BATMAN WILL NEVER DIE
No one’s ever planned an end for Batman. I mean, obviously the movies have endings. Comic arcs have endings. But no one has ever said, “That’s it. We’re done with Batman.” Why would they? Batman is nothing if not a money-making machine. 2008’s The Dark Knight is the eighth-highest grossing movie of all time. There are over a dozen Batman-themed rides at theme parks over the world. Under ‘The New 52’, DC Comics 2011 reboot of all its titles, there are eleven Batman-related titles, with a twelfth on the way next year. There are also direct-to-DVD movies, toys, and of course, video games. The latest one, Arkham City, besides being the definitive Game of The Year, gets closer then anything ever has to explaining why Batman will never really end.
A large portion of that is due to Paul Dini’s fantastic script. Dini’s been a company man for over twenty years, only writing for Warner Bros or DC Comics under every imprint known to man. He only took a break in 2004 to write and consult for that island show on ABC, maybe you’ve heard it? Anyway, Dini understands the most interesting thing about a comic is the villain (he invented Harley Quinn, among others), and their affairs are probably more interesting then whoever our titular hero might be. Hence, Arkham City’s plot: second-tier villan Hugo Strange takes the stage and actually sections off a large portion of Gotham City for an open-air prison. It’s an idea large enough that it could be tackled in any of Batman’s many mediums, but perhaps it works best here, where you can hang around any area as long as you’d like. Onetime Batman editor Dennis O’Neil once described Gotham City as “Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November” and it comes through in City, where the streets are perpetually being snowed on and populated by an endless number of criminals.
Arkham City plays a lot like its precursor, Arkham Asylum, but bigger. Asylum trapped the Dark Knight in an island prison and dedicated itself to a gothic theme, filled with stunning architecture and ghost stories. City is decidedly urban, which means the game has to sacrifice a lot of architectural unity. What ties all elements of the game together is the snow, continually falling from the sky. The non-playable characters comment on its seemingly never ending nature, wondering if they’ll ever see the sun again. Of course, the kicker is they won’t. No one in this game will ever see the sun, because there is nothing outside the walls of Arkham City, outside the long night Bruce Wayne has to spend with this seemingly endless number of criminals.
That’s always been the strain on open-world games, the idea that anything is possible when it really isn’t. The biggest tipoff is usually swimming. The protagonist of Arkham City is a man in peak physical condition with endless financial backing, planes, ziplines, electro-rays, and yet the slightest drop of water and you have to restart. It’s kind of ridiculous, making Batman’s ultimate fear getting wet. Aquatic ineptitude has a long standing tradition in video games, and surely the developers at Rocksteady Studios had better things to do then focus on the Bat-stroke. Watching Batman begrudgingly pull his massive frame out of the water again and again provides a moment of surreal levity in a game that takes itself its realism very seriously.
Swimming be damned, Arkham City is endless. The main storyline takes up only a third of the game. I’ve already beat the Joker, Mr. Freeze, Victor Zaasz, Bane, The Penguin, The Mad Hatter, Ras al Ghul and others and I’m still not up to fifty percent. And even if you beat all the super-villians, the number of inmates whose asses you can kick will never end. You can go into challenge rooms, where you can ignore the idea of the open world and just kick their asses! It’s a lot fun, especially City has the simplest fight mechanics imaginable: just press one button, and Batman will do whatever suits the situation. You can upgrade it, but it’s accessible to anyone. The game wants you to win, wants you to see as much of it’s endless turmoil as you possibly can.
Recently, Georgia State Profesor and Video Game Smart Person Ian Bogost described people playing video games almost as archeologists, entering a strange land: “The player or critic could make appeals to authorship or origin, but such an act isn’t necessary—it’s equally satisfactory to reflect on the role of a strange, unfamiliar machine.” Yet Batman is the definition of familiar, and to play Arkham City is to feel the joy of co-opting one of the most popular fictional creations of all time. “It’s the Bat!”, inmates scream when you drop in on them, and suddenly you’re personally invested in decades worth of pop culture. Adam West, Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, and now you. It doesn’t hurt that Kevin Conroy of Batman: The Animated Series gives your voice, either. Arkham City has a Batman for All Seasons: the Gritty Realness of the Nolan reboots, a Burton-esque attention to costume, and even a little of Adam West goofiness thrown in for good measure.
When Frank Miller first rebooted Batman in 1986 with The Dark Knight Returns, he understood what differentiated him from Superman was the fact that Bruce Wayne, by action and word, refused to accept that mainstream society could be any good to anyone. Sure, there’s Jim Gordon, but Batman has been at war with the police as much as he has any villian. DC Comics profits are a part of it, but the reason Batman has been able to be so good for so long is that there is a permanent rift in American society, one where a certain class will never trust those in power. That rift is on full display in Arkham City. Endless criminals patrolling the streets, given full blessing by the city, the Mayor, and whoever else has power. You’ll never be able to stop them all, and maybe you don’t really want to. They give you a sense of purpose, after all. Arkham City knows that it’s walls should be un-scalable, that Batman would never leave it even if he could. Endless crime, endless revenge? The god-damned Batman’s finally found his god-damned home.
A large portion of that is due to Paul Dini’s fantastic script. Dini’s been a company man for over twenty years, only writing for Warner Bros or DC Comics under every imprint known to man. He only took a break in 2004 to write and consult for that island show on ABC, maybe you’ve heard it? Anyway, Dini understands the most interesting thing about a comic is the villain (he invented Harley Quinn, among others), and their affairs are probably more interesting then whoever our titular hero might be. Hence, Arkham City’s plot: second-tier villan Hugo Strange takes the stage and actually sections off a large portion of Gotham City for an open-air prison. It’s an idea large enough that it could be tackled in any of Batman’s many mediums, but perhaps it works best here, where you can hang around any area as long as you’d like. Onetime Batman editor Dennis O’Neil once described Gotham City as “Manhattan below Fourteenth Street at eleven minutes past midnight on the coldest night in November” and it comes through in City, where the streets are perpetually being snowed on and populated by an endless number of criminals.
Arkham City plays a lot like its precursor, Arkham Asylum, but bigger. Asylum trapped the Dark Knight in an island prison and dedicated itself to a gothic theme, filled with stunning architecture and ghost stories. City is decidedly urban, which means the game has to sacrifice a lot of architectural unity. What ties all elements of the game together is the snow, continually falling from the sky. The non-playable characters comment on its seemingly never ending nature, wondering if they’ll ever see the sun again. Of course, the kicker is they won’t. No one in this game will ever see the sun, because there is nothing outside the walls of Arkham City, outside the long night Bruce Wayne has to spend with this seemingly endless number of criminals.
That’s always been the strain on open-world games, the idea that anything is possible when it really isn’t. The biggest tipoff is usually swimming. The protagonist of Arkham City is a man in peak physical condition with endless financial backing, planes, ziplines, electro-rays, and yet the slightest drop of water and you have to restart. It’s kind of ridiculous, making Batman’s ultimate fear getting wet. Aquatic ineptitude has a long standing tradition in video games, and surely the developers at Rocksteady Studios had better things to do then focus on the Bat-stroke. Watching Batman begrudgingly pull his massive frame out of the water again and again provides a moment of surreal levity in a game that takes itself its realism very seriously.
Swimming be damned, Arkham City is endless. The main storyline takes up only a third of the game. I’ve already beat the Joker, Mr. Freeze, Victor Zaasz, Bane, The Penguin, The Mad Hatter, Ras al Ghul and others and I’m still not up to fifty percent. And even if you beat all the super-villians, the number of inmates whose asses you can kick will never end. You can go into challenge rooms, where you can ignore the idea of the open world and just kick their asses! It’s a lot fun, especially City has the simplest fight mechanics imaginable: just press one button, and Batman will do whatever suits the situation. You can upgrade it, but it’s accessible to anyone. The game wants you to win, wants you to see as much of it’s endless turmoil as you possibly can.
Recently, Georgia State Profesor and Video Game Smart Person Ian Bogost described people playing video games almost as archeologists, entering a strange land: “The player or critic could make appeals to authorship or origin, but such an act isn’t necessary—it’s equally satisfactory to reflect on the role of a strange, unfamiliar machine.” Yet Batman is the definition of familiar, and to play Arkham City is to feel the joy of co-opting one of the most popular fictional creations of all time. “It’s the Bat!”, inmates scream when you drop in on them, and suddenly you’re personally invested in decades worth of pop culture. Adam West, Michael Keaton, Christian Bale, and now you. It doesn’t hurt that Kevin Conroy of Batman: The Animated Series gives your voice, either. Arkham City has a Batman for All Seasons: the Gritty Realness of the Nolan reboots, a Burton-esque attention to costume, and even a little of Adam West goofiness thrown in for good measure.
When Frank Miller first rebooted Batman in 1986 with The Dark Knight Returns, he understood what differentiated him from Superman was the fact that Bruce Wayne, by action and word, refused to accept that mainstream society could be any good to anyone. Sure, there’s Jim Gordon, but Batman has been at war with the police as much as he has any villian. DC Comics profits are a part of it, but the reason Batman has been able to be so good for so long is that there is a permanent rift in American society, one where a certain class will never trust those in power. That rift is on full display in Arkham City. Endless criminals patrolling the streets, given full blessing by the city, the Mayor, and whoever else has power. You’ll never be able to stop them all, and maybe you don’t really want to. They give you a sense of purpose, after all. Arkham City knows that it’s walls should be un-scalable, that Batman would never leave it even if he could. Endless crime, endless revenge? The god-damned Batman’s finally found his god-damned home.
