Batman doesn’t kill. I’m firmly in the camp that in any scripted media,
whether it be film, TV or comic books, the caped crusader should adhere to his one rule.
Unless we’re telling an elseworlds story, or the no kill rule is explored with some
neat ambiguity ala The Killing Joke, I don’t ever want to experience a Batman
script where he goes around punishing criminals to the point of death.
Certain superheroes do kill, and I’m fine with that, but Batman isn’t one of them.
Batman is such an inspiring character because he touches darkness but never lets it consume
him - canonically anyway. He instigates fear, he has a terrifying look and he has
no qualms beating supervillains to a pulp but he has a line - he has strong principles and a
code which he cannot break. The best Batman movie of all time, still the Dark Knight,
wrestles with that code and how the Joker tries his hardest to corrupt him and break it.
Does it bother me that Keaton straight up murders? Of course,
but I also understand that this was a much earlier superhero adaptation, in the same way
I can forgive the earliest X-Men movies for giving us black leather. Killing is far more
egregious in adaptations like the Snyderverse, especially when you’re trying to make a point
about Batman choosing NOT to kill Superman. I think making that choice and then machine
gunning a bunch of criminals in the Batwing ten minutes later undercuts that, but that’s just me.
However, there’s always an exception that proves the rule. There is one time when
Batman can kill, and it would still be a perfect Batman adaptation. Nay,
not only is it the one time he can kill - it’s a time when I openly welcome it. In
fact he must be able to kill for this to work… In this paradigm,
Batman’s ability to kill enhances the strength of the adaptation rather than hindering it.
What is that exception?
But before I get into all that, I want to say a quick word from my latest sponsor, Babbel.
There’s lots of reasons to learn a new language, it’s a great way to get your brain in gear,
it’s fun, and it leaves you with long-term practical skills. It would also certainly
save you a few embarrassing moments on holiday! If you want to get started,
then Babbel is the language app for you.
In my final year of Spanish at school, we didn’t have a full time teacher! So the teaching
assistant instead stuck on Benidorm. I wish I was joking. Whilst I might not have learnt an
ounce of Spanish, and had no grounds to continue it at a higher level,
I certainly gained an encyclopaedic knowledge of an ITV Comedy! And the
school wondered why it was in special measures at the time…
Babbel’s lessons are designed by real language teachers, and scientifically proven to get
you speaking in just three weeks. It’s one thing to regurgitate learnt words,
but Babbel seeks to build your ability to hold conversations and understand the intricacies of
any given language. So whether it’s for work, or travel, or simply for yourself, Babbel will be
incredibly useful. If you remain unconvinced, Babbel offers a 20-day money back guarantee.
If you want to try out Babbel for yourself,
you can get 60% off your subscription by using the link in my description below!!!
In Film and TV, you are on rails, narratively speaking. Unless you’re watching Bandersnatch,
any film or TV show has an ending clear cut before you start watching. So for a character
like Batman, his choices have already been made and the joy comes from getting
to experience his journey, the pressures he faces and his strength in overcoming them.
But in a video game, there is that all important ludic element. You
are not watching the Batman, you ARE the Batman.
The Arkham series is something I’ve gushed about on the channel before,
noting that Rocksteady’s game changing superhero series is a near-perfect Batman simulator. The
combat, which sees you ping from foe to foe unleashing a flurry of martial arts combos,
makes you feel like you’re in the middle of that warehouse scene from BvS.
The first time I saw a demo for Arkham Asylum and I saw the myriad of different options to
take down foes I was blown away. This was peak Nolan Batman era and being able to switch between
grapple guns and explosives and batarangs to produce hundreds of different outcomes
was electric. Not to mention, the animated series' voicework and comic-book inspired
aesthetic. I still think it’s crazy that we were blessed with the Arkham series - there
was and still is nothing quite like it. Asylum was and still is the perfect Batman game,
and I say that knowing that City and Knight are also about as close to perfect as you
can get. Asking me to choose between them would be like asking me to choose a favourite child.
The Arkham games were incredible, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them, other than maybe
having a few physical boss fights in Arkham Knight over everything being a batmobile boss…
However, in terms of capturing the morality of Batman, you are on about
as set a path as any movie or show. The interactivity tackles the “how?” of Batman,
but never the “why?”. That is absolutely fine, I never expected them to do it any other way,
and the stories in every single one are really engrossing. We’re talking about a series that
started in 2009 on the PS3 and the 360 here. Wow, has it really been 14 years?
Smash Mouth really were right, the years don’t stop coming…
But a new Batman game is inevitable, and who knows if it would even be made by Rocksteady.
They’re busy with other corners of the DC universe and other studios have already
attempted to move on with titles like the lacklustre Gotham Knights. I think Gotham
Knights didn’t work because not only did it strip away the excellent combat and mood of Arkham,
it didn’t really provide anything substantially new in terms of an interactive Gotham experience.
In a video game, you control the story to a certain extent. Of course, it’s impossible to
program every single choice so that the player can splinter off in any direction they want,
but games like Mass Effect allow you to make some pretty significant choices. If Commander Shephard
had a strict moral code for one player, that code could be completely unrecognisable to another.
I don’t think this is necessarily about choice but rather a well-crafted illusion
of it. This hypothetical game should still be pushing you to be the Batman - to stick
to the no kill rule - it should just allow you to break it if you really want to.
A game series I think did this really well was Infamous. In both games you could walk
around the open world and commit murder if you didn’t want to be the superhero on the box art.
I remember the games receiving criticism for their dark paths
not feeling as fleshed out as their good ones. The fact that the sequel
continues on from the good ending of Infamous 1 was thought to squash the notion that the
dark path was worth its salt. After all, the good ending is canon in both cases.
But that was exactly the point - it wasn’t a game that was trying to make you a murderer,
it was trying to make you a superhero. I recall when the first Infamous game came out one of
the developers explained that even though they were making Infamous with the canon,
heroic story in mind, the bad choices were there so that the good things you were doing were all
driven by you. The choice to do good only matters when the bad path is available. If there is no
bad path available what meaning is there to your actions? You haven’t done anything good, merely
what you’ve been told to do. In a Spider-Man game you’re told to save civilians - you must
do this to pass go or you will fail the level - but in Infamous, the mere fact that you CAN do
the awful nonsensical out of character thing makes it feel like the choice was always in your hands….
If you don’t save the civilians, they will die - but the game will continue on. You would have to
live with the consequences of failing to be the hero. Even though the evil path isn’t fleshed
out to the same degree, its importance in being an option is paramount to the very point of the game.
So imagine if you were in an interactive game-ified version of The Dark Knight for
example - and you felt the same pressures Batman does to kill the Joker. He’s tearing
the city apart, threatening Dent, the one man who could fix the city,
and every day you don’t people will die. I’m a man of my word…
It would certainly make your experience of the game ten times easier if you could just
finish the Joker once and for all, but then you wouldn’t feel like Batman. So
the game actively wants you to do the right thing, make the right choice.
[the choice that no one else can make, the right choice]
After Rachel dies, you have the option to seek revenge on the Joker and every
miserable criminal in Gotham. Or you could be the person she wanted you to be. One
choice would mean you aren’t truly Batman, thus giving the right choice real weight.
Imagine you had a boss battle against Superman and you were left with the choice to kill Superman.
Martha references aside, it feels very batman for him to relent giving into the darkness.
If you know you can do the bad things in this Batman game, but you still adhere to his code,
then wouldn’t that make you feel more like the dark knight than ever before? To actively
have the choice to use his gadgets with lethal impunity, to run people over in the Batmobile,
to deliver the killer punch, and then to stop yourself from giving in - that would be about
as close to being the Batman as you could get without a billion dollars and some serious lats.
In Arkham Knight, you can run people over but the Batmobile shocks them
away. Whilst this does maintain the illusion of Batman’s no kill rule,
in actuality you just end up charging down the streets of Gotham with no care for who
you might hit - it doesn’t matter anyway. But what if you did have to consider the
lives of not only Gotham’s citizens but the criminals too? Isn’t that the point of Batman?
In the finale to the dark knight, that no kill rule is exemplified by the citizens of Gotham.
We witness a boat of civilians and a boat full of convicts, both given the opportunity to blow up
the other to kingdom come in order to survive - and they make the choice to spare everyone.
They make the right choice, even though Batman never interacts with them his mantra has clearly
rippled throughout the hearts of the city. It’s easier to push the button and ensure your
survival but it’s harder to trust that other people will do something good alongside you.
[What were you trying to prove? That deep down everyone’s as ugly as you.]
The game developers should be like the Joker, pushing Batman to the absolute limit - trying
to coax him into making the easy choice at every turn. And by the end of the game, if you resist,
if you manage to continuously make the right choices then you’ll have the same emotional
catharsis as the movies, except it will be directly your doing. Won’t that make you
feel like Batman more than ever before? An added dimensionality on top of the excellent combat,
driving, traversal and detective work we’re used to? I feel like if we ever get a spiritual
successor to the god-tier Arkham games, some kind of morality would take that to the next level.
Web of Shadows, as awesome as it is - with some of the best superhero combat out there, really
only topped by Arkham itself - tries and fails spectacularly to deliver a morality system. Sure,
you can make the bad choice and split Wolverine in too, but the result is edgelord spectacle,
not an examination of why Spider-Man refuses to do that in the first place.
It’s not enough to just have a couple of scripted branches - you should be able to
swing around in real time and say - I don’t wanna pull my punches as Spider-Man - if you really,
really want to. All these superhero games should allow you to go on megalomaniacal killing sprees,
yet at the same time weaving narratives that exemplify why these heroes don’t give in to that.
Storytelling in gaming continues to get more and more complex,
and so I think it’s time superhero games thought more about the point of these superheroes,
rather than just committing to a live service experience where half the characters feel
interchangeable. Their codes are what make them different; Iron Man is happy to blow people away,
but Batman isn’t, so if both have a video game experience the choices you’re encouraged to make
should reflect that. Imagine if your skills as Batman would allow you to become the new kingpin
of Gotham? Your gadgets and fighting prowess allow you to take the city over like a gangster
game. You’re supposed to stop the villains, but what if you instead sought to replace them?
So yes Batman should be able to kill, when the audience has the power to decide. I don’t want
to see Batman mercilessly shooting people to death as is more common in the Keaton
and Affleck iterations, if I’m watching a movie I want to be shown why Batman is the way he is.
If the Batman stories in most media wrestle with the no kill rule,
and video games are an interactive medium and this is what sets them apart from films, comics and tv,
then shouldn’t that no kill rule be an integral choice to the very make up of the experience?
Just because you get given control of the Batman, and you’re wearing the cape,
and driving the car and playing with the toys, that doesn’t make you Batman. You're
only an affectation of Batman if you don’t also actively exercise his code.
You should be incentivised to Be The Batman - but the choice to do the not-batman things
should always remain. We should be able to take the evil as far as possible with the
gadgets and vehicles and combat techniques available. That doesn’t mean that players
will. A staggering amount of Infamous 2 players picked the heroic route; having the choice built
in didn’t deter you from being a good guy if you wanted to get the superhero experience. The fact
that Sucker Punch took the time to craft the evil path but most players didn’t do it says
to me that the mission objective of making you a true superhero was achieved. I’d love
to see a true Infamous 3 one day. Man, the late 2000s to early 2010s were a gaming golden age.
I’m not saying you implement these ideas into the Arkham games as is;
there’s way too many people on the streets for you to avoid everyone without it falling into
tedium. But when inevitably a new Batman game is created from the ground up, it would be amazing
to create a Gotham that makes it challenging but not impossible to be the legitimate Batman.
What do you think? Would you like to try an expansion of In famous’ principles? Would you
indulge in being an evil Batman for the hell of it, or would it be infinitely more satisfying to
make the hardest choices like the caped crusader himself? Let me know in the comments below…