Review: Telltale’s Batman Episode 5 — City of Light
It’s been rocky, but Telltale sticks the landing with some grace.
As this is the finale of my Telltale Batman reviews you can expect spoilers for the full series to be present up to the finale. If you’re planning to play the series this isn’t the review to read because I’ll be spilling the beans on everything episode 1 all the way up to the beginning of episode 5. If you want to go in sequence you can find the earlier reviews here: Episode One, Episode Two, Episode Three and Episode Four.
It’s been a very bumpy road reaching this point. Telltale’s proven some surprising chops for making a compelling Bruce Wayne narrative, but they’ve also displayed some blatant use of their ‘the choice affects the journey not the destination’ design to all but ignore some of the game’s major decisions. Technical limitations with their by-now considerably outdated engine has resulted in a plague of issues great and small, including episode one having an instance of completely crashing and the last two episodes having broken PC launches that required a hasty patch to get them out the next day.
There’s a greater issue in that, one that stems from Telltale’s design philosophy and attitude towards their skyrocket into fame as the ‘Walking Dead guys’. I think it’s a company who ballooned outwards too fast. I always get the feeling in Telltale games they’re under the pump because their newfound success has afforded them more hands to work on things but not enough padding to take a rest and work on anything behind the scenes — everything is done on the same engine with updates rather than an overhaul, technical issues plague their releases with disturbing regularity, and in just a week they’re pushing two episodes of The Walking Dead Season 3 out at once as part of a blockbuster premier. Just a note: I may not be reviewing those as they come out like I did Batman. Computer issues caused me to lose all progress through seasons 1 and 2 and I’m not sure if I can stand the idea of just randomising my choices to get on with it.
I hope one day in the future soon Telltale is forced to take a hard look at themselves. Whatever’s going on at their company, it doesn’t feel like it can last, and I get the impression one solid failure of a game could see them in hot water straight away. With these sorts of ‘western visual novels’ gaining popularity I hope we’ll see a few other companies enter the market to really push each other into producing stronger narratives. The likes of Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls as well as Life is Strange prove there are some looking at it, but Telltale right now is the name dominating the sphere.
But that’s enough of my rambling about the company, this is about the game.
City of Light starts out right where Guardian of Gotham left off, and depending on the player’s choice at the end of the last episode I have to assume it changes the initial scenario. I opted to bring down Penguin at the end of the last episode because I considered his hacking the Batcomputer to be considerably worse than Wayne Manor burning down. While it was satisfying to close out that plot arc with a beatdown, I still don’t really think Penguin at any point played the part. As a villain wronged by the Wayne name more than Batman it made sense to use him in the way he was, but his character was really just a mishmash of some of the other un-Penguin things Batman’s most recent iterations have seen. The cockney accent and time in London gangs from Rocksteady’s Arkham series and the size-up to average man height from the Gotham tv series. Both things pushed him further away from the character he had been, and while I’m fine with seeing a character evolve and develop as the years go by, there comes a point where you might as well have just gone with a different character. Ultimately while I liked Oswald Cobblepot I stand by what I said all the way back in my review of episode 1: he’s Oswald in name only, and his role feels more like Thomas Elliot with a more recognisable name. Maybe I just want more good Hush stories.
Clobbering Oswald to close out episode 4 left Harvey/Two Face on the board for chapter 5’s opening, which sees the Wayne manor rather worse for wear as the Mayor tries to burn it to the ground in the name of his personal vendetta against Bruce.
I’m of two minds about Harvey Dent, and yes I’m aware how bad that joke is but it’s true. On the one hand he’s one of the best possible options for a Batman villain in a series that’s every bit as much about Bruce as it is about Batman. On the one hand I think Telltale played his transition fairly well. It showed a man struggling with a ruthless alternate identity he’d suppressed as it slowly twisted him and took control of him, and at every step of the way I acted to try and slow or stop that. It was inevitable of course he’d lose and become Two Face, and I knew that going in, but I wanted to play a Bruce who refused to give up on the better side of Dent, and the game recognises that enough for me to be satisfied even with a bit of the ham that went with it.
One of my major conflicts about him however is that he never really becomes Two Face either, at least if you opt to stop it. Oh the personality comes out, and his obsession with chance bubbles to the surface enough for us to see his coin in action, but the visual distinction that both helps him make the leap to Two Face and helps identify him as such wasn’t there for me. All the meaningful camera cuts to display one side of his face or the other to accompany his personalities duking it out or one gaining the upper hand are lost on a Harvey with a perfectly fine face.
Most of the time a Telltale choice has some effect on the journey but not the destination. I’ve heard people bemoan that their choices aren’t truly effective, and I’ve generally disagreed that Telltale should be held to such a standard because I don’t think most people understand the sheer degree of versatility and work that would need to go in to account for in order to have one’s choices truly alter the story. I’ve always considered the small moments where you get the chance to put your personal touch on the narrative and the few major choices to be enough. Episode 2’s cruel choice between Selina or Harvey is an example of Telltale’s choices at their worst however. It’s so blatant the game wants you to save Selina over Harvey in that moment and the story suffers for taking what I would argue is the logical option — saving Gotham’s mayor over a capricious ally. Selina’s gunshot wound is not only never mentioned again, it’s seemingly healed by the very next time she’s seen (only a few days later if that) and nothing changes except Dent’s appearance on his way to being Two Face, which damages the narrative of his slipping sanity by giving it less reason to happen at all. It certainly makes everyone’s desire to call him Two Face fall flat.
Despite the considerable issues I have with that, I still feel the actual arc and use of Harvey as one of Bruce’s best friends manages to have some solid moments amongst it all. Dealing with him as Bruce and seeing a friendship sour over a number of reasons made for a strong character arc, and the option to deal with Harvey almost exclusively as Bruce throughout the series rather than turning it into a Batman vs Two Face narrative kept things extremely personal. Jagged as some of its edges were, I considered the Two Face subplot to be far superior to the Penguin one because it kept that personal back and forth, even as Mayor Dent started blowing up buildings and declaring martial law.
Addressing each of the major characters in the season episode 5 rounds out the Selina Kyle plot arc in a manner I personally enjoyed, giving her and Bruce an opportunity to discuss the chaotic nature of their relationship as well as offering some dialogue options to dig behind the front Catwoman portrays. I think of all the relationships the complex one between Bruce and Selina and Batman and Catwoman was done the most justice in Telltale’s story. It doesn’t overstate itself, it doesn’t slip into too much melodrama and importantly it stays true to Selina’s character. While the player has various options in how Bruce plays it out, to me it never felt like it strayed too far away from believable on his part, and that’s to be applauded. I think Catwoman’s arc throughout the series may in fact be the one that holds up the best under the strain of choice, though the reasoning for that could is likely in part because the other threads feature more bombast and actual decision-making.
The most important part of the story though is its main villain of course: Lady Arkham, AKA the most messed up iteration of Vicki Vale we’ve ever seen. There are a lot of things to say about Telltale pulling off Lady Arkham. Namely that they pulled off a completely original character, managed to make their secret identity reveal be a surprise (certainly to me) and managed to make her a decent villain, something even Rocksteady didn’t really pull off with Arkham Knight. Her motivations are there and explored well enough as to make them logical (as logical as dressing up like a psycho with a force push stick can be) and I enjoyed that the ultimate confrontation and resolution didn’t feel rushed or too sudden.
The season’s trifecta of villains all kept close to a core theme, which was a connection to Bruce and the Waynes in general, and that let Telltale play a much more personal game about attacks on Bruce himself where frequently in Batman stories the villains are interested in destroying Batman, but don’t know anything about Bruce Wayne and don’t care — he’s some rich playboy off in the distance with no relevance to anything. The stories that use both sides of Batman are the ones I personally enjoy the most though, as the stress of being Batman while also keeping up appearances takes its toll on one man trying to be two very, very different people.
Alongside that was an undercurrent that was carried well throughout the season and culminated in a few different ways with its final episode: Alfred.
Ever the faithful butler and always offering a sounding board and second opinion on things, Alfred’s role in Batman stories varies a great deal. He’s never absent, but sometimes he’s utilised more than others, and I definitely consider it to be a feather in Telltale’s cap that they played up Alfred’s role in the story. Indirectly they did this by giving him a greater source of conflict with Bruce’s monster of a father but in other ways especially in the last episode the nature of him being Bruce’s only real family is touched on and I really appreciated shining a light on Alfred. I often feel like he’s under-utilised or sidelined because of his role, but he’s a very important part of who Bruce is and who Batman is, and one of the few people who freely speaks with both.
Overall Telltale’s shot at the Batman mythos has worked out fairly well. It’s not a masterpiece and I was sufficiently ticked off by a number of the things they did over the course of their five episodes but ultimately it was still a pretty good time spent in the batsuit. It wasn’t really about feeling like Batman so much as it was stepping into the role of Bruce Wayne and his two identities, and Telltale played to their strengths on that one. I’d recommend any fan of Batman to give it a look in if they wanted more Wayne in their life. Would I look forward to season 2 though? No, I don’t think I would. I’m a bit Joker’d out personally.
