These days you probably don’t think of Batman as a detective, but that’s how the caped crusader was originally envisioned when he swung onto the comics scene in 1939. The series’ loss of mystery and intrigue has been a running event but it’s perhaps most obvious when looking at recent movie adaptations of the character such as Christian Bale’s raspy brawler, or Ben Affleck’s rocket launching murderous monster. Initially I wasn’t thrilled when I heard that Telltale’s next big property score was Batman, a series that I just didn’t see itself lending well to Telltale’s design philosophies. But word was the developer intended on returning their Batman to his detective roots, which was something that intrigued me. And so now here we are welcoming the game’s first episode into the world, how did it go? Do we have a regular gumshoe on our hands or is Batman still clinging to his old punchy ways?
The game’s opening shot in which a security guard takes a gory bullet between the eyes immediately lets you know that this particular Batman probably won’t be for children. The game has earned itself an M rating, something not even the notably dark Arkham series went for. There’s plenty more gore and curse words stored in the wings so get ready.
But what about those detective moves? Well hold on, first we have to do the introductory action sequence. This involves Batman dispatching a group of mercenaries breaking into City Hall before ending with a nice little rooftop fight with Catwoman. The game’s action plays out in typical Telltale fashion via quick time events. I initially started play with a mouse and keyboard but found that some of the odd strokes they were asking me to press were throwing me off. For example the game will sometimes ask you to press shift+q to administer an attack but I found the combination strangely cramped and would occasionally turn on the Steam overlay (shift+tab) by mistake. Eventually I switched to an Xbox One controller and we were back in business.
This is probably not a Batman for your kids.
After getting our expository action out of the way it was time to take control of Bruce Wayne, whom you actually spend about fifty percent of your playtime as. Bruce is currently in the middle of helping his new friend Harvey Dent to win his campaign for mayor of Gotham. Of course we all recognize Harvey Dent as notorious supervillain Two-Face but at this point he’s still yet to make that transformation. It’s such an obvious plot point, I have my fingers crossed that Telltale will skirt past it.
In fact I find much of Batman’s plot to be repetitive and although their deaths are never shown directly on screen plenty of time is spent laboring over Wayne’s famously assassinated parents. There’s a small twist towards the end of the chapter that suggests Telltale might put a new spin on the family or perhaps do some retconning for the series, but ultimately the take-away here is that if you were sick of hearing about Batman’s dead parents this is going to be the opposite of a remedy.
Let’s use this big computer to look up my dead parents!
Unbeknownst to Bruce, Harvey’s campaign has gotten a little too chummy with resident gangster Carmine Falcone who ends up crashing their fundraiser with the intent of intimidating Wayne into doing business with him. You have your choice to play ball but regardless of what happens you and Falcone don’t necessarily part on the best of terms, and suddenly the next day Bruce finds himself defending his family’s legacy against allegations that the Waynes were a bit more chummy with Falcone than one might have initially thought.
What’s that? It’s time to put our detective skills to good work? Great idea! Telltale has fleshed out “detective mode” to be something a bit more meaningful then the glorified x-ray goggles from the Arkham series. During investigations Batman will survey the scene, uncover points of interest in the environment and then link them together to assemble a narrative of what exactly transpired. It’s not the most complex thing in the world, I solved the only segment in chapter one without a huge amount of thought. It is an interesting feature though and my hope is that it will make more appearances in the series rather than less.
It’s time for Batman to solve the mystery of the exploded man.
I’m still skeptical that Batman is the right IP for Telltale’s design model. The whole appeal of their choice based world is the potential for consequences behind those choices and Batman’s world doesn’t exactly give them the liberty to make real damaging gashes in the lore. Game of Thrones was frustrating at times for its use of show characters who you know could never be killed. Well now we have a game where the entire cast is covered in theoretical plot armor.
I’m interested to see what direction this heads in and what risks Telltale is willing to take. The first episode isn’t really anything special but it does give a dose of cautious optimism. I guess we’ll see how things go from here…
