavement batman sees joker fall off the roof and instead of just letting the joker die and calling it a day he decides to rescue him joker still crazy as ever decides to try and attack his savior when they safely make it down to the ground joker is rightfully confused now why why why would you do that [Music] newsflash i'm the one who's trying to kill you those were two very very bad man who the things they've done you really don't want to know they deserved death just like don't move freak i think he's talking to you take them down let me guess he got away take him to blackgate my partner who else would jump off a building to save your sorry ass you know officer i was wondering the same thing myself to my surprise the game detours us away from batman and gives us more background on joker which i actually think was a very smart decision even though i wasn't a huge fan of that black mask twist i do think wb montreal give joker some excellent character development from here on out including explaining his fascination with batman now that joker's arrived at prison he's required to be examined by psychologist harley quinn per her agreement with the warden harley wants to better understand the joker and he gives her a monologue regarding his past beginning by asking harley if she's ever had a really bad day this is another nod to the killing joke where joker presumes that everyone has the capacity to go crazy like him all it takes is one bad day that's how it happened for him and he's corrected that batman started out the same way the day his parents were murdered in front of him in the killing joke joker aims to prove this theory by giving gordon one really bad day to see if it makes him crazy but i won't spoil how that goes here in case you'd like to check it out for yourself however we do need to discuss the origin that they give joker in that comic because it's used as the basis for his origin as he describes it here to harley in the game we start by seeing joker performing stand up at a comedy club but gets booed off stage in the comic prior to becoming the joker he was an aspiring comedian but was largely unsuccessful at it to make matters worse his girlfriend was pregnant and they were broke which only put more pressure on his failures in an attempt to scrounge up some money fast he reluctantly agreed to help the red hood gang with a robbery when they approached him for help prior to trying to become a comedian he worked as a lab assistant at the ace chemical plant something the red hood gang felt they could exploit they needed someone who knew the chemical plant inside and out to navigate them through it so they could rob the place next to it prior to the robbery joker learns that his wife an unborn child died in an electrical accident but the red hood gang still forced him to assist in the robbery the day of the robbery the red hood gang place a red helmet and cape over his head to conceal his identity or so they tell him in all actuality this was their ploy to evade the police they make him look like the leader of the gang so the police will focus on him instead of the actual gang members it works since when they accidentally trip the alarm the police and batman focus on who they perceive to be the leader in a panic he jumps off the ledge and into the water of the ace chemical plant turning his skin pale white and his hair green transforming him into the joker the game doesn't give this information directly and is instead more of a dreamlike interpretation of it as we watch joker walk around in the red hood attire this obscurity is likely intentional because even in the killing joke joker admits that he often remembers his origin differently and that if he had to pick a past for himself it would be multiple choice as we continue walking through joker's mind he'll occasionally have visions of a giant bat creature and prior to its appearance we can see a blink and you miss it flash of something before it shows up it's nothing too major but the flashes are of a couple different images reminiscent of a rorschach inkblot test that you might receive from your psychiatrist the first one looks like a bat then the next one kind of explodes in brightness before transforming into the final one that kinda looks like a face with a crazy smile with bats flying around it maybe i'm just projecting my own subconscious onto it but i think it's cool the way it combines elements of both batman and joker's iconography to demonstrate how the two are fused together in joker's mind throughout the scene we can hear joker's conversation with harley as he details his thoughts on fate he now believes that there are no chance encounters and that everything has been building up to the moment he would meet someone special and how meeting that special someone has changed his life and perspective of everything of course he's referring to batman and how he feels that batman is the same as him but harley assumes he's talking about her teasing up their twisted relationship i think this was very well written and not only details joker's perspective on batman and the relationship they have but it also forms the basis of how harley felt for the joker joker and harley have a terrible relationship where joker is often abusive and takes advantage of her so having harley foolishly misunderstand joker's words here and him take advantage of that feels very true to those characters i also love how it then transitions to batman having a similar internal struggle about the man that he met tonight as he has flashbacks of his interaction with joker this leads us to a minor dream sequence similar to one of these scarecrow sequences in arkham asylum where batman takes a stroll down crime alley and witnesses the death of his parents again as he ponders why he does what he does if you're wondering why batman decided to save the joker it's never explicitly stated in the game his no kill rule is because he feels like if he kills once he'll lose control and kill more but in this case he wouldn't have killed the joker and totally could have pulled the i won't kill you but i don't have to save you so why did he save the joker i think it's meant to be an unclear answer that maybe bruce isn't even too sure of and it definitely makes batman all the more fascinating to joker my personal interpretation is that bruce believes in the rehabilitation for even the worst criminals and that he wants to prevent any death that he can in order to honor his parents it's of course very open to interpretation though so i'd be very curious to hear what you all think but even with the joker behind bars the night still isn't over since bane is still on the loose the police scanner picks up a report of someone matching bane's description being killed and held at the morgue batman decides to head their next to inspect the body and confirm whether or not it's bane alfred doesn't approve and is tired of bruce rushing out to risk his life unnecessarily alfred's had enough which leads to this incredible cut scene between the two of them master bruce stop master bruce bruce i will not in good conscience allow you to go you're outmatched by these messages you're not some hardened vigilante you're a young man with a trust fund and too much anger go in over your head tonight i don't want this to be your end alfred who do you see when you look at me the boy whose shoes you use to tie every morning the teenager you drove to his first date while you are here every night i am out there the only thing between the innocent i am when the mugger or the thief stops to think twice that is fear that is what i am that is why they hired assassins because i am the reason the criminals breathe easier when the sun rises so no albert i am not in over my head [Music] but it will be theirs this could be my favorite cut scene in the game just from a pure character development standpoint it's short but it goes a long way to show bruce and alfred's perspectives on bruce's crusade alfred is genuinely fearful that bruce will die out there and bruce feels that he is the only one who can truly save gotham this younger bruce wayne is a lot more cocky and stubborn unwilling to accept help and carries the weight of the world on his shoulders alfred knows bruce can't do it alone and is trying to convince him otherwise they provide a good balance for each other and i think i like this cut scene so much because it gives insight into their relationship that we don't usually get from these games also bruce has been a real dick to alfred this entire game so it's nice to see alfred stand up to him for a moment thankfully though bruce and alfred apologize to each other pretty much immediately stating that they understand where the other is coming from with them back on good terms we sneak back into the gcpd to examine the body in the morgue unfortunately the body doesn't belong to bane and is instead one of his venom enhanced henchmen after reviewing the autopsy batman is able to determine that this henchman was using a new variation of the venom drug that gives increased strength but has a side effect of damaging the brain's memory center as we're analyzing the body bane's tracker becomes active so we leave to chase him down the tracker leads us to bane's hideout in the hallway we can see a couple easter eggs on the ground are some newspapers referencing an identity thief and judging by the bandages on the victim's faces i'm guessing this has to do with the villain hush a skilled plastic surgeon able to alter his own appearance to look like someone else there's also reused assets from arkham asylum of killer croc i'm not sure why they're here but it could have something to do with croc and bane's rivalry in the comics when bane first shows up to gotham he decides to make a grand entrance by easily defeating gotham's strongest villain killer croc it's basically the idea of punching out the biggest dude in prison on your first day in this case bane shows up breaks both of croc's arms and walks away croc hates him for this and when he later heals he attacks bane for revenge so perhaps these images here are insinuating that bane has been studying the strength of killer croc once we make it inside bane's actual hideout it seems he's already left but this gives us an opportunity to investigate we learn that bane has been experimenting with a new form of venom calling it tn1 likely the same stuff used by the corpse at the morgue unfortunately for bane it seems he hasn't been able to find a way to bypass the memory damaging side effects of tn1 further investigation of bane's hideout leads us to another room where bane has a bat computer of his own on the screen he has an interview clip of bruce wayne on loop next to an image of batman indicating that bane has deduced our secret identity this is in line with the comics since bane was able to figure out that bruce wayne was batman during the nightfall series in that story bane causes a breakout in arkham asylum causing many of batman's worst villains to run rampant on gotham batman would spend the next few months rounding them up exhausting himself in the process this was bane's plan and he waited until bruce was at his breaking point and then snuck into wayne manor to break him for good in a rage batman blows up the entire room destroying all of bane's evidence that he's batman still bane is a major risk so batman warns alfred to hide out in the bat cave since bane may target wayne manor batman intends to rush over to protect alfred but as luck would have it this is the exact moment the assassin firefly has taken hostages and planted bombs on the bridge batman is forced to make a tough choice either rush to alfred or save the hostages on the bridge he assumes that alfred will be safe in the bat cave so he decides to handle firefly i'm sure you can see where this is going at the bridge it seems that firefly isn't aware that joker has been captured and that the 50 million bounty is null and void so firefly is stupidly doing all of this for nothing nonetheless he's rigged the bridge with bombs that he'll detonate if any police set foot on it however gordon doesn't know about the bombs and is planning to have his men breached to rescue the hostages batman uses the bat wing to lure away firefly so he can sneak in and warn gordon like batman gordon is stubborn and won't hear him out batman now has to hurry to disarm the bombs potentially without gordon's help we successfully disarm two of the bombs but another one is locked behind a fire door that gordon has access to batman tells gordon to open up the door and gordon basically tells him to screw off so instead batman tasks alfred with hacking the codes to the door so he can access them himself in the meantime we go defuse the third bomb firefly has started destroying the bridge though leaving much of it in ruins gordon then decides to have his men breach the bridge ignoring batman's warnings alfred provides batman with the codes to bypass the locked fire door and we head for the fourth bomb along the way we're intercepted by firefly who has the remote detonator in his hand batman manages to disarm the detonator from him but were forced to fight him now to keep him away from it firefly is a pretty unique boss fight compared to everyone else we fought though since firefly is airborne we have to use different strategies to combat him primarily our utility belt since we'll be using our glue grenade to trap him in a glob of glue long enough for us to whip batarangs at him for damage after doing that a few times we'll fire the bat claw at him and pull him close for a damaging kick despite our best efforts firefly's jetpack gives him a speed advantage and he's able to reclaim the detonator now armed with a detonator firefly decides to blow up the bridge killing everyone on it including batman to our surprise the detonator doesn't work meaning gordon and his men must have reached the bomb in time to disarm it now that we don't have to worry about the bombs we can go back to fighting firefly the rest of this boss fight plays out exactly like earlier blob up firefly with glue grenades hit him with some batarangs and then use the bat claw to reel him in it's pretty straightforward but it's enjoyable using a variety of gadgets in a boss fight it also forces you to utilize your quickfire gadgets if you haven't been doing so already a useful tool in any combat scenario but ultimately it was a pretty cool boss fight overall and i also enjoyed that firefly has some of the cheesiest lines in the game with firefly taken down though batman decides to briefly meet up with gordon even though they're still a bit resistant towards each other they also seem to have a bit more respect for one another now [Music] you didn't listen i'm not big on taking orders from wanted men i'm not big on taking orders from cops i should have gotten to that last bomb yeah and i should have given you access to that security door but between the two of us we covered it pretty well [Music] now that the bridge is under control again batman heads back to the bat cave but it seems he's too late i am in your house come home say your goodbyes once you've had time to turn grief to anger then you'll be ready to face me i have left enough life in him for some final words if you hurry alfred once at the bat cave we find alfred under the rubble of the incomplete batmobile and alfred is on the verge of death batman feels that he's failed alfred the same way that he failed his parents but he has an idea to save him seeing those paramedics of the gcpd gives him the idea to use his shot gloves as a defibrillator and beat alfred back to life alfred's alive but bruce is still at a low point with a lot of self-doubt he no longer feels that he can save gotham stating that he can't even protect his own home alfred gives him some words of encouragement but also tells him that he can't do this alone and that he needs to start accepting help from others at this moment it's broadcasted that the joker has escaped from his cell in black gay prison and has started a riot gordon is requesting help from anyone who can provide it alfred's words of wisdom give bruce the motivation to rise again as batman and this is also the turning point for their relationship bruce treats him more as an ally instead of a servant and it seems that bruce is now more open to working with others instead of trying to handle everything on his own the next order of business though is stopping the riots at blackgate for the second time tonight the joker has managed to escape containment and black aid is out of control after sneaking in we save a few hostages one of which is harley and quinzel who informs us that joker is in the panopticon waiting for us i don't think it's ever stated in the game but i have to assume harley was the one who helped him to escape after seeing her start to fall for him that's pretty much the last we'll see of her for the rest of the game though but we do come across one other familiar face before reaching the panopticon that person being slade wilson deathstroke apparently the joker wouldn't let slate out of his cell because he's too scared of him and rightfully so after fighting our way through the prison some more we eventually make it to the panopticon where jokers designed a sick game aimed at testing batman's moral code let him go i i understand you had a chance to let me die and you didn't take it i bet right now you're wishing you had i killed a lot of people i brought the city to its knees crippled the police force it is not even time to unwrap our presents ship it let's do this okay okay so what our friend fame holds in his hand is a heart monitor once he clamps it on every beat of his vacant little heart will charge the battery on this electric chair and when it's fully charged so either you kill bay no you won't kill him but you will you will fight me with all your resolve or you will die someone is going to die you me or the clown the question of which one of us it is is in your hands we're now on to our second boss fight against bane and it works a lot like the first we have to dodge his charges and stun him to deal damage one cool thing i forgot to mention about his attacks is that he'll occasionally grab you and lift you over his head if you fail to escape he'll crack you over his knee the same way he did in that iconic image from nightfall where he broke batman's back we ultimately won't beat bane during this battle though as he inevitably pins us to the ground as gordon interrupts the commotion gordon and warden joseph attempt to free the joker and who knew joker had moves like that gordon is now at risk at dying to the electric chair alongside joker but luckily batman has an idea thinking back to those paramedics and the way electrocution or taunted him he thinks he can kill bane and then bring him back to life with the shock gloves this takes us into round 2 against spain where we do just that he did it the game is over joker let captain gordon go yeah put the gun down freak how about i put you down well i'd love to stay and celebrate your victory but i've got stockings to stuff mistletoe to hang and about 15 skyscrapers to blow up before sunrise thank god you had your vest on [Music] he's got my gun gordon joseph i need your help to stop the joker our health you're the so-called vigilante or is one kill enough for you tonight baines and cardiopulmonary arrest i have only minutes to resuscitate him before it's too late you mean you didn't that's not how i do things now go like with alfred we attempt to bring bain back to life and as you'd expect he immediately grabs us by the throat you leave me no choice mr wayne this leads to our final boss fight against bane and if i thought he was scary in the prior levels he's downright terrifying here you can't directly engage him in combat and if you try he'll deal out devastating hits even worse he starts to learn your tactics realizing that you like to hide in the vents and floor grates to take him down he'll occasionally reach into a vent that you're hiding in leading to plenty of oh moments on my end thinking i had the upper hand bane is somewhat unpredictable during this fight and i was always nervous to approach him unsure if he'd flip around at the last second and crush me just when you get comfortable handling him the game throws you a curveball and activates a jammer disabling your ability to track him in detective vision this means you'll have to nervously leave cover hoping that bane isn't nearby so you can disable the jammer i think that was a really smart decision by the developers and helped to up the tension overall i loved this fight and i found myself being audibly scared at times which i think makes it a successful encounter when i could finally muster up the courage to attack bane the strategy was to sneak up on him and perform a stealth takedown throwing him into a wall or ideally into one of these electrified cell doors afterwards he'll start to rampage in a desperate effort to chase you down so you'll hide and repeat the same process after dealing enough damage bane is finally down for the count and batman radios alfred to let him know that ocean master bruce master bruce are you all right with bane on a final rampage batman thinks quick and uses the remote claw to attach bain to the power generators dealing him an incredibly powerful electric shock bane passes out and batman leaves him suspended in the air for the police to find while hoisting him up bane continually murmurs to himself that he must find the batman indicating that bane's use of tn1 has damaged his memory center and that he's permanently forgotten who bruce wayne is this also explains why he's more of a brute in arkham asylum and why he doesn't know our identity there either batman calls alfred to give him the good news but we still have to apprehend the joker as we make our way back through blackgate we find that warden joseph has been shot by a sniper distracting us from the re-emergence of killer croc croc grabs us giving the sniper the perfect opportunity to strike when gordon shows up at the opportune time to take him out croc decides this is a good time to leave as more of joker's guards arrive to stop us this leads to a pretty cool little section where we get to fight alongside gordon to protect the warden even though you may not get a real sense of it here gordon is actually a pretty solid fighter due to prior military training in the batman year one comic gordon single-handedly takes down his corrupt partner detective flass a much larger opponent with green beret training flass and the rest of the police force didn't like that gordon wasn't taking bribes and that he was an honest cop so flash started threatening gordon's family even going so far as to jump in with a few other cops to send the message gordon later beat flass and left him naked tied up in the woods as a way to send his own message so if you've ever wondered why gordon has been able to stay the only honest cop in gotham this is a good example of him holding his own this moment with flash is also alluded to in one of the audio files where commissioner loeb and black mask discuss how they can deal with gordon and that having him jumped already failed so they need another solution to keep him in line black mask tells loeb not to have gordon killed since they need the good pr that gordon brings so loeb decides that blackmail is the better option and tasks detective bullock to set up a honeypot trap for gordon meaning they want to trick gordon into cheating on his wife with another woman this is likely a reference to batman year one as well since gordon did cheat on barbara in that story gordon fell in love with another cop sarah essen and started to have an affair with her loeb was able to get pictures of the affair and attempted to use them to blackmail gordon caught between a rock and a hard place gordon opted to tell barbara about the affair removing the leverage that the cops had on him but beginning the downfall of his marriage going back to the main story though gordon stays with warden joseph as batman confronts joker in the chapel batman tells joker that bane is alive and then proceeds to beat the out of him going full anime style on him with a rapid flurry of punches batman begins to choke the joker to the point that it seems like he might kill him joker even seems like he wants him to do it batman manages to pull himself together and just knock him out instead as gordon enters the room gordon is still conflicted about batman and tries to arrest him but he gets distracted and batman flees we then get voice over from gordon as he talks to his daughter he tells her about how this knight has changed his perspective and how he hopes that both he and batman can give the people of gotham something to believe in we also see the joker as he's being wheeled back into prison and he's still amused at how batman was able to out think him earlier we also see harley is right beside him setting up their relationship for arkham asylum and that ends the main story of batman arkham origins in the credits we get one final moment of foreshadowing as we listen to an interview on the jack ryder radio show one of his guests is quincy sharp the future warden of arkham asylum quincy blames all of gotham's christmas eve problems on the failings of blackgate prison feeling that we need a stronger institution to house these more high-risk inmates he states that he will reopen the currently defunct arkham asylum and make it into an institution for the criminally insane housing the worst of gotham's criminals like the joker quincy's words are also incredibly ironic knowing that the joker will one day cause a riot in there too but that's a story for a different video as far as the story in this game i think it was expertly written i know i had some gripes with the black mask joker twist but it's far from ruinous to the game especially since i think the rest of it is done so well i think where it excels the most though is its character development and how it sets up the relationships that we've come to know in the other arkham games for example i found that scene between bruce and alfred to be really powerful and it's cool seeing bruce grow as a person to be more accepting of help from others batman's relationship with gordon was also well established as they started off reluctant to trust each other and then slowly began to respect what the other was doing i also like how they explained joker's fascination with batman and how their two sides are the same coin since joker is such a prominent villain in the arkham series i think it was right to take a moment and delve into his psyche by giving us that brief level focused on him as well i also really loved how they handled bane the way he could knock around batman and out think him made bane feel like a genuine threat and he was legitimately scary to me i also think he had the best and most challenging boss fights in the game the cinematics were also top notch and there was a lot of skill demonstrated with how each shot was framed as well as the direction of the motion capture there were some truly epic cinematics like the opening one setting the tone for the game or the first person view of loose lips being dangled from the roof and how terrifying batman looked to him the cinematics went a long way to enhance the storytelling of the game and they were a joy to watch throughout wb montreal definitely brought their a-game to the storytelling and i was incredibly engaged throughout it it's tough to do but i definitely think they managed to meet the high standards set by the other arkham games the story isn't quite done yet though as we still have another end credits scene and a dlc for the end credit scene we see deathstroke still in his cell as he's approached by amanda waller enlisting him to task force x aka the suicide squad this is a pretty cool tease and i believe it picks up in a small tie-in game that released after this one called batman arkham origins blackgate my understanding is that is a full game on its own so we'll save that for potential future video but now let's get into the dlc story cold cold heart the story focuses on the villain mr freeze and takes place shortly after the events of the main game on new year's eve people caring for people compassion that's the foundation gotham was built on and i have proudly built golf corp on that same foundation that's why we're called the people company thank you so much please mr boyle seems to be after your title as gotham's biggest philanthropic industrialist gotham needs more people like him bruce hey i am blown away by your support it's well deserved you're going to change the world ferris hey we'll change it together right pardon me mr boyle the press is waiting this way please okay the future is looking very very bright for gotham now it's almost midnight and you all know what that means let's get this new year's eve party going with uh [Music] forget to pay your heating bill bruce bring me ferris boyle mr freezes crashed bruce wayne's humanitarian awards ceremony at the mansion and bruce sneaks off to get the bat suit he's apprehended by some of frieza's men but easily takes them down freeing alfred in the process as well before heading straight to the bat cave you can take a moment to explore wayne manor a cool detail is that you can see the portraits of some of bruce's ancestors one of which is solomon wayne bruce's great great great great grandfather from the 1800s solomon was a judge and entrepreneur who funded a lot of gotham's architecture during this time through talented architect cyrus pinckney a character we'll be discussing more a bit later we can also see a portrait of solomon's brother joshua wayne who ran the various wayne businesses solomon and joshua also played a role in the underground railroad helping slaves escape via the caves underway in manor there's also sir gawain of wayne a knight of the scottish court from the 14th century continuing through the manor though we make our way to the wine cellar for access to the bat cave we'll encounter guards along the way forcing us to take them out silently this was a pretty fun challenge since we can't rely on our detective vision or any gadgets we'd have as batman and were forced to be sneaky as bruce wayne when we make it into the cellar we find more guards and learn that they are penguins men why would penguin want to team up with frieze and lend out his men well one of the thugs reveals that penguin was interested in helping frieze since his plan involved destroying wayne manor the waynes ruined the cobblepots back in the day and penguin still holds a grudge after taking down penguin's men we go inside a hidden elevator that takes us to the bat cave once inside alfred suggests that we use the prototype extreme environment suit or xc suit for short bruce doesn't think it's ready yet and decides to don his normal outfit instead by the time we arrive back at the mansion the henchmen have set it ablaze and have captured ferris boyle when we show up to rescue him we're frozen in place and mr freeze steals ferris boil away without much to go on we return back to the city and start interrogating penguin's men one of them informs us that boyle has likely been taken to goth corp his own company when we arrive at goth corp we learn that penguin is there too but has entered a sealed room that we don't have access to we'll next hunt down a guard who might have the access codes but along the way we can see displays of some of goth corp's inventions which reveals that goth corp has been investing a lot in cryogenic research lately after rescuing the guard and obtaining the access codes we continue our pursuit of penguin freeze and boil eventually we find them in a standoff as penguin attempts to double cross freeze he's taken boyle hostage for himself thinking that frieze must want boyle for some high-powered weapon he doesn't know about frieze isn't after a high-powered weapon but penguin won't listen batman decides to intervene now you belong to me i'll give you one chance to let him go threats are meaningless to a man who has lost everything [Music] penguin is now trapped in this giant wall of ice and tells us that the only way to knock it down is with a cryo drill he's got stashed at the my alibi nightclub as we're leaving to retrieve it we can see that a lot of pipes in the facility are leaking causing the temperature to drop rapidly batman won't be able to survive in some of these areas without his xe suit so we'll have to retrieve that as well once we don our new xc suit and acquire the drill we return back to goth corp inside we need one final piece to power the drill which we can find in the weapons testing lab however there are dead bodies here and batman gets the sense that there's more going on here than he initially realized so we conduct an investigation after putting all of the pieces together batman is able to determine what happened in this room as well as mr frieza's origin odd frieze was secretly doing research on huntington's korea but this is a cryogenic weapons lab the test subject was nora freeze now i know what happened here boyle hired victor to help advance the secret cryo weapons program within goth corp in exchange boyle agreed to devote goth court resources to finding a cure for norris huntington's boyle was more interested in how victor had managed to put nora into cryostasis when victor realized that boyle had no intention of following through on their deal he decided to do the huntington's research himself but boyle didn't like that the cryo-chemical cocktail altered victor's metabolism as well as the guards boyle escaped the head of the world and had the lab quarantined victor survived but he knew that leaving the supercooled lab would kill him [Music] so he built himself a suit and utilized an organic super coolant to keep his core temperature sub-zero all this violence he's just trying to save his dying wife now that we know mr freeze's motivations and that ferris isn't the good man we thought he was it's time to confront them both first we have to get through the giant ice wall that penguin is trapped in unfortunately for him there's enough room to cut a doorway into it without having to save him so batman just leaves him stuck in the ice now that we're in the room we can confront freeze victor you have to let him go i'm taking my life you can't stop me i know the truth and so will the police boyle will face judgment for his crimes it was an accident you don't know what you're talking about nothing matters do you understand nothing but my nora you've endangered lives all over this city nora would never have wanted this though what she wants is to live a long life in the warmth of the sun her hand in mine because of him she'll only feel the icing touch of a man whose emotions run as cold as the blood in his veins freeze isn't cooperating so this forces us into a boss fight against him freeze played a prominent role in batman arkham city with his boss fight being one of the most praised encounters in that game due to frieza's ability to learn our tactics and adapt to them so this boss fight has a high bar to contend with i think i like the arkham city fight better but this one is still pretty good and does enough differently to stand on its own we have to navigate around the room while freeze patrols from the center keeping an eye out for us we have to avoid where he's looking while also taking out the guards that enter the room not only that but we also have to shut down these cryogenerators this adds a lot of tension because if free sees you he'll zap you with his ice gun and put everyone on high alert so you have to wait for the opportune time after managing to shut down all three this forces freeze to drop into the room and search for you on foot like in the arkham city game you can only do a stealth takedown from behind once after doing so the container on his back will start to leak harmful cryovapor preventing you from getting behind him you can still use other methods to take him down but i found the most effective way was to use the icicles that have formed on the roof using your new thermal gloves you can super heat your batarangs and throw them at icicles to drop them to the ground timing them to hit freeze while he's under them will deal a decent amount of damage and you can do this repeatedly after a while norah's containment pod will start to experience a containment failure forcing freeze to tend to it while he's distracted batman grabs him from below and severely damages frieza's suit weakening him unfortunately boyle is the true villain here thanks for doing the heavy lifting but you shouldn't have stuck your nose in my business and here i thought i was going to have a problem explaining what happened in your lab i mean the police are never going to look at me after what you did and with this bat freak dead there won't be anyone left to say otherwise cryogenic containment is failing and that just leaves you please you can save her you just have to bypass the fire she's victory i'll keep you alive long enough to see her i also think it's a funny detail that when boyle hits freeze here it lowers his health bar but anyway batman breaks free from the ice to take down boyle and restores the cryo containment to nora's pod i'm sorry victor i can't give you peace but i can't give you justice now and that ends the dlc story cold cold heart during the credits we get some extra details on the future of these characters boyle penguin and freeze have all been apprehended while quincy sharp uses freeze as another example of the type of criminal that needs the special attention that arkham asylum can provide we know freeze will ultimately end up in arkham since we can see his frozen cell as one of the easter egg locations in that game the news is also reporting that james gordon is the front-runner for police commissioner and will see him in that role in the arkham asylum game as well there's also a fun easter egg where one of the security guards describes batman fighting next thing you know bam boom kapow the bastards are all on the ground ko'd i didn't even see him coming this is a nod to those cheesy fighting captions that would pop up during the old 60s batman show overall i thought this story dlc was pretty cool it takes a lot of inspiration from the animated series specifically the mr freeze episode heart of ice and the opening title card gives me some of those vibes as well one difference between the show and the game that i found interesting was whether or not bruce knew boyle was bad in the show it's made clear to bruce from the beginning that ferris boyle isn't a true humanitarian and instead bought his way to that award for publicity i like this in the show but i think wb montreal were right to change it in the game if you don't know the story from the animated series or comics then you're probably right there with bruce believing that ferris is a genuinely good man it makes for an interesting riot as both the player and bruce discover that he's truly a nasty human being and it's another example of why bruce has trust issues i think it also plays with your assumptions since you're led to believe that mr freeze is just another run-of-the-mill villain determined to rob someone or further his evil schemes in all actuality frieze is a rather tragic character his sole motivation is to rescue the woman he loves and he's willing to do anything to save her and it's disappointing that he always takes things too far the way the show ends for him is actually kind of sad because he's left in his cell unable to further his research to save her i can only beg your forgiveness and pray you'll hear me somehow some place some place where a warm hand waits for mine i think freeze is actually a really compelling character with a lot of depth so it's nice to see him get a bit of the spotlight in both origins and arkham city although i personally think he deserves to be a leading villain at some point in the future the cold cold heart dlc as a whole is pretty good in my opinion but it isn't quite as fulfilling as the main game despite some cool new locations like wayne manor and the ice infested goth corp the dlc ends up feeling kind of hollow i think it's because the whole middle section feels like it's padded with fetch quests most notably when you have to leave goth corp to obtain parts of the cryo drill and get the xc suit before returning back to progress it felt kind of needless to the story which is disappointing because they did such a good job of avoiding that feeling in the main game ultimately i think the dlc was good for what it was but it didn't quite match the quality of the main story but i think we've spent enough time discussing the story of the game so let's start to transition into the gameplay and extras of batman arkham origins looks like you got my invitation just you and me come on whoa hello uh not so fast deathstroke he's my kill [Music] after completing the main story there are still loose ends that batman needs to tie up to start there are different side missions following certain minor villains and their schemes around gotham one of which is anarchy who sees himself similar to batman in a crusade to rid gotham of its crime and corruption he's going about it all wrong though and his place bombs around the city where he deems the corruption to be at its worst he offers batman a choice either let him blow up these buildings or rush to defuse the bombs after choosing to defuse them all batman expects anarchy to be disappointed but quite the opposite actually instead he invites batman to the courthouse to complete the final trial he has for him when we arrive he offers to form an alliance to clean up gotham batman refuses and instead wants anarchy behind bars for the bombs that he planted anarchy is disappointed and sends his men to fight us after a while he even joins in on the fight himself once we beat anarchy and his men we tie him up and leave him for the police he'll give us a lot of speeches while he's sitting here but i found it most interesting when he blames batman for why so many super criminals have shown up to gotham he basically feels that batman invites challenge making batman the source of gotham's problems anarchy feels this way in the comics as well often hunting batman while hunting other criminals around the city anarchy has still left his mark though in the form of taggings of his symbol that we can scan in detective mode doing so gives us intel on certain locations in gotham from his perspective there's not much else to these but they're fun to read if you're into all of the lore of gotham another villain on our list is black mask the actual black mask roman cionus who despite having been through one hell of a night already has brushed it off and jumped right back into his criminal enterprise around the city he's hidden containers storing a secret drug stash so we patrol the city and destroy them all the last one however is hidden inside the church after silently taking out all of the guards we detonate the final container right on cue sayana shows up this leads into a combat encounter against both sionis and his men he doesn't add anything interesting to the combat but the novelty of getting to duke it out with a main villain is always fun especially if you can save them for last and get a close-up takedown this isn't the last we'll see of black mask though since i believe he next makes a minor appearance in batman arkham city bane's men are still making a mess around the city as well led by his lieutenant bird bird was originally incarcerated at the same prison as bane penoduro and was later freed by him making him incredibly loyal to his cause in the comics bird looks a lot different from the game and he gets his nickname due to his pet falcon who we unfortunately never get to see bird has been tasked with securing venom shipments in gotham but penguin doesn't like someone else running drugs on his turf so he sends his men to oppose banes this makes it easy for batman to find these shipments since they are always marked with a large scale gang fight we'll stop multiple of these fights and seize the containers at which point we find a matchbook for the my alibi nightclub indicating that bird must be hiding out there when we arrive to my alibi we find bird attempting to muscle the owner of the nightclub into handing it over to him we drop in defeat burden as men and then leave them for the police one of the more interesting side missions is for the mad hatter after leaving the sewers in the main story we're greeted by a bunch of thugs wearing rabbit masks singing a song inviting us to a party you were very cordially cordially cordially you were very cordially invited to a party and it will be a grand affair grand affair grand effect and it will be a grand affair hosted by the hatter these masks are mind control devices invented by jurvis tech aka the mad hatter jervis has a fascination with the story alice in wonderland and has modeled himself after the mad hatter he also kidnaps girls and makes them his alice which is something he's done this christmas eve we'll later arrive to the hat shop to save alice and interrogate tech but he has a trick up his sleeve during the interrogation he gets us to look at a clock in the room which hypnotizes us putting us in the world of wonderland it's of course very similar to these scarecrow missions in arkham asylum but this wonderland twist makes it feel fresh i actually like this mission a lot because it's so visually creative it's trippy and dreamlike and it perfectly captures the atmosphere of a twisted wonderland based on this mad hatter so i had a lot of fun here and i honestly think it's my favorite of the different side missions that we encounter eventually we break free from the hypnosis and find mad hatter holding alice hostage batman cleverly uses a reverse batarang to catch him off guard giving us a moment to knock him out even that must have been part of the hallucination though because in this scene the room is very open and put together but after beating tech batman then wakes up and the room is a huge mess meaning that we must have been causing a lot of mayhem in our hallucination this is all really trippy which i think is pretty cool as we're leaving there's also this really weird decoration of two faces but i can't tell if they're part of the plant sticking out of the vase or part of the wall regardless my mind is still struggling to comprehend it once we leave the room and go down this hallway we can see a variety of paintings on the wall each one is reminiscent of a location that we just saw in bruce's wonderland hallucination and i wonder if it's meant to indicate that in our dream state we actually wandered into the hallway and saw these paintings causing our mind to convert them into further hallucinatory environments maybe that's a reach but it's cool nonetheless and i really enjoyed this mission our next villain though is one of the assassins tasked with taking us out deadshot this begins when we reach an sos signal at the same time as a rescue helicopter when suddenly the helicopter is shot down and crashes into the streets below we set up a crime scene analysis to determine what happened after scanning all of the evidence we determined that there was also a swat sniper on a rooftop but he wasn't the one who shot down the helicopter someone managed to shoot the sniper and have the same bullet ricochet off a wall and take out the helicopter realizing that deadshot is the only one capable of making a shot like that we follow the trajectory of the bullet and find a casing it has dead shots named engraved on it as well as numbers to a radio frequency deadshot uses the radio to invite us to a showdown at the bank where he'll be waiting when we arrive deadshot is there along with multiple henchmen this will be another stealth predator mission but deadshot adds some extra challenge since he's an expert marksman he can ricochet bullets off multiple services to reach you even if he can't directly spot you you can see this via his laser sight as it bounces off multiple surfaces he'll even use this to threaten his own men if he feels like they're slacking off which is funny but it also adds to the challenge you never know when he might target one of his men as a surprise so you never feel safe taking one down since that could be the exact moment he decides to focus on them this was definitely a very challenging encounter but also a lot of fun to defeat deadshot you can't just take him down once and be done with him though you need to sneak up behind him and deal damage while you can and then escape while he's dazed you'll do this a few times until he starts to feel paranoid and then grabs the hostage you have to take dead shot down without being spotted or else he'll kill the hostage after successfully doing so batman breaks both of his arms and leaves him tied up for the cops there's still one assassin left to deal with though shiva at one point during the story we can hear the sound of a baby crying in a stroller in the middle of an open area it's clearly a trap and when we investigate we're immediately jumped by shiva she doesn't seem very interested in the bounty but is instead more interested in testing us she tells us that an innocent man is about to be killed and that we should go save him for our next test this brings us to a shopping complex where a man is dangling above a pool of electrified water we have to shut down the power but each time we do we're ambushed by ninjas the ninjas are a lot of fun to fight though since they're faster and can evade your attacks we don't see them a lot in this game but we'll encounter plenty of them in arkham city now that we've rescued this cop he asked us to find his partner who managed to shoot one of the ninjas we'll scan the ninja's blood and follow the trail we're too late though since when we find the cop he's already dead and bagged up shiva leaps out again and we have a conversation with her shiva had him killed because he was corrupt hoping that batman would approve he clearly doesn't but shiva continues on with this test giving us the next location we meet her again in the lobby of wonder tower a location that will be very important in arkham city our next test is to fight her in her minions and she's definitely a good challenge although she fights identical to the martial artist enemy type after getting her health down enough she'll pull out a sword and begin fighting similar to the ninjas we encountered earlier even though she's more of a hybrid of two existing enemy types she's a pretty cool fight and i like how she changes up her combat style and phases we never truly beat her though since we fight to a standstill shiva's impressed and mentions that she understands why the master has chosen him batman doesn't know who she's referring to but i believe this is foreshadowing rei xiao ghoul the leader of the league of assassins or if you're more familiar with the nolan batman films it's the same guy as raz al-ghul the leader of the league of shadows the storyline will become more prominent in arkham city but the premise is that reish wants to cleanse gotham by killing off all of its criminals he's also looking for a worthy heir to lead the league of assassins once he's gone and he's chosen batman to do so batman's no kill rule is the main problem though causing batman to reject the calling as for shiva even though she seems sort of antagonistic here in the game she is occasionally an ally to batman and his family in the comics she trains future robin tim drake in combat as well as with mastering his proficiency with the bo staff if you recall from earlier she's also the one who had a relationship with rejected assassin david kane making her the mother of future batgirl cassandra kane when batman gets his back broken by bane and nightfall shiva is the one he reaches out to to help him retrain his skills so she's been a noteworthy ally in batman's history our next villain is a notorious one edward nigma the riddler we'll first encounter him early on in the game since he's set up jammers around the city blocking our use of the batwing's auto navigation capabilities we'll have to go to each tower in gotham and hack the terminals to disable the jammers reclaiming one will unlock that district for fast travel using the batwing enigma hacks our comms and communicates with us each time stating that he's trying to clean up gotham too instead of beating up criminals like batman though he's decided to find dirt on all the corrupt members of gotham and blackmail them he scattered these data packs around the city and batman aims to find them all these data packs will act similar to the riddler trophies of the other games which i think was a nice touch by wb montreal it doesn't make as much sense to have a bunch of trophies scattered around the city but hidden data packs seems a bit more logical we also find the location of riddler's hidden layer but we can't fully access it until we accomplish multiple tedious tasks not only do we have to find all 200 data packs but we also have to destroy network relays in each district to help us find these we can locate them endigma hired to hide the data and interrogate them doing so reveals their locations on the map not only is each data pack hidden but there's often some kind of puzzle associated with claiming it some are pretty easy while some take a bit more thought it's definitely on theme with the riddler trying to outsmart you but i can't say i ever really found these fun we'll talk a lot more about data packs and riddler trophies throughout each of these games but i think my main issue with them is that it always feels like there are way too many of them you could trim this number down by half and maybe that wouldn't be too bad but it always feels like a chore i think i dislike them more in this game though because the reward for doing so is so minimal after destroying all the network relays and collecting all the data packs you can return to riddler's headquarters destroy his equipment and then enter his secret room inside you'll find pieces for all the various traps and puzzles as well as a board compiling his thoughts on who he thinks batman could be he's close since it seems that he's narrowed it down between bruce wayne and harvey dent harvey is commonly thought to be batman since he's such a power for good as gotham's district attorney and they have similar builds of course this won't last forever though since harvey eventually hits a breaking point after being scarred turning him into the villain two phase but our main reward is hidden behind a secret wall and it contains the first riddler trophy like we'll see later in arkham asylum it's a fun nod to the future games and it sets up riddler's determination to test batman and outsmart him but it does nothing for the gameplay batman has been taking gadgets off of defeated villains and repurposing them for himself this entire game so i think it would have made more sense for us to find some kind of cool gadget or upgrade in here really just something of excitement for players collecting all of the riddler data packs is a real slog so i wish wb montreal had rewarded that more there is some incentive to collecting them all though since the extortion files unlock audio logs and intel and the character profiles and if you return to alfred after completing the riddler side mission he will have found more information on riddler's identity alfred has learned that his real name is edward nashton and that he works for the police's cyber crime division this is how he was able to dig up dirt on everyone so easily also if you die during a riddler-related mission you can see that his badge says i.t consultant another hint towards his true identity for the player that's pretty much everything you get from beating this mission though so overall i'd say you could skip the riddler side mission and not feel like you're missing out on too much also in gotham are a few different murders that you can solve you'll receive the location of a dead body and you can use your evidence scanner to recreate the crime and reveal the killer after doing so you can track down the killer and get them to confess their crimes these were each pretty brief only taking about a couple minutes each but i think that was the right amount of time the crime scene investigations are fun but i think they run the risk of becoming tedious if you're forced to do too many for too long still i do like the wb montreal give you the option to solve murder mysteries around gotham batman is known as the world's greatest detective so i think it was wise to lean into that and give players the capability to act out those skills but after solving all of the murders we're not done yet since completing it unlocks another side mission apparently barbara gave gordon batman's communication frequency so he calls to request help in capturing 20 escaped criminals from the black gate riot batman agrees taking them down one by one after capturing them all batman requests that gordon let him operate freely without harassment from the police and gordon says he'll think about it so kinda anticlimactic but it's cool seeing gordon and batman's partnership slowly begin one neat detail with the side mission though is that fans discovered that the booking number for this criminal is the same one for o.j simpson so cool little detail there there's still one other murder case left to solve though and that's of cyrus pinckney cyrus was the architect that was working with solomon wayne to build all of the impressive architecture that's still in gotham today unfortunately cyrus was eventually murdered and the crime was never solved while roaming around gotham though you can find various plaques on some of the buildings that cyrus built and if you scan them it'll reveal an audio log that cyrus had left before he died it seems that he knew that his life was on the line and he wanted to leave behind the story for someone to find one day the gist of the story is that even though solomon was funding cyrus projects the money eventually dried up causing cyrus to go behind his back and make a deal with henry cobblepot ancestor of the penguin like penguin henry was known to be a shady individual but cyrus didn't have a choice later henry decided that cyrus owed him for helping him out and demanded cyrus build a munitions factory inside the city cyrus knew this would be terrible for gotham so he went to the mayor and requested he introduced a bill to block henry's endeavor it worked but henry knew cyrus went behind his back he would still act friendly towards him though later holding a party in honor of cyrus's 40th birthday cyrus knew it was a trap but decided to go anyway fortunately before going to the party he first spoke about it with one of his friends amadeus arkham who he became friends with after helping him create arkham asylum they knew that the wine at the party would be poisoned so they switched it with a wine of their own spiked with a concoction to make the user seem dead but only temporarily it worked and everyone believed that cyrus was dead cyrus later resurrected and vowed vengeance against henry cobblepot interestingly henry cobblepot died not long after this incident meaning that cyrus must have been successful in killing him what happened to cyrus afterwards is still a mystery though i thought this was a really cool little side mission and unlike for riddler i really enjoyed hunting down these audio files and unraveling the mystery behind cyrus pinkney i also really appreciate the lore it provides for the creation of gotham's historical buildings and the people who helped to create them as well as the ancestors of different characters we're familiar with today but that leaves us with the final side villain penguin barbara informs us that penguin has weapon caches scattered around gotham and she asks us to shut them down like with black masks drug stashes will drop by each one and destroy it however we're actually rewarded for doing so since this earns us a loot box in the game's online multiplayer mode that's right arkham origins had a multiplayer mode created by developer splash damage it's since been shut down due to low player counts but you can still access it on the pc version through mods or by messing with the game's files i'll leave a link in the description if you're wanting to do so for yourself i tried it and was able to access it but wasn't able to actually find people to play with still it looks pretty interesting in this mode you can either play as a joker thug bane thug or batman or robin penguin is the loot box vendor and destroying those caches in the main game allows you to open up a few on the house among other things these unlock cosmetics to change the appearance of your character if you're playing as one of the thugs you'll run around trying to accomplish different tasks and kill members of the rival gang or batman and robin if you come in contact with them depending on which gang you're part of you can also break out joker or bane allowing you to play as them for a limited amount of time if you're playing as batman and robin you'll stick to the shadows and try to stealthily take out gang members it's a pretty cool premise and i like the idea of having a first hand experience as a thug suddenly seeing batman drop in out of nowhere to take you out it's unfortunate that the servers were ultimately shut down but it seems like it didn't review too well anyway there's still quite a lot of extras in the single player though and after beating the main story you'll unlock new game plus in this you'll restart the game but with all of your upgrades and unlockables however tougher enemies are introduced earlier into the game and you no longer get the counter indicators above their heads before they attack new game plus is one of my favorite modes in the other arkham games and it's the same case here it introduces more replayability to the story and changes things up enough to still provide a fun challenge i especially love how the attack indicators are removed because it feels like a whole new experience now you have to watch the battlefield and read the criminals body language to anticipate when they'll attack just like how batman would i ended up enjoying new game plus a lot overall to the point that i think it's my preferred mode however if you want to take the challenge to the next level wb montreal introduced the i am the night mode which unlocks after beating new game plus this is a perma-death mode where if you die once throughout the entire story you immediately get reset back to the beginning thankfully this mode isn't required to meet 100 completion of the game and is instead there for those who want the ultimate challenge it's a very punishing mode and it can be very easy to die abruptly especially in the predator sections but overall i think it's a really cool idea and i'm glad wb montreal included it to further challenge yourself and hone your skills you can also use the challenge mode either by visiting the bat cave or by accessing it in the main menu here you can try out a variety of different challenges based around either combat or stealth for example with stealth you'll be set in a room and have to quietly take out all the enemies within it you'll be timed and you can also attempt to complete a set of three challenges these challenges typically require you to take down enemies in a specific way like from a statue or from a great for example they can definitely get more intricate than that though and they're good at making you get creative with your gadgets instead of just hopping behind each enemy and taking them down the combat challenges have trophies attached as well but based on score you want to meet or exceed the highest trophy score ideally and to do so you need to do a few things firstly you need to keep your combo going as long as possible and without taking hits if you can complete a round without taking damage or without fumbling the combo streak you'll get bonus points you also get more points for varying your combat style like by using different gadgets i enjoyed the combat challenges the most since they're so fast paced and it's really satisfying working the room and reaching high combo streaks as well as experimenting with different gadgets and methods to defeat enemies one of my favorite options in the challenge mode was the campaign section where the game combines a couple or more of the combat and predator maps to play sequentially i also like how it incorporates different challenge modifiers either making things harder or easy on you but mostly harder you can select which ones you want to start with but don't go too easy on yourself because those options will be locked for the next challenge room in the series meaning you could make things substantially more difficult for yourself if you're not careful these were a lot of fun though and they also included one dlc campaign the initiation this is technically a story but not as in-depth as cold cold heart in it you experience the trials bruce wayne faced as he attempted to earn his right to study under master kirigi we get a minor cut scene introducing the challenge and we learn that nobody here really respects bruce and instead see him as an outsider unworthy of their training these trials are aimed at earning your place among them and you'll start with a pretty standard combat challenge taking out waves of enemies after which your next test is a stealth mission this isn't just a training mission though as master kiriji tells the students to kill bruce if they get the opportunity upping the tension in the combat sections bruce felt like he played pretty similar to batman only really differing as far as gadgets for the stealth sections he feels a lot different since you're limited on gadgets and don't have your cape i like this though since it felt really thematic taking down enemies as just a man with only a few tools at your disposal the rest of the missions in this campaign play out pretty similar but the final combat trial is my favorite one you'll face a variety of difficult enemy types like ninjas and martial artists but after a certain point shiva drops in to fight alongside them the cool thing about shiva is that she doesn't have the counter indicators above her head like the other enemies do so you really have to pay attention to what she's doing and not become too reliant on the indicators she also has a larger health pool so it can take some time to take her out i really love this challenge and it felt like a fun test of skill but after overcoming the trials we get our final cut scene you have done well novice but you still have much to learn for the time being find a rag and clean the floors so not much of a reward for bruce but he's still alive and has earned his place amongst the others initiation bruce wayne is also his own separate playable character and can be used in any of the other challenge maps he gets one alternate costume as well his vigilante suit which is my personal favorite between the two speaking of playable characters there aren't many the only other one being deathstroke this is pretty awesome though and it's the only time he's been playable throughout the arkham series however i'm pretty sure his combat mechanics were based on robin from arkham city since they have similar poses and fighting animations he still feels like his own character though and has his own unique gadgets to use both in combat and in predator stealth missions he felt a bit limited to me in these stealth sections but i had a blast using him in combat challenges i couldn't help but take him through that final initiation mission against shiva and tested him out in one of my new favorite challenge maps 100 vs 1. in this map you have to take out 100 enemies who slowly drop into the arena in waves it's a fun test of endurance and gives you a lot of opportunity to get a feel for a character and test out their abilities unfortunately you can't take deathstroke into the open world but he's a lot of fun to use in these challenge maps like bruce he also comes with a couple costumes one of which is his look from the injustice game while the other is called judas contract referencing his outfit in the teen titans comic series while we're on the topic of alternate outfits batman has a slew of them there's of course his default outfit but you can also unlock a darker version called the dark knight suit there's also blackest night a green lantern story involving superheroes rising from the dead one of which being batman there's also the long halloween suit based on an excellent story where batman investigates murders occurring on each holiday and no it's not calendar man there's also red sun batman based on a superman what-if story with the premise of what if superman landed in soviet russia instead of america in that story batman's role is that he's an antagonist to superman's regime we also have gotham by gaslight a batman story taking place in the 19th century with batman dealing with the jack the ripper murders next is the new 52 batman suit the new 52 being dc's relaunch series for their entire lineup of characters there is also a metallic version of this suit that you could unlock as a reward for buying the arkham origins digital comic for an ios device i actually read some of the digital comic for this video and it's pretty unique it's a multi-path choose your own adventure style story where you make decisions for batman and see how the story unfolds based on your decisions i played a lot of games like this with that premise like the telltale games or detroit become human but never in a comic it was cool but pretty punishing with a lot of my decisions leading to batman being unmasked or killed if you're curious about trying it yourself i'll leave a link in the description below going back to the outfits though there's also batman noel a christmas tale based on the classic christmas carol story by charles dickens bruce wayne is essentially scrooge in the story and is visited by three prominent figures that help him find clarity next is batman dark knight of the round table a crazy story where batman is trained to fight by merlin and becomes a member of king arthur's knights of the round table we also have the thrill killer suit based on the story set in the 1960s where batman investigates the murder of dick grayson's parents this next one pretty much speaks for itself but it's the first appearance suit from batman's original comics we talked about blackest night batman and here's the follow-up brightest day or white lantern batman where batman is brought back to life we also have earth 2 batman an alternate world version of bruce wayne unafraid to use guns there's also earth 2 dark knight based on an alternate world where thomas wayne survived the mugging of joe chill becoming batman himself like deathstroke batman also has his suit from the injustice game that you can unlock the next one is the batman 1 million suit which you can unlock by creating a wbid i did that and still wasn't able to access it so i don't know if it's still available batman 1 million is a comic series based on a new batman taking place in the far distant future the last two skins are exclusive to the ps3 version and they're pretty awesome the first is of the classic tv series suit worn by adam west and the other is the nightfall suit john paul valley stood in as batman while bruce recovered from his broken back and designed this suit to help him take on bane himself i'm jealous that these suits are only on the ps3 version because they're definitely two that i would want to wear throughout the story especially nightfall there was supposed to be one additional suit but it was unfortunately cancelled by the developers shortly before the game released it was reportedly going to be the batman creature we saw during joker's nightmare apparently there was some sort of bug within it that developers couldn't fix in time so it was just removed it's a shame that it was never able to see the light of day as a playable skin because it would have been so much fun to terrorize gotham's criminals looking like this it's also disappointing that we didn't get a playable joker for these challenge maps i find it surprising because we get a playable combat section for him during that nightmare sequence he was also playable in the challenge maps for the playstation's version of arkham asylum so it's curious that he wasn't available in arkham origins they could have even had an alternate costume for him in his red hood look he had some pretty cool attack and takedown animations in the brief combat section that we played so i would have liked to explore that deeper going back a bit though we've talked a lot about the different combat and stealth challenges but we haven't talked about those mechanics much themselves and honestly that's because not much has changed from the previous games if you're familiar with how combat and stealth work in arkham asylum and city it's pretty much the same here not to say that's a bad thing in fact wb montreal often stated that their mindset was if it's not broken don't fix it in regard to many of rocksteady's pre-existing systems however where they opted to make changes was mostly with batman's gadgets and enemy types there are a few different gadgets in this game but a lot of them operate roughly the same as gadgets from the other games however there are a couple key gadgets that wb montreal introduced to batman's arsenal most notably the remote claw and the shock gloves the remote claw can be used to create tight ropes high above enemies or used as a zipline similar to the line launcher in the other games but it has its own unique features as well since it can attach to enemies and objects and yank them towards each other this was a lot of fun in predator missions because you could immediately string an enemy to a statue to take them out or launch an exploding canister at someone i've seen it criticized as being too overpowered but i don't agree it can definitely thin the herd pretty quickly but you're only limited to three shots so you need to pick when best to use them i found that it gave me a lot of additional options in how i wanted to take down enemies and it ended up being my favorite gadget to use in the game the shock gloves i'm a bit more conflicted on after taking them from the electrocutioner you can use them in combat after charging them up by fighting enemies once activated they last for a limited time but can deal out a lot of damage and they even have their own takedown animations they're fun to use and they make you feel powerful but they completely bypass the combat mechanics of the game for example enemies with shields or shock batons can provide additional challenge since you can't take the mod head on and instead need to use the vault mechanic to get the upper hand with the shot gloves you can just spam the attack button and carve your way through these enemies so it definitely feels overpowered in that sense and takes some of the challenge away at least to a point i doubt this was intentional but the gloves are so good that i found myself becoming very sloppy during combat when using them because they're such a crutch that i accidentally start mindlessly attacking everyone i would stop paying attention to counter icons and whether enemies were grabbing guns this caused me to take a lot of unnecessary damage and i realized that i was only becoming this sloppy when i was using the shot gloves so in a sense i like that the challenge with the shot gloves was more of an internal one to not drop your focus and become dependent on the power of the gloves it's kind of thematic that way too because i imagine that's exactly what happened to the electrocutioner and why he was always so cocky but each time we saw him he'd get one-shotted by someone regardless i ultimately like the shock gloves but i think their power should have been dialed back a bit prior to release i do really like the enemy types that wb montreal introduced to the game though specifically the martial artists and the bane thugs the bane thugs are powered by the drug venom and they start off very strong requiring you to prioritize them to de-power them you need to either perform a beatdown or a takedown resulting in batman removing the venom tubes after which they basically function like a normal enemy type it's nothing too flashy but i like how they can become a problem for you if you don't deal with them but aren't an overwhelming presence the martial artists are my favorite though because they actively fight against you most enemies you can trust that your hits will land but these enemies will parry your attacks you have to really pay attention when striking at them in case they deal out any follow-up attacks meaning you might have to counter them a couple times before you actually land a hit they'll also charge in with a leaping attack requiring you to quickly press the counter button twice in order to successfully counter them only pressing it once isn't enough and they'll land a couple quick strikes on you this becomes even more challenging in the new game plus mode where you no longer have the indicators to tell you what they're doing i like that this enemy actively challenges you and requires your full attention and i think they were an excellent inclusion into the game wb montreal also added some additional challenges that you can complete through their dark knight system this provides a series of challenges in different categories and you have to complete each challenge in order you'll also gain xp and some unlockable rewards for completing them for example the sonic batarang is locked behind one of these challenges as well as its upgrade i think it's a pretty cool idea but i wasn't a huge fan of this system sometimes i would struggle with a particular task locking me out of higher tier challenges even though some of the higher tier challenges were things i had already done so by the time i got them i'd have to do it again i think i would have enjoyed it more if all the challenges were accessible from the beginning and i could do them in any order with upgrades like the sonic batarang unlocking after i complete a certain number of them i still like what wb montreal were trying to do with the dark knight system but i didn't find it as engaging as i had hoped i do like the upgrade system though and i think wb montreal did a good job in cleaning up the user interface compared to arkham cities in that game it felt kind of cumbersome to navigate and sometimes unclear what i could upgrade and what was already unlocked in arkham origins the skill progression is a lot clearer with a whole category dedicated to showing you the core abilities you have unlocked with the other categories used for new abilities these categories are for combat stealth and auxiliary upgrades the auxiliary upgrades can't be bought with skill points though and have to be unlocked through other means like side missions or the dark knight system i think i would have preferred being able to put skill points into these upgrades but it didn't hinder the experience within this wayne tech menu screen you can also find character profiles for everyone you encounter some of which have audio logs that give them additional lore even certain locations have details on them and i appreciate the depth wb montreal went into to flesh out the background of gotham and its inhabitants speaking of gotham let's talk about the open world for a bit one of wb montreal's main enhancements from arkham city is that they more than doubled the size of gotham's explorable space adding the pioneers bridge and new gotham they even had to include a fast travel system to help you traverse it being able to explore more of gotham is really exciting and it adds a lot of room to roam and explore after roaming around it a lot though i'm starting to wonder if arkham city's less is more approach was better somehow arkham city feels more detailed and exciting to explore compared to arkham origins which after a while feels kind of samey maybe there's not enough uniqueness to each district the way that there is in arkham city i'm not sure but it lacked the excitement i'd hoped that it bring me that being said i do appreciate the added scale to the map and i still had fun zipping around and gliding through the streets of gotham i also appreciate the wb montreal attempted to liven up gotham by adding crimes in progress which are essentially random events that occur in the city and they're typically street fights unfortunately these fall kind of flat as well they're optional and you're not given much incentive to complete them besides additional xp so you're likely just going to do a couple of them to try them out and then ignore them for the rest of the game it's disappointing and i wish wb montreal had found a way to spice them up more there are still some cool details in the world though like different easter eggs and companies from the comics for example soder cola and big belly burger are both companies from the comics there are also notable locations like ace chemicals where joker's origin began as well as the monarch theater the same theater where bruce's parents were shot and killed if you go behind the theater you can still see the chalk outline of their bodies there's also a pretty creepy easter egg at this location that i definitely missed my first time through during one of the crime scene side missions you're meant to scan the area to investigate a different crime that went down in this same area however during the reconstruction for just a couple frames bruce's parents will show up on the ground it's really eerie but i kinda love it there are also some easter egg posters scattered throughout gotham besides the flying graysons there's also a poster for zatanna a powerful magician who's also a member of the justice league there's also a poster for a show called funny faces starring basil carlo basil carlo is an actor who becomes the villain clayface after being dowsed in a putty that allows the user to shape their appearance into whoever they want we also have a poster for rare jungle cats presented by thomas blake thomas blake is the character catman who had a hobby of capturing jungle cats he'd later become a villain stealing cat-themed objects he's basically what joe exotic would have become if he never went to prison on the topic of easter eggs there's also a pretty funny hidden cheat code that you can use which is for big head mode batman and the villains you encounter will all have big heads hands and feet and it's kind of like watching a couple funko pops fight but i think we've talked enough about the gameplay and extras so let's get into the audio section of this your video where's he going awesome is me you want teeth i want wait answers black masks assassins get through with you what a sass whoever wins is gonna be famous [Music] at least we know he won't be ugly freeze hold it right there i'm taking you in not tonight no such thing as a batman just like everything else in the arkham series there was a very high bar set for the voice acting in the arkham games by rocksteady batman and joker are voiced by kevin conroy and mark hamill respectively two legendary voice actors for these characters however they didn't return for arkham origins which was a choice made by wb montreal since this game takes place significantly before arkham asylum they wanted new voice actors to give these characters a younger voice but sound similar enough that it's believable that they will transition into the future versions of these characters the decision was then made to cast roger craig smith as batman and troy baker as the joker both of which in my opinion perfectly capture what wb montreal were trying to achieve they're also both very high caliber voice actors with extensive experience in other games roger craig smith for example has played a lot of recognizable characters in recent years for example he's played ezio in the assassin's creed games and chris redfield starting with resident evil 5 continuing into resident evil 6 and revelations he's also regularly voiced sonic the hedgehog in games like sonic generations and his appearance in smash bros ultimate amongst others you might also recognize him as captain america voicing him in animated shows like avengers assemble and marvel future avengers the list definitely goes on from there but my point is that roger craig smith is a very accomplished voice actor this wouldn't be his last time voicing batman either since he'd later return to voice him in the red sun and batman ninja animated films as well as the batman unlimited tv series troy baker is also a very accomplished voice actor and this isn't his first role in the arkham series in batman arkham city he was the voice of robin and we'll see him return as a couple different characters in batman arkham knight he's also reprised his role as the joker in the recently released long halloween animated films and he's voiced batman for the telltale batman games outside of dc you might also recognize him as such characters as joel from the last of us bruce banner and marvel's avengers and sam drake and uncharted as far as how roger and troy do as batman and joker i think they did a phenomenal job it's no easy task to follow up kevin conroy and mark hamill especially when you're trying to give your own take on a role while still trying to stay within the parameters of what those actors established that's tough but they nailed it not only do i really like their portrayals but i can believe that these voices of the younger characters could eventually turn into the older versions from arkham asylum and beyond i think i have to give credit to troy baker especially though since his role required a lot of range as the joker batman is usually straightforward and gruff while joker has to be maniacal comical and intimidating all at once i think troy provided that portraying all the right emotions at the right time not to mention that he also had to impersonate black mask as the joker so i'm very impressed with troy baker batman and joker were probably the most crucial roles to nail but the rest of the cast also turned in incredible work as well to start there's nolan north as the penguin nolan is another big name voice actor with a long resume but you might also recognize him from his work as tony stark iron man in marvel's avengers and nathan drake from the uncharted franchise nolan also voices penguin in arkham city and arkham knight so we'll definitely talk more about him in the future i also can't forget to mention steve bloom this time voicing both the electrocutioner and loose libs if you watch any of my other retrospective videos steve bloom is likely in it due to his long list of appearances in comic book games most notably as wolverine and various marvel video games there's also carrie payton playing killer croc and warden joseph i know him best from the walking dead show where he plays ezekiel but outside of that he's also spent a lot of time voicing dc character cyborg in various shows and games such as injustice 1 and 2. we'll also see him return in both arkham city and arkham knight as ezreal even though joker was black mask for the majority of arkham origins the actual black mask roman cyanus was voiced by brian bloom you might also know brian from his work as william blaskowitz in the wolfenstein games and he also voiced daredevil and captain america in marvel ultimate alliance 3. there's also jb blanc and although i'm not familiar with his other work i want to compliment his work as bane i've mentioned how much i've enjoyed bane in this game a few times now i think jb did a good job voicing him jb has played bain on another occasion though in the telltale game enemy within another cool addition to the voice cast was robert costanzo who plays harvey bullock here i think he was a fun choice since he originally voiced bullock in the batman animated series and i've always enjoyed his portrayal another recognizable name is laura bailey voicing alice and the gcpd dispatcher she's a big time voice actress and she's been in a ton of different video games and for good reason she always gives an excellent performance for example she's black widow in marvel's avengers abby and the last of us part 2 and mary jane and spider-man ps4 believe me the list goes on as far as talented noteworthy voice actors who played a role in this game but these were the ones that stuck out to me the most overall the voice acting was incredible in arkham origins and there wasn't a single character that i felt was lacking so i have to give a lot of credit to both the performers as well as the casting directors let's talk about the score for a bit now composed by christopher drake christopher holds zero punches on the soundtrack and i was extremely blown away by his work each track of the ost manages to capture the emotions of its scenes beautifully ranging from very somber dramatic moments to full-blown epic heroic batman scores i absolutely love this soundtrack and i think it's one of the best parts of the game so usually in this part of the video i played a few clips from the original soundtrack for you to listen to but they keep getting flagged by youtube so we'll have to do things a bit differently instead i have three gameplay clips where i think the audio design evokes great atmosphere and i'll play those next but first i'm going to start with a bonus one during the end credits joker will sing a song about batman while he's in jail i personally don't find it too exciting but it's kind of fun so i'll go ahead and play some of it there was a time when i believed that you belonged to me but now i know your heart is shackled to a memory you won't admit that we're the same and it's tearing me apart why can't i free you down for mine and melt your cold [Laughter] this first one is more of a somber one and you'll hear it a lot while free roaming around gotham i think it creates a lot of atmosphere it's very calming but it also gives some solid wintry christmas vibes as well as the sense of looming danger [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] i really love this next one since it captures the moment so perfectly this one plays during the scene after bane destroys the bat cave and bruce resuscitates alfred the music starts off very slow and subtle when bruce is at his lowest point and then transitions into a more powerful triumphant score as bruce finds the motivation within himself to continue one alert the joker has escaped from his cell and is leading the riots the joker has taken over the entire prison multiple casualties anyone for assistance [Applause] this next clip is during the final shiva fight in wonder tower and i love the background music in it and i think it's perfect for a fast-paced combat encounter like this one this ost was absolutely incredible and i wish i could show you more in this video these tracks elevate every cutscene and gameplay encounter and they're so well done christopher drake did an excellent job and i'd love to see him do more batman soundtracks i feel a drift floating like someone's pulled the stopper on my reality and i'm sucked down the drain into something new it's all very exciting really you wouldn't know what that feels like i'm sure i might can you tell me more about how this person makes you feel it's like meeting someone i can actually relate to which believe me dear i've never felt before you understand you're someone who's not afraid to let go and fall [Music] free falling and i didn't pack a chute [Music] do you know what i mean yes yes i do i figured you would so may i ask who is this person oh summer very very special but whose real name i don't even know yet my name's harleen harleen quinzel what a pretty name do your friends call you honey i don't have a lot of friends well hi you got one now batman arkham origins is definitely overshadowed by the rocksteady games but not outclassed in my opinion this game meets the same level of quality that the other games in the series meet meaning that it's an excellent game on its own even though it heavily borrowed from everything rock city had established in the prior games it still manages to bring in some fresh ideas i think it was a great decision to go the prequel route here instead of shoehorning itself somewhere into the present continuity as well you can tell they spent a lot of time studying the lore and continuity of the arkham franchise and i would say that they really excelled in setting up the basis for the relationships that we've become accustomed to in the other games a lot of the time it feels like it's only batman and joker who get the most character development and although they do get great character arcs here other characters are given more depth as well for example i feel like i got a lot more time with gordon and alfred allowing me to understand them more as individual characters the writing overall is incredibly well done and i think this is one of the better stories in the arkham franchise the cutscenes in this game are expertly constructed as well every angle the pace at which the shots are cut the motion capture and the way it all blends with the score are so well done that i always feel whatever emotion they're wanting to evoke whether that be fear confusion sadness or triumph it's always making a solid impact then of course there's the outstanding score by christopher drake and all the incredible voice talent that elevate every scene really the audio overall for this game goes a long way to capture the proper mood and thematics that you'd want from a batman game so overall i think the storytelling cinematics and audio design are really where this game shines the most however the gameplay although good feels largely like a cut and paste job i still have trouble criticizing wb montreal for this though rocksteady developed a winning formula so i think it's wise that wb montreal opted to not over tinker with it their unique conclusions to the gameplay are hit or miss though with things like the shock gloves crimes in progress and dark knight system not doing much to change things up but i do appreciate their efforts to add new ideas however i do think things like the larger open world remote bat claw the i am the night mode and enemy types like the martial artist do help to make the gameplay more refreshing so even though i think this game catches a lot of criticism for how much of it feels borrowed from the rocksteady games i still think wb montreal made a lot of smart decisions on where to add new things what to change and more importantly what not to change so i want to grade this game based on how it stands as a whole and not necessarily how it compares to the other games or knock it because of reused assets so ultimately i give batman arkham origins a 9.5 out of 10. it maintains the quality standard of the other games in the franchise while providing its own unique flavor and executing a story that i absolutely love i definitely want to replay this game again and it might even become a new christmas tradition for me i'd highly recommend trying it for yourself if you never played it because i think you'll be pleasantly surprised i know that may be easier said than done though since this game is kind of the black sheep of the family not part of any of the remastered collections that have been released at least at the time of this recording fingers crossed that one day that will change though because it's an excellent game and shouldn't be ignored that being said i always like to compare my score to metacritics to see how critics and fans have rated it honestly i was stunned to see this in the 70s for both pc and ps3 since i played the game on pc we'll focus on those scores in particular but it's pretty much the same for each console and these scores seemed incredibly low to me i did notice how some reviewers stated that the bugs really ruined the experience for them so that might have played a factor in a lot of these scores i definitely ran into some bugs myself but nothing ruinous for progression halting i think i had to reload a checkpoint once or twice but the game autosaves enough that it wasn't a hindrance i think the fact that wb montreal didn't expand on the gameplay of arkham city much was a problem for a lot of players too and i do remember that clouding my perspective from when i first played it back in 2013. revisiting it now with fresh eyes though i still think it stands on its own and i stand by my score so at this point you may be wondering what rocksteady and wb montreal have done since this game and where they are now rock city of course finished their arkham series in 2015 with the release of batman arkham knight a game i'd like to cover eventually as well they technically continued it another game further though with the release of arkham vr in 2016 which i tried and thought was pretty cool too since then they haven't released anything but they are due to release their next game soon which will be suicide squad kill the justice league as far as wb montreal they haven't released any new games since arkham origins but they did work on some dlc packs for arkham knight other than that it seems they've been hard at work at developing another dc game gotham knights focusing on the other members of the bat family besides batman at the time of this recording that game hasn't released either but it's one that i'm curious to check out especially with how much i loved arkham origins but that's all that i have for this video if you're wondering what to expect next we'll continue with this continuity and discuss batman arkham asylum the first rocksteady batman title so i'll be working on that next but in the meantime i have plenty of other comic book game retrospectives that you can check out like the spider-man movie games marvel ultima alliance and the punisher if there are other games you'd like to see covered in the future definitely let me know since it helps me to figure out what games to prioritize over others i've also tried to compile a list of the different comics that were discussed throughout the video in the description below in case you'd like to check them out for yourself if you enjoyed this video i'd really appreciate it if you gave it a like since that helps it to reach new viewers and if you'd like to see more videos like this you can subscribe for more retrospectives i've been mainly focusing on marvel but i am hoping to incorporate more dc games into the mix as well but anyway thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next video oh [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Always Nerdy

Views: 3,217,912

Keywords: batman arkham origins retrospective review, batman arkham origins easter eggs, batman arkham origins gameplay, batman year 2 game, the batman, joker, bane, penguin, riddler, enigma, wb montreal, rocksteady, always nerdy, batman arkham prequel, batman knightfall, batman killing joke

Id: ew2vg50IT2c

Length: 147min 14sec (8834 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2022