A Closer Look And What To Expect In 'Batman: Arkham Origins'

[STORMSHADOW__210]

As reported just a few days ago,gamers were treated with a wonderful surprise that the next installment in the famed Batman series will be a prequel to the 2009 smash hit Batman: Arkham Asylum and will be hitting stores later this year on Oct 25, 2013. With the blessing of series developer Rocksteady, newcomer developer to the series WB Montreal has taken the helm for the next entry Batman: Arkham Origins. No need to worry ,I would say it's a pretty safe bet that Rocksteady is hard at work on the sequel to the 10 out of 10 2011 masterpiece Batman: Arkham City for the next generation of consoles.In the meantime,feel free to check out a in depth look at the upcoming game that will still be using the same blueprint that the first two installments have already set for gamers to expect!

My first thoughts...as excited as I am to have another batman game to sink my teeth into,I fear that even with the "blessing" that Rocksteady has given WB Montreal, that the open world might be a bit bland ala the ps3 Amazing Spiderman?



Source:GameInformer.com

Batman: Arkham City set high standards for a big exploration-focused open world filled with content to uncover. Warner Bros. Games Montreal aims to embrace the model established in that earlier Rocksteady game, but plans to dramatically expand the world to have Batman explore the full breadth of Gotham City. Along with a dramatic choice for the setting in time, the game world of Arkham Origins promises to offer a mix of familiar and surprisingly new elements.

One of the big features that sets Arkham Origins apart is its midwinter Christmas setting. The game picks up on a cold and forbidding Christmas Eve night in Gotham City. Batman is not new to his crime-fighting job as the game begins, but neither is he the grizzled veteran we’ll see in later Arkham games. Up until this point in his career, he’s been fighting mostly normal criminals – mob goons and heist artists – but tonight brings a new and far more dangerous series of threats – super-villains bent on the Dark Knight’s destruction.

The Christmas Eve setting is a purposeful juxtaposition of a normally joyful time cast in the light of the grim world of Gotham City. “It’s a really cool, happy, warm thing and then a really sad thing mixed together to make this ironic image,” explains creative director Eric Holmes. “It’s a beautiful thing in an ugly place. It adds an ironic humor to things without breaking the seriousness of the theme, which is really fun for us.” Scattered throughout the game world in the demo we saw, Christmas lights shine a pale light onto shadowy alleys. Decorative Santa statues take on a frightening tone when placed side by side with gothic gargoyles. Plazas are decked out for holiday celebrations, but they lay vacant thanks to a combination of intense cold, an awful winter storm, and escalating gang activity. Christmas in Gotham is not the stuff of happy dreams.

As Batman faces his new foes in this not-so-cheerful winter wonderland, he’ll have a far bigger world to explore than in previous Arkham games, but the entire setting is thematically tied together. The team calls Gotham City a parachronistic location – a place that seems to be dislodged from time and out of place. Many of the structures seem old and stylized, but the technology available in the world feels modern day or futuristic. “In terms of the timeline, there are aspects of 1930s all over. Like various incarnations of Batman, it’s very consistently in a 1930s style world. But Batman’s technology is clearly from the future. Batman has stuff that we don’t have today.”

In this early stage of the Arkham timeline, the section of the city that will one day become a walled Arkham prison is still connected to the rest of the city. Called Old Gotham, players once again get to explore the area, but will soon realize that it is dramatically different from how it appeared in Arkham City. Old Gotham is dominated by lower buildings and slums, but many areas will seem entirely new. For instance, Jezebel Plaza, recognizable for its retrofit of prison bars, containment facilities, and gang hideouts in Arkham City, is still a premier shopping district dominated by a massive Christmas tree. Elsewhere, the great flood that drowned so many buildings has not yet occurred, and Batman has the opportunity to explore the dock areas that still exist. Docked just outside of the city limits, players find The Final Offer. This massive ship is the headquarters for the Penguin and his minions, as they illicitly engage in an arms trade with the many parties in Gotham City who are interested in their wares. The off-land HQ provides a no-man’s land of laws, and they ply their trade without interference from the police. Batman isn’t so careful of jurisdictions, and players can expect extended gameplay sequences aboard the hulking ship. Inside, visitors find a full casino and theater in a large passenger section, as well as less public arms storage decks.

While the landmass that will become Arkham City is painted in a new light, it represents less than half of the overall outdoor city area players explore in Arkham Origins. Cross the bridge from Old Gotham, and Batman enters New Gotham. This island of towering skyscrapers, mazes of pipes, and soaring catwalks is an entirely new gameplay space. New Gotham offers dramatically expanded opportunities for gliding navigation, as you climb to the high rooftops and float down through the snowy streets. Though the buildings are high and the streets might be wider, WB Montreal is focused on trying to make New Gotham just as dense with gameplay as any area players encountered in Arkham City. “There are a lot more opportunities to position enemies above and below you because there’s more than one level,” says senior producer Ben Mattes. “In Old Gotham we’ve got the ground and we’ve got rooftops. Now we’ve got ground, we’ve got medium rooftops, we’ve got tall rooftops. So it expands the playground along the vertical axis. We’re not interested in making a big sprawling city where you run for blocks before you find someone to fight. We want to maintain that density where around every corner over every rooftop there’s always something interesting both visually and gameplay-wise.”

With this new, larger space to explore, many players may enjoy the lengthy glides and grapnel trips involved in traversing the distance. For those looking for a quicker route, Arkham Origins introduces a fast travel system using Batman’s signature Batwing plane. He can remotely summon the aircraft to carry him up and away and closer to his current objective in an instant. However, players have to work for the privilege. All around Gotham, Batman finds jamming towers held by enemy forces. Echoing popular systems in games like Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, by taking over those towers, he gains access to a number of collectibles in the area and the ability to call in the Batwing to whisk him away.

It’s a mistake to characterize the world of Arkham Origins as a dramatic departure from previous entries. Rather, WB Montreal has wisely maintained many of the visual aesthetics and city characteristics that made the earlier Arkham games so iconic. Instead of reshaping something that doesn’t need to be changed, the Origins team has instead focused on painting that brilliantly realized Gotham City in a new light for a different moment in time. In addition, their ambitions suggest a game world that is around twice as large as the last game in the series. Together, the game world we witnessed in our demo has us itching to dive in for ourselves, and finally spread the shadow of the Dark Knight’s cape across all of Gotham.

[FlogginMcMurryZombiePizza]

I'm looking forward to this.
I'm hoping if WB Montreal are actually following Rocksteady's blueprint then we shouldn't get a bland experience as seen in the Amazing Spider-Man video you posted.

[Candy Kappa]

Arkham Origins... Oh how I wish we'd get more of the origin of Arkham Alsylum, like the tidbits we got in the first game based of the Arkham Serious house on serious earth comic.

Explore more of Amadeus Arkham, his relation to his mother, the bat and the building of the asylum.

[TheCanadiandrome]

there's a game coming for Vita and 3DS and this one for current Gen systems correct?

[Peanut]

Arkham City is a 10 out of 10? Get a f*cking grip.

I was so excited by the news that the next game in the series was a campy Batman set in the silver age, but instead we get what seems like a AC:Brotherhood/Revelations style filler game by some b-team. How could anyone want more of these games after City? Let alone one set in the exact same environments we've seen for two games?

Hopefully Rocksteady is either still making the silver age Batman, or has instead moved away from the franchise all-together. The less gritty Batman we get over the next decade, the happier I'll be.

[Brodie]

In revisiting City with the GOTY edition to play the Robin/Nightwing stuff, I made the mistake of going back into the game proper.

It just reminded me of how much I ****ing disliked Arkham City.

Like Peanut, I was excited about a weird, off the wall Silver Age Batman game. This game is going to be some goddamn mishmash of Rocksteady B-Team, going for the ultra grit tone of the last one.

Arkham is not that interesting. Worth one game? For sure. Two? A city? And then some? No.

[Slade]

I can agree Arkham isn't that interesting and disagree that I did not want to play Silver Age Batman at all, but I still love te games. So yeah I'm pretty excited for this.

[STORMSHADOW__210]

Originally Posted by Peanut

Arkham City is a 10 out of 10? Get a f*cking grip.

I was so excited by the news that the next game in the series was a campy Batman set in the silver age, but instead we get what seems like a AC:Brotherhood/Revelations style filler game by some b-team. How could anyone want more of these games after City? Let alone one set in the exact same environments we've seen for two games?

Hopefully Rocksteady is either still making the silver age Batman, or has instead moved away from the franchise all-together. The less gritty Batman we get over the next decade, the happier I'll be.

umm ya a 10 out of 10 lol

I respect everyones opinion and i dont think i need to "get a grip" just because you didnt like it.Fact is it DID get a 10 out of 10 on its way to winning several game of the year awards.I thought it was well voice acted,the graphics were amazing and the story was great with a all star dc cast.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/ba...ever-made.aspx

^ uh ya,looks like the rest of the world needs to "get a grip" as well

[The Stryker]

Game reviewers also like garbage like Braid.

[STORMSHADOW__210]

Originally Posted by TheCanadiandrome

there's a game coming for Vita and 3DS and this one for current Gen systems correct?

Correct my friend,there will be a Black Gate handheld game released as well on the 25th of Oct

[STORMSHADOW__210]

Well actually being a critic myself,i can tell you we would't of got the job in the first place if we didn't have a good feel for which ever genre we are reviewing.Opinions are always respected...or at least SHOULD be,but sadly there is always a percent that will never agree.Thats what makes the USA great.I have a buddy who HATES Nolan batman trilogy,even when in reality ,they are the greatest batman films ever made to the majority of the world.

[Cure]

Originally Posted by STORMSHADOW__210

Well actually being a critic myself,i can tell you we would't of got the job in the first place if we didn't have a good feel for which ever genre we are reviewing.Opinions are always respected...or at least SHOULD be,but sadly there is always a percent that will never agree.Thats what makes the USA great.I have a buddy who HATES Nolan batman trilogy,even when in reality ,they are the greatest batman films ever made to the majority of the world.

Oh, Jesus. I'd hate to read any of your reviews.

As for Batman, I can't wait for more detective mode. I sure looooooved that.

[STORMSHADOW__210]

^ fair enough. Hey i love Big Trouble in Little China which got massacred by critics.If your referring to my Nolans Batman comments, it sounds like you would not only "hate to read my reviews ",but the majority of all critics world wide who reviewed Nolans Batman as well.Lol

[Cure]

Originally Posted by STORMSHADOW__210

^ fair enough. Hey i love Big Trouble in Little China which got massacred by critics.If your referring to my Nolans Batman comments, it sounds like you would not only "hate to read my reviews ",but the majority of all critics world wide who reviewed Nolans Batman as well.Lol

I'm referring to the way you type.

[STORMSHADOW__210]

^Im sorry,i didn't know i was in a class room doing a test for a passing grade? Fact is,im using a touch screen on my phone.Maybe you should spend less time being a negative heckling jerk and more time actually contributing to the actuall topic at hand.

Who is the Admin here? I got to say,i have never seen a site with such a consistent and negative group of people.Is this the image you all want to give to the world of the Technodrome community? I think i may just have discussions in the Nick tmnt thread and leave it at that from now on.

[Brodie]

Hey, a lot has changed in the reviewing world. Things like punctuation and capital letters? THIS AIN'T YOUR DAD'S NINTENDO POWER!

[The Stryker]

Originally Posted by STORMSHADOW__210

^Im sorry,i didn't know i was in a class room doing a test for a passing grade? Fact is,im using a touch screen on my phone.Maybe you should spend less time being a negative heckling jerk and more time actually contributing to the actuall topic at hand.

Who is the Admin here? I got to say,i have never seen a site with such a consistent and negative group of people.Is this the image you all want to give to the world of the Technodrome community? I think i may just have discussions in the Nick tmnt thread and leave it at that from now on.

Have fun with that! We'll always have the memories.

Look up the Fuel song about memories and you'll get it.

[Cure]

Originally Posted by STORMSHADOW__210

^Im sorry,i didn't know i was in a class room doing a test for a passing grade? Fact is,im using a touch screen on my phone.Maybe you should spend less time being a negative heckling jerk and more time actually contributing to the actuall topic at hand.

If you can take the time to use a caret (^), you can hit the space bar after punctuation.

[Brodie]

I'm waiting for him to "correct" your spelling on 'caret,' and point out ...pot, kettle, blah blah.

[STORMSHADOW__210]

Hey, a lot has changed in the reviewing world. Things like punctuation and capital letters? THIS AIN'T YOUR DAD'S NINTENDO POWER!

If you can take the time to use a caret (^), you can hit the space bar after punctuation.


Have fun with that! We'll always have the memories.

Look up the Fuel song about memories and you'll get it.

Ok,so let me get this straight,so heres a new member (me),who took the time to post some news with pics(not some half ass link like many just post)to share some exciting news on OUR hobby to contribute to this site and have a good discussion with fellow tmnt fans...........

AND instead ,you all would rather heckle me because im using a touch screen phone to post and ALL you got to contribute is "trying" to start some **** by being a bunch of negative assholes by "burning" me because...OMG I DIDN'T use correct spacing and use capital letters?? LMFAO....

Good one guys,yall really showed me.Y'ALL are a embarassment to this site than many refer to as a great place to talk shop with good people that we all share a interest in.

Look up the definition of the word TROLL and you will GET IT.F--kin losers.Now if you will excuse me,i have a juicy booty coming over to cook a nice steak dinner.Have fun enjoying the rest of your evening dipping your eggo waffles in your gallon of syrup as you wink at your Battle Star Galactica poster on your moms basement wall.