It's safe to say that Batman gets a lot of love. From a number of video games starring the caped crusader in every form between
Lego and realistic to so many film adaptations that I can claim to have seen Thomas and Martha Wayne die from multiple angles, the Batman narrative has been taken in countless directions. Different villains have been given the spotlight and different plots to destroy Gotham have been foiled. But never, in all of Batman history, have we seen a story the likes of which Telltale gives us in their Batman series. It would be fair to say that Christopher Nolan's beloved
Dark Knight trilogy counts as a rewrite of the Batman mythos, but in the end the world is still the same: These guys are good, these guys are evil, etc. Sure, he gave the city of Gotham and its colorful cast of characters a more realistic interpretation, but we still went into the theatre with accurate expectations. It's never been any secret that
Batman: The Telltale Series does some serious world rewriting, so I'm not spoiling anything by telling you that, but let me assure you that this game is going to surprise you every time you think your
Batman knowledge is going to help you predict the story.
This review is going to be spoiler-free. Also, I will be talking about the merits of each individual episode, but there are some general things I need to cover first. Let's get bat-started.
--------------------- --------------------
The first general thing I'd like to talk about is the game's technical performance. It's terrible. That much can be said of any Telltale title, but for some reason
Batman just seems incapable of a stable performance. There are times when the game runs at 60 fps for a few seconds then drops back down to some unknown level. There are the usual slew of framerate dips, animation stutters, and mid-dialogue loading screens as well. In addition, I did experience one hard crash at the beginning of episode 2, and there were some points where there were missing sound effects during crucial action sequences. That's quite a rap sheet I just listed there, and it's certainly true that
Batman is Telltale's worst technical specimen, but the fact of the matter is that Telltale is so bad at making stable products that it doesn't even really bother me anymore (save for the hard crash). Telltale needs to step up its game for the rest of
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, because I shouldn't be so used to technical slop from a company.
--------------------- --------------------
The other general thing I feel like I need to touch on is...*sigh*...look, does anybody really believe Telltale when they say that your choices matter at this point? There's been so much evidence to the contrary in recent products (with
Game of Thrones being the exception as choices actually do matter in that one) that I don't even take it into account anymore. Really, the choices only serve to get us invested in characters and things like that, and to its credit, it works for me. There are plenty of times where I have to really think about my choices in Telltale games, but I do so knowing that in the end, none of them will really have much of an impact. However, I've never seen a game shrug off player choice as lazily as
Batman: The Telltale Series since
Mass Effect 3 put Udina on the council no matter what. As I played, I found myself actually being irked by it, as the game would simply act like I'd made different choices. Let me give you an example: at one point I gave a reporter a tip on a certain villain, and at a later point I refused to give this same reporter a tip about a different character. In the next episode, Bruce Wayne mentioned the reporter owing him for "that tip," at which point Alfred responded with "oh yes, that business with" and then he mentioned the wrong tip. The game had decided that I'd given the reporter the latter tip even though I hadn't. Throughout the game there are plenty of examples of this, so just don't go into this game actually expecting your choices to matter. Of course, I'm probably preaching to the choir on this one.
--------------------- --------------------
Now, onto talking about each episode without spoilers. The logical place to start is, of course, episode 1. As far as Telltale opening episodes go, Episode 1 of
Batman is actually pretty strong. It opens up, as many Batman stories do, with a robbery in progress by masked mercenaries. As Batman, we halt the robbery only to discover that none other than Catwoman has already stolen the item in question. After scuffling with Catwoman, Batman takes back the item and takes it to the Bat Cave for analysis. Telltale opening episodes are usually pretty great, but episode 1 of
Batman stands out by being just a little bit better. This is primarily because this episode has a much better sense of self-containedness than other Telltale opening episodes. Even though there is a slight cliffhanger to keep us interested, the episode just feels
complete.
Now would be a good time to bring up the fact that a better name for this series would be
Bruce Wayne: The Telltale Series, as you only play as Batman sparingly until the last episode. Now, Bruce Wayne has never been the part of the Batman narrative that people flock to see, but the role that he plays in this particular Batman story is intriguing and almost feels like an old detective movie. In this opening episode, you only play as Batman three times (the bat-beginning, a piece at the bat-middle, and at the bat-climax), and the rest of the time is spent as Bruce Wayne as he tries to help Harvey Dent in his mayoral campaign. Unfortunately, all of the intriguing story rewrites happen in Bruce Wayne's plot, so I can't go into too much detail on it.
Though you only step into the Bat Suit a few times, there is something to like in each segment. In the opening, the bat-quicktime event combat is fast-paced and seems to mirror the actions taking place on the screen. In the middle segment, you get to live up to the caped crusader's title of "world's greatest detective," as you link pieces of bat-evidence together at a crime scene. Finally, in the climax, Batman puts his gadgets to use to devise a strategic plan of attack. Batman only comes into play when there is something new for him to show off to us, and as Bruce Wayne, we get to see a side of the narrative world that we've never seen before. All of this closes out with a revelation that I don't think anybody will see coming, and it provides a significantly more uncomfortable framework for the Batman mythos. Hopefully now you can see what I mean when I say that episode 1 feels complete as its own thing.
--------------------- --------------------
Then comes episode 2, which has historically been a low point (along with episode 4) in Telltale titles. In
The Walking Dead, episode 2 was the St. Johns's episode, and it wasn't bad, but it did feel like filler. In
The Wolf Among Us, episode 2 was the start of the game's downfall. There have been some exceptions - such as
The Walking Dead Season 2, wherein episode 2 had us reuniting with Kenny - but most of the time Telltale hits a slump in the second episode. Thankfully, in
Batman, Telltale doesn't conform to this pattern. It isn't as good as the opening episode, but episode 2 is quite enjoyable here.
After the revelation that comes forth at the end of episode 1, Bruce Wayne finds himself facing a crushing internal conflict, and he goes out to find answers as both Batman and himself. The Batman sequences are more action-based, as the detective aspect seems to be removed in this episode. Either way, everything in this episode up until the end is done in the service of getting answers. Eventually, Batman must face off against one of the game's villains (a villain that is typically hokey, but who here would have made my "Best Antagonists" list had I played this last year) in what is one of my favorite sequences in the series. It is at this point that we are introduced to the game's
overarching villain - a masked figure whose identity isn't immediately guessable - for the first time. The episode ends with one of the most inconsequential choices of them all, but like I said, the sequence was one of my favorites, so it doesn't really matter all that much.
I said this in my
Beyond: Two Souls review back in the day, but it's still true: having a choice-based game wherein you play as two closely linked characters doesn't work.
Heavy Rain worked in that the characters each were doing their own thing, but
Beyond: Two Souls didn't work because Jodie and Aiden's stories were too closely linked. In other words, it's like giving you a choice-based game where you play as both sides of a relationship. It's pointless because if you choose to have person 1 cheat on person 2, you can immediately choose to make person 2 not care and all narrative tension is thrown aside.
Batman isn't exactly the same thing, but it tries to play the character loyalty card when one of the choices would only have a negative impact on Bruce Wayne (who you aren't currently playing as), not Batman. There are essentially two bat-characters in Bruce Wayne and Batman, and only a few characters know they're one and the same, so playing with character loyalty doesn't really work here.
Episode 2 was definitely a strong episode, especially for Telltale, but it was a step down from the opener.
--------------------- --------------------
Episode 3 is a pretty varied time in Telltale's history. In both seasons of
The Walking Dead, the third episode stood out among the rest, but in
The Wolf Among Us, it was just continuing the downward fall. It may very well be my favorite of the
Batman episodes. In this episode, just about every character gets extra development, one of the game's main villains gains an infuriating advantage, and Bruce Wayne is ultimately powerless to do anything. The story intrigue is back in full force for this episode, as the overarching villain becomes far more prominent and we start thinking about which of Batman's nemeses they might be.
The detective aspect of the Batman sections also returns in this episode, allowing us to piece together bits of the overarching villain's grand plan. Tensions rise as the question of "who" keeps surfacing. Then, finally, towards the end of the episode, the overarching villain's identity is revealed!...
And it's ok. Shocking, to be sure, but not compelling in the bat-least. Here's the problem: a plot twist doesn't work if there isn't some kind of trail to follow. A plot twist only works if there are subtle, easily missable clues that the player can pick up on. Think about
Bioshock. The phrase "would you kindly" was used before every action you carried out, but there was no way of understanding its significance until the plot twist, at which point you could go back and say "wow! I didn't notice that before!" Likewise, little tidbits - like the fact that Atlas's fake wife and son's names were the name of an Opera being advertised in Fort Frolic - could be found in the world. No such clues can be found here and the reveal just kind of comes out of left field. The third episode was the best one overall, but I left it with a bitter taste in my mouth, like all of my brainstorming had been wasted for shock value. It isn't a deal breaker for the game, but you should know not to expect too much from the main villain.
--------------------- --------------------
Then we get to episode 4...*inhales sharply through bat-teeth*...and unfortunately this is where the game starts to fall apart. With the exception of
Game of Thrones and possibly
Tales from the Borderlands, episode 4 has always been the worst episode in any Telltale game. It typically only exists to set up the finale, and
Batman is no different. This episode of
Batman seems to push the envelope in the bad fourth episode department, however, as
several promising subplots are thrown away in mere seconds, leaving us with basically no plot until the finale. At this point I can no longer talk about the story without spoiling, as every little tidbit depends on something that happened in a previous episode.
What I can say about episode 4 is that, like any other Telltale fourth episode, it's mostly filler and focuses on amassing questions for the finale to answer.
--------------------- --------------------
Finales in the Telltale model are usually pretty good. The standout example is, of course, the finale of
The Walking Dead, but the finales of
The Walking Dead Season 2, Game of Thrones, and
Tales from the Borderlands were fantastic as well. The finale for
Batman is better than episode 4. It isn't great, as it's one of Telltale's weakest closing chapters (in fact, the only closing episode worse than it is the finale for
The Wolf Among Us), but it's still better than episode 4. The problem here is that in the previous episode the story completely ditches its large-scale conflict and switches to a smaller-scale one at the last minute that I just didn't really care about. More development is given to the overarching villain, which makes them a bat-tad bit bat-better (sorry), but they're still pretty bland. The episode ends with two choices, both of which give the inconsequential choice from episode 2 a run for its money in the pointless department, and right before we fade to the credits, there is an admittedly compelling cliffhanger.
One thing I would
like to say is that the action in this finale is good, and admittedly it's much faster paced and the animations happening during the quicktime events are action packed, but this episode -more than any other - is hampered by mid-action loading. What this amounts to is a solid five minutes of promising action that is shot in the foot by constant stutters.
--------------------- --------------------
My first night playing
Batman: The Telltale Series, I played until 1 in the morning, when I had completed episode 3. At that point, I had to force myself to stop and convince myself that it wasn't smart to stay up until 5 in the morning in order to finish the game in one sitting. That's how fantastic the first three episodes of
Batman are. Then, the second night, I played through the fourth and fifth episodes and was glad that I hadn't spoiled my experience by playing them right after the third episode.
I'm going to be honest with you, dear reader,
Batman: The Telltale Series is one of my favorite products from Telltale. It might have had more technical problems than ever and one of the weakest finales in Telltale history, but the first three episodes had me completely invested from start to finish. Telltale does some legitimately fascinating things with the Batman narrative, and when you aren't playing as Batman the game shrouds its story in almost Film Noir atmosphere. I can't score this game as high as I would like in good bat-conscience, but you should know that I highly recommend that you play it. Whether you're a huge batman fan like I am or if you don't care about him at all, there is a lot to like here.
So, let us bat-review:
Poor technical performance -0.5
Pointless choices -0.5
Weak final episodes -1
The final bat-score for
Batman: The Telltale Series is...
8.0/10 - Good
Good work, Telltale games, good work.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thoughts? Questions? Think I'm full of it?