Batman Arkham Origins - Random Review

I bet none of you saw this coming, but here we are. I have been randomly thinking about Batman: Arkham games for the past few months, considering I played them a lot when I was younger and with the upcoming release of the similar Gotham Knights. Arkham Origins is often seen as the black sheep in one of the greatest video game series ever made, a mere increment rather than a massive leap. I played it and enjoyed it, but I will certainly admit that this is a really flawed game, especially if compared to its masterful predecessors and successor.

To set some context, Arkham Origins, released in 2013 for Xbox, PC and PS3, follows Batman in his second year of crime-fighting before he encounters many of his greatest foes. While the previous two games – Arkham Asylum and Arkham City – were developed by Rocksteady Studios, Origins was developed by Warner Bros Montreal as a placeholder game between the 2011 release of City and the 2015 release of Arkham Knight. So in that essence, you can already feel the perception of Origins as a cynical cash-grab rather than a fully fledged game.

The vast majority of my criticism towards Origins is going to be sort of like “it’s good, but it’s not changed/was done better in Arkham City” or something similar. I acknowledge that WB Montreal probably didn’t have the time or the respect to make the best Batman game they could as Warner Bros in general wanted to really put a creative push into Arkham Knight (justifiably, as Knight is a masterpiece). That still doesn’t mean that this game gets away with some of the stuff within.

I’ll start with what I think is an improvement over the other games, the voice acting. It’s clear that the developers wanted to give each villain and each character a distinct identity, rather than in Arkham Asylum where actors had to voice 4 different characters at once. Additionally, City and Knight both had weird moments with voice actors that pulled me out at points, such as the weird inflections made by Deathstroke in Arkham Knight.

I can still clearly remember the tones and voices of each distinct character all these years later, and for the side characters, I have to give specific praise to JB Blanc as Bane, Martin Jarvis as Alfred, Peter MacNicol as the Hatter and Michael Gough as Cpt. Gordon.

As for Batman, the actor from the previous games, Kevin Conroy, was re-cast with the younger voiced Roger Craig Smith. I think that Conroy will always be the Batman I imagine in my head, but Smith’s performance in Origins is amazing. He perfectly conveys the rage felt by Batman and his anger towards the systems he views as corrupt, and really sells all of the brutal interrogation scenes.

And Troy Baker as the Joker may not be better than Mark Hamill in the other games, but he brings his own distinct flavour to the role. He comes off as a mixture of Hamill’s flamboyance and the deadly seriousness of Heath Ledger, less funny ha-ha and more unpredictable and terrifying.

The other thing that’s improved significantly from the other games are the boss battles. Arkham Asylum and Arkham Knight both had their greatest failings in their boss fights, as the developers ultimately made them feel too structured and gamey rather than immersive and challenging. Arkham City had excellent fights, but I think Arkham Origins tops it in the fact that even though I was quite skilled at Arkham’s gameplay and had played through City beforehand, I was really challenged by the bosses in Origins in ways that I wasn't in City.

The Deathstroke fight.

I died at the hands of most of the bosses and so had to continuously refine my techniques and make myself better. Deathstroke, in particular, really makes you stop just mashing the buttons and start reconsidering how you move in the game. Additionally, all 8 of the bosses are completely different from one another in style, from bare-knuckle brawling to creeping on ceilings to grappling onto them as they fly over a bridge. I think that overall, Origins has some of the most consistently high-quality bosses in any game released recently.

But that’s where Origins stops being better than the other games and starts looking more like a rush job. This game is glitchy as hell – the PC version had to be briefly recalled due to, among other things, the game not loading when you pressed the start button. Even when I played on an Xbox 360, I had several occasions where I just couldn’t continue playing because the floor bugged out and I couldn’t move.

Sometimes the boss will just disappear as well.

Easily the biggest criticism I have for this game is that the core gameplay does not feel fundamentally different, and the changes that were made make the game worse. The gameplay of Origins is still fun, but changes to the level design in stealth sections make them more difficult and frustrating rather than fun, and Batman now feels ludicrously overpowered in combat sections as well. All this with the recycled gameplay elements would probably make any player feel like the game was lazy and rushed, and so they would tune out before any of the better elements of the game come up.

Additionally, travelling Origins’s open world is less appealing than Arkham City’s, as it feels distinctly less memorable to fly through. There are barely any cool landmarks and the aesthetic of a snow-covered city, while still visually appealing, pales in comparison to the war-zone that was Arkham City. Combine that with untouched traversal controls, and you have generally joyless flying and travel compared to the fun playground that came before and after.

Origins on left, the previous game City on right.

Returning to that point of “this is good, but before/after did better”, I want to focus on three areas in that regard: music, side missions and the main story. With the music for Origins, Christopher Drake replaces the composer of the other Arkham Games, Nick Arundel. Drake’s approach is less gothic than Arundel’s, preferring a dark Christmas-themed motif to concur with the game’s Yuletide setting that feels distinctly more Hollywood-esque than the other games. While I think that Origins has flipping great music, it doesn’t give me the same feelings as Arundel’s compositions, which feel much more like Batman and much more tonally appropriate.

Side missions are another matter, as these side missions feel less like interesting explorations of Gotham City and more like tedious busywork. Aside from the missions with Mad Hatter and Deadshot, there are none that feel unique or memorable, and the Riddler mission (present in all games) in particular feels tedious and unrewarding. By comparison, Asylum compelled exploration through fantastic design of giving backstory to the player while completing them, City gave enormous puzzle rooms mixed with gory horror, and Knight had a combination of horror, humour and brute force. Origins, by comparison, is bog standard.

Finally, let’s hit the story. Some people consider Arkham Origins to have the best narrative out of all 4 Arkham games. It’s easy to see why it has the best narrative – Asylum and Knight have been picked apart for their massive plot holes, while City has been criticised for its back-and-forth nature of storytelling. Origins, by comparison, is straightforward and follows strong logic, demonstrating Batman’s encounters with his foes very well and setting up the pieces to fall later in his career.

That doesn’t mean that the story has the same impact, however. Sure, Arkham Knight had plot holes the Batmobile could fit in, but that game felt awesome to just watch the incredible things you as Batman did as you put down Scarecrow and Joker for good. Asylum was unpredictable and every random event that occurred made you jump, and City felt grandiose and full of amazing moments. Origins has a stronger narrative, but it doesn’t have that impact until the very end, making the game seem more gently tugging along rather than punching hard.

Additionally, there are multiple design decisions that annoy me, where the paths to making the story more impactful are hidden behind a lack of incentive to explore them. Sometimes, dialogue is hidden behind quick-time events, meaning that if the player hits the button at the instructed time, they miss out on a heap of dialogue. Meanwhile, interesting locations with lore within aren’t marked on the map, so you have to fly blind through the city until you find them, and by then you’re too disinterested to care.

However, I have not answered the key question you are wondering – is Origins fun to play? Yes, undeniably. The Arkham series has some of the best gameplay loops ever designed, and even in poorer situations, it still feels immensely satisfying to beat people up.

Overall, I’d say that Origins is not anyone’s first priority when it comes to this series. It has its moments and is a fun game overall, but is overall a lesser version of its predecessors that only triumphs over them in a couple of areas.

I’m giving Batman: Arkham Origins a B.

I doubt you’ve played Origins, but I’d recommend playing it after you’ve played the other 3 Arkham games, as they are way better. This game will subsequently feel like more of a relaxed experience rather than a hype machine, and it will lessen the blow a bit more.