A bit more than a month after the release of Telltale’s Batman first episode, episode 2 has finally come out. Here are my thoughts, right after the two hours I spent playing it.
There might be slight spoilers for last episode, and for this one as well. But I’ll try to keep them to the bare minimum.
“I’ve been dreading this day for nearly two decades.”
I didn’t mention this last review, but in a way I’m enjoying how this game changes something as vital as Bruce and Martha Wayne. They were always beacons of integrity, people that only had the well-being of Gotham in mind. Changing that and making them corrupt feels a bit wrong, but in a way it’s quite interesting because it puts both Bruce Wayne and Batman in a quandary. What if everything he has ever fought for has been built on a lie?
And that shows right at the beginning of this episode. With Bruce visiting the infamous Crime Alley. I know we’re all sick to death of Batman’s origin story, every reboot has to remind us and that ends up getting to you. But this time it felt truly different, and it made sense.
Bruce goes there to be alone and think, but after talking to Alfred he realises something else. There are gaps in his memory of that night, so by visiting Crime Alley he starts revisiting his memories to fill in those gaps. He’s always thought the killing of his parents was just a mugging, but what if there was something else behind it?
“It’s time he met the Batman.”
This game has been playing with things set in stone when it comes to Batman. But one of my favourites is what they’re doing with The Penguin. Now Oswald Cobblepot and Bruce Wayne are childhood friends, and I kinda like the character redesign as well. Cobblepot’s new appearance gives him some kind of edge. It doesn’t reach the level of “Let’s make his monocle a broken bottle instead” that Rocksteady did for the Arkham series, but he looks cool anyway. The trenchcoat is cool, but I’m not quite sure about the English accent yet.
Telltale’s been doing good on their promise of devoting time to Bruce Wayne too. In fact, this episode presented a choice that I was hoping they would include. At a given moment we have to visit some character, and we can choose to do it either as Bruce or as Batman. The catch here is that as Bruce we might not get the information we want, but we might as Batman.
But Batman relies on intimidation, and after my choices in the previous episode people (and James Gordon) trusted Batman. And that would change if I did the very Batman thing of breaking into someone’s place to scare the shit out of them in ‘exchange’ of information. However, that doesn’t mean that Bruce only talks to people, Bruce Wayne sees as much action as when he’s Batman, and that’s cool.
“The Revolution has already started. It’s too late to join”
The game looks a lot more polished than it did on release. I didn’t have the issues I had back on day one. However, the QTEs are still a bit too lenient. There were a couple of times where I didn’t press any buttons to see what would happen, some times the action kept going, as if I had done right. But others I got a game over. Still, if a game has QTEs it should have negative consequences of some type, not just continuing with the action as if nothing had happened.
That’s my main gripe with the game. And wanting episodes to be longer. Oh, and some more interactivity would be fine too! But in spite of these issues, I’m quite enjoying this game. At the end of the day, these are only just minor annoyances. I keep coming back to the game so they don’t matter that much.
I’m curious about episode 3, especially considering how this episode ends. I can’t stop thinking about that choice at the end, and what decisions it will have for my episode 3 playthrough. I’m still confused because I’m in the minority in that final choice. Considering what that choice entails I thought more people would’ve gone down that route. When you get there you’ll understand what I mean.
This episode has finally established the final conflict, but I’m sure we’re missing some key players. Hopefully episode 3 will release next month and it will be as good as this one. But the main question I always have when I play a Telltale Game remain:
Where is season two of The Wolf Among Us?!
Angry Spaniard, adoptive Irishman. Writer, reader, tea drinker and video game player/designer.
