A Deep Dive From Atop A Gargoyle, Close Look Into The Arkham Games

Batman Arkham Trilogy (and some more) are widely considered to be the pinnacle of superhero games and have brought revolutionary game design and methodology to the Third Person Action genre. This is my(Upa) deep dive into what made these three (Yes Origins, I know) games great why they stand out even today and deserve a replay if you have never tried them out.

Asylum

In 2009, superhero games as a genre existed almost only to serve one purpose, market the upcoming superhero movie. These games often did nothing revolutionary to change the game, just sticking to the formula and adding maybe an experimental hook to differentiate it from the previous games, sacrificing on some aspects to make up for the vast number of targeted platforms and deadlines.

Batman Arkham Asylum was the first stand alone superhero game that came in with a triple threat of top tier production (Technology-Gameplay-Writing).

With the backing of bleeding edge tech like Unreal Engine 3, and NVIDIA’s 3D tech + Graphics APIs utilizing the relatively new CUDA Core technologies, it was a game that would stand the test of time (it completely does). The gameplay had an interesting backstory, starting off as a Batman rhythm game that would expect the player to string up combos by hitting the right action buttons in conjunction with the music that would change on the fly. This was shortly scrapped but the interesting design ideas from there made it through into the combat system we all know and love as it has now become the prototype for Third Person Action Adventure Games like, Mad Max,Shadow of Mordor, Spider-Man(2018) and even Assassin’s Creed. Stringing up combos, one key blocking and an inventory of gadgets/skills has now become the go-to blueprint putting Arkham Asylum in the history books as one of the most innovative games of the 2000’s. Arkham Asylum was loosely based on the graphic novel Batman Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison. One of the writers of Arkham Asylum would be Paul Dini, the Co-Creator of Batman: The Animated Series, considered by many to be the definitive telling of the mythos of the Dark Knight. Dini used elements and cannonity from the Animated Series to influence the world of Arkham Asylum, to the extent DC backed this project by pouring in resources and talent of voice actors such as Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil reprising their roles as Batman and Joker from the show. These three pillars coming together resulted in Batman Arkham Asylum becoming an instant modern classic. It has entered the pantheon of the best Superhero Games and even just Third Person Action Adventure Games of all time. With this success there was no doubt this would be a franchise.

City

2011 saw the return of Batman in Arkham City, the sequel, bringing over the same Technology-Gameplay-Writing talent and taking the story out from the Asylum out into the streets of this brand new setting of a section of Gotham City locked off for all inmates. This added much needed verticality and space to let Batman glide and swing across the “City” and very thoughtfully carried forward the same design philosophy that was born from Asylum. The move to the open world from Asylum’s semi-open world added the possibilities for side missions and abundant collectibles (damn those Riddler Trophies).

Arkham City built on top of all the innovative mechanics of Asylum, and more importantly from the writer’s perspective gives us a look into how to do world building. In the world of comic books, a lot of writers write their own takes on these heroes and choose what they want canonized and retconned. Having this background the writers build on the world by bringing in new villains that have valid motives that are true to the world’s history and lore. We have characters that return from the old game, new ones for this one, and characters that are set up for the next game. More importantly our hero makes decisions based on his past, for example, when you suit up in the beginning, you start off with all your gadgets from the first game showing that the Dark Knight is prepared for any threat, learning from his last mistake.

Knight

2015 saw Batman Arkham Knight release on the new generation of consoles and a bump up in visual quality yet sticking to Unreal Engine 3, indicating that the game was pushing the engine to its limits. Rumors are that one of the character models in its highest quality has more polygon data than that of the Arkham Asylum model from the first game. This leap in quality instantly made Arkham Knight stand out from the rest of the new gen games of the time, it brought the familiar game design with upgraded visuals and brand new detailed world and story (although HIGHLY predictable by any comic book fan well versed with the Dark Knight mythos). The biggest polarizing design addition to this game was the Batmobile.

The Batmobile is as big a part of Batman’s character as his cape or utility belt. Already making its appearance in the previous games, Rocksteady had to add some element of playability with it. This on top the move to Gotham City from the sectioned off Arkham City setting meant that traversal around the city had to be rethought from a driving perspective. Arkham City featured a layout that had narrow streets and relatively high buildings making Batman’s traversal easy for the player by just grappling and gliding across. While developing Arkham Knight, they realized that congested design of the City streets would not make for a fun gameplay with a vehicle and opted to widen the streets and tweak Batman’s traversal abilities to incorporate both forms of travel. Adding the Batmobile meant that from a game design perspective they needed a replayable fun system of combat, looking at the rest of the game’s design philosophy it was apparent that this was either a stealth system or a straight up combat system, they went with the latter. This almost chess-like battle that plays out was criticized to be dull and boring, and some of the worst parts of the game. We somewhat agree with this but while understanding the necessity of a gameplay hook for the Batmobile, do you guys have any possible solutions to this problem? We mainly see Batman use his Batmobile to traverse the city and maybe take down enemies at high speeds which we got in the form of random chases in the streets. From a writing perspective, having the Arkham Knight be a mercenary relying on technology like drones makes its easier for Batman to use missiles and destroy these tanks without worrying about taking lives and there’s a mention of rubber bullets and electrification to put a stop to baddies on foot similar to The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel.

It’s fair to say that the Arkham games have inspired us and undoubtedly encouraged us to read more comics. They have been a huge talking point in our school days and brought Gunit and me(Upa) closer as friends. We love these games and have so much more we can talk about these games that not Instagram or Blog post and fully encompass it.

P.S. Arkham Origins deserves its own blog post and will get it soon, keep a look out for that soon!

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