On Batman and Agency
Most people probably already know this, but I would like to make this point very clear: Batman Arkham Asylum is a fantastic game.
Something struck me while I was playing it, though. Batman is weak. At one point, the Joker is standing over a deadly drop, precariously perched on some sort of machinery. He has just escaped from captivity and his stooges have taken control of Arkham Asylum, killing half the guards in the process. The other half are fighting for survival against apparently dire odds. Oh, and the Joker may or may not have planted bombs all over Gotham. The Joker has just told Batman that he has to go, because his plan still isn't complete, but before he goes, he tells Batman "or, you could just kill me right here, and end this right now," as he dances on the edge of the precipice. Batman thinks about it, but puts away his batarang. Because, you see, Batman doesn't kill. Because he's too damn weak to deal with some personal guilt in order to save hundreds of lives.
Shortly before or after that scene, there is another scene in which Batman is sneaking around, and he watches two guards mercilessly gunned down by a couple of inmates. Just before the trigger is pulled, one begs "You don't have to do this! I've got a kid!" The murderer's retort of "I know, I don't have to do it," suffices to prove his complete lack of remorse. Those murders are on your head, Batman.
A bit later in the game, you collect an audio recording of the new warden interrogating the Joker. That means that even within the continuity of this particular game, the Joker has been incarcerated in and broken out of Arkham asylum within the past three years. At what point do you realize that a criminal is un-reformable? At what point do you realize a criminal is un-containable? How many more people does he have to murder before you are finally ready to put a put a stop to his rampage once and for all? Apparently, for Batman, that point is somewhere completely out of view. I know what Jack Bauer would have done when he had the Joker there on that precipice, though.
OK, so I know it's pretty silly to go this deep into rhetoric for a video game. Especially one based on a comic book. Indeed, this was initially going to be a much shorter post. But then I kept on thinking. What if you could go ahead and pull LT to have Batman finish the Joker in that scene? What if there was a "Batman's finally had enough" button? Maybe that would end the siege of Arkham, or maybe it would make it worse! Either way, it would be giving the player an actual, meaningful choice about how he wanted things to turn out. And it would have been done in a much more graceful and immersive fashion than the "Good Ending/Bad Ending" dialog option you see at the end of games like Mass Effect that are all about player choice.
Preferably, you wouldn't even get a popup telling you how many "morality points" you just lost, you would just be choosing how you dealt with the situation. You would be given the choice of whether or not you stick to your Ethos as Batman, or whether you will do whatever it takes to save the lives of the remaining guards. And what if the game gave you this option all the way through? What if, after watching the guard gunned down in the scene I mentioned earlier, Batman decides this particular henchman isn't going to live to kill again? Or what if your partcular Batman decides to use lethal force on the armed henchmen who pose a higher risk to him and any bystanders? Or what if you just decide to become a homicidal vigilante, bringing ruin to every offender in Arkham?
If you did, maybe Commisioner Gordon would have words for you when you next saw him. Maybe he would decide you were just another criminal, and the police consider you just another baddie who needs to be locked back up in Arkham. There really doesn't even need to be that much of a gameplay element to it, either. One of my favorite parts of Deus Ex was right after the first mission, when you were in UN headquarters. Since your orders were to use non-lethal force, the guy running the armory would dress you down for crossing the line if you had gone around killing the enemies, and he wouldn't give you more ammo. That's the extent of the gameplay penalty--you missed out on a few bullets. But just the fact that he told you to act like one of the good guys was pretty powerful.
That could easily work in Arkham, as well. Throughout the game, the Joker is taunting you on the loudspeaker. As you disable thugs in a room, the remaining baddies get progressively more nervous, until the last one standing forgets his patrol and just starts walking around randomly while freaking out. All the time, the game is giving you these subtle reactions to your progress. If you made a few corpses in there, imagine how much more freaked out the henchmen would become. "What's going on? I thought he didn't kill?" Maybe a few would abandon their posts. The Joker (or any surviving supervillains if you decide to finish him) might also start getting nervous. Or angry.
Maybe you could drag their entire plot (or the entire game, for that matter) off the rails, just because the player decided he'd had enough of this mollycoddling and opted for a more permanent solution.
I don't know if that'd be a Batman game anymore, but I would love the hell out of it. Even more than I already love Arkham Asylum.
Something struck me while I was playing it, though. Batman is weak. At one point, the Joker is standing over a deadly drop, precariously perched on some sort of machinery. He has just escaped from captivity and his stooges have taken control of Arkham Asylum, killing half the guards in the process. The other half are fighting for survival against apparently dire odds. Oh, and the Joker may or may not have planted bombs all over Gotham. The Joker has just told Batman that he has to go, because his plan still isn't complete, but before he goes, he tells Batman "or, you could just kill me right here, and end this right now," as he dances on the edge of the precipice. Batman thinks about it, but puts away his batarang. Because, you see, Batman doesn't kill. Because he's too damn weak to deal with some personal guilt in order to save hundreds of lives.
Shortly before or after that scene, there is another scene in which Batman is sneaking around, and he watches two guards mercilessly gunned down by a couple of inmates. Just before the trigger is pulled, one begs "You don't have to do this! I've got a kid!" The murderer's retort of "I know, I don't have to do it," suffices to prove his complete lack of remorse. Those murders are on your head, Batman.
A bit later in the game, you collect an audio recording of the new warden interrogating the Joker. That means that even within the continuity of this particular game, the Joker has been incarcerated in and broken out of Arkham asylum within the past three years. At what point do you realize that a criminal is un-reformable? At what point do you realize a criminal is un-containable? How many more people does he have to murder before you are finally ready to put a put a stop to his rampage once and for all? Apparently, for Batman, that point is somewhere completely out of view. I know what Jack Bauer would have done when he had the Joker there on that precipice, though.
OK, so I know it's pretty silly to go this deep into rhetoric for a video game. Especially one based on a comic book. Indeed, this was initially going to be a much shorter post. But then I kept on thinking. What if you could go ahead and pull LT to have Batman finish the Joker in that scene? What if there was a "Batman's finally had enough" button? Maybe that would end the siege of Arkham, or maybe it would make it worse! Either way, it would be giving the player an actual, meaningful choice about how he wanted things to turn out. And it would have been done in a much more graceful and immersive fashion than the "Good Ending/Bad Ending" dialog option you see at the end of games like Mass Effect that are all about player choice.
Preferably, you wouldn't even get a popup telling you how many "morality points" you just lost, you would just be choosing how you dealt with the situation. You would be given the choice of whether or not you stick to your Ethos as Batman, or whether you will do whatever it takes to save the lives of the remaining guards. And what if the game gave you this option all the way through? What if, after watching the guard gunned down in the scene I mentioned earlier, Batman decides this particular henchman isn't going to live to kill again? Or what if your partcular Batman decides to use lethal force on the armed henchmen who pose a higher risk to him and any bystanders? Or what if you just decide to become a homicidal vigilante, bringing ruin to every offender in Arkham?
If you did, maybe Commisioner Gordon would have words for you when you next saw him. Maybe he would decide you were just another criminal, and the police consider you just another baddie who needs to be locked back up in Arkham. There really doesn't even need to be that much of a gameplay element to it, either. One of my favorite parts of Deus Ex was right after the first mission, when you were in UN headquarters. Since your orders were to use non-lethal force, the guy running the armory would dress you down for crossing the line if you had gone around killing the enemies, and he wouldn't give you more ammo. That's the extent of the gameplay penalty--you missed out on a few bullets. But just the fact that he told you to act like one of the good guys was pretty powerful.
That could easily work in Arkham, as well. Throughout the game, the Joker is taunting you on the loudspeaker. As you disable thugs in a room, the remaining baddies get progressively more nervous, until the last one standing forgets his patrol and just starts walking around randomly while freaking out. All the time, the game is giving you these subtle reactions to your progress. If you made a few corpses in there, imagine how much more freaked out the henchmen would become. "What's going on? I thought he didn't kill?" Maybe a few would abandon their posts. The Joker (or any surviving supervillains if you decide to finish him) might also start getting nervous. Or angry.
Maybe you could drag their entire plot (or the entire game, for that matter) off the rails, just because the player decided he'd had enough of this mollycoddling and opted for a more permanent solution.
I don't know if that'd be a Batman game anymore, but I would love the hell out of it. Even more than I already love Arkham Asylum.