I'm replaying Arkham Origins now, doing some clean up work on the trophies. Considering I've done the hardest ones, all the multiplayer trophies, when it came out, I just need to put in the time to get the challenge map trophies and New Game Plus (which I'm doing now), and then I am the Night mode, along with the DLC stuff.
The game still feels like the best narrative in the Arkham games. The characterizations feel perfect, too. Batman isn't an errand boy going from place to place because someone told him to, instead he's actively hunting down leads and serving as the driving force because he's the one pursuing leads, characters, etc. It's really interesting, too, how they've established this Batman as a very angry man. I mean, he's just seething with anger and it shows in everything he says, how he responds to Alfred, and most situations. It's just interesting how they've established him as being brutal and angry. It's weird, but it felt more like a deliberate characterization that they handled in the story, rather than how it's kinda just how he is in the other Arkham games. Like, how he's called out on it by Alfred, for example. It was kinda cool how they pulled some stuff back, too, like making Killer Croc more like the OG version I once knew and less of the quasi-Godzilla he became. Bane looking more human, and being a mastermind...and how they handled Joker seemingly falling in love with Batman, and how the way he spoke of it won over Harley...I mean, there's so much good stuff there in terms of how the characters are handled. Way too many times in the Rocksteady games it felt like they were shoehorning story beats even if it was out of character or ruined aspects of a character.
If the rumors are true, and WB Montreal are now the Batman studio, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they can do with ample time to do it. The weaknesses of Origins feels like mistakes made under a strict deadline. If they'd given the game more time, we'd had actually gotten a Deathstroke mode, completing contracts around Gotham. And the Batgirl DLC in Arkham Knight, 'A Matter of Family', was definitely a highlight of that release. The only knock that ever got was people wished it'd been longer.
Feels like a missed opportunity to not include it in the upcoming remaster. Definitely would make that $50 price tag seem more worth it if it were a 3 game collections with all that DLC.
Btw, as I'm making my way through Origins in New Game Plus, I'm pretty certain I'm going to die a few times in I Am The Night mode. Pretty damn certain of the spots that will get me, too.
And they nailed the Christmas setting. That's something that was missing big time in Knight. It takes place on Halloween yet you don't really feel like it does at all. Origins however nailed the holiday aspect.
Jet boot flight to test the flight engine for Rocksteady's Superman game?
