The Bat-Thread of Batman: Arkham Origins Bat-Hype

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Batman: Arkham Origins comes out later this month. Is this a good thing? A bad thing? Well, that's a matter of personal opinion.

I, for my part, am torn over Arkham Origins. Asylum and City are among my favorite games of the last five years. The combat was amazingly fun, the reimagining of Gotham and its denizens was interesting and relatively believable, and the storylines were... passable. Oh well: as disappointing as City's Dur Hurr three different antagonists and oh yeah Joker's here too I guess and also Talia?? ending was, I really enjoyed the overall experience. So when I heard there was going to be a third game, I was naturally thrilled.

See, I want to like this game and look forward to it. I really do. And what few reviews I've seen so far lead me to believe it's a good game. But....

There's just a bunch of warning signs for me.

A) New dev studio.Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, but Rocksteady did a fine job on the last two. What will the new studio bring to the mix?

B) New voice actors. Kevin Conroy is my favorite Batman voice actor, and Mark Hamill my favorite Joker. Sure, Hamill said he was done playing Joker, which is fine, but--

C) Joker AGAIN. There are lots of villains in the Batman universe. I'm getting bored of Joker being the main antagonist in these games, particularly after how disappointing he turned out to be in City.

D) It's a prequel???I find this a bit disappointing, since half of the sidequests in City were quite literally pointing to a sequel. "Oh look someone is impersonating Bruce Wayne OH WELL I'LL DEAL WITH THIS LATER CUZ IT'S SUPER IMPORTANT" -game ends- "Hi there Mysterious Stranger who keeps following me! I'll learn more about you later, in the sequel!" -game ends-

E) Where mah Riddler at?! So Joker gets to come back, Mad Hatter comes back, Black Mask apparently plays a big part, but no mention of Riddler. He's my favorite so I hope he ends up in the game somewhere. He's voiced by Almighty Tallest Red from Invader Zim, which is awesome.

So I have those misgivings. On the plus side:

A) Multiplayer: Not sure how this will be implemented, but kicking villain butt in co-op sounds fun.

B) Probably no Harley, definitely no Robin. Enough said.

C) It's been getting decent reviews thus far, and I really do want to believe it'll be good.



Anybody else waiting on this game?