Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series
The second season of Telltale Games Batman has come to an end and it is time to look back and assess the overall result of the 5 chapters that have composed it. The first season was, by all accounts, a disappointment for a character as legendary as the one created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger almost 80 years ago. Being able to create it own history of the Dark Knight seemed in hands of a study that gives as much value to the narrative, but they did not measure up to the greatness of the hero without superpowers. This second season compensates something the bad taste of mouth left, but we anticipate that it is not thanks to Batman himself.
Batman: The Enemy Within , title that has been given to this second season is a full-fledged continuation. Introduce new villains for Gotham City, but the common thread between the first and second batch of episodes is the genesis of the Joker , who we will still begin to know as John Doe and is a friend of Bruce Wayne thanks to their season together at Arkham Psychiatric . There will be no returns as grateful as Selina Kyle / Catwoman, who made Episode 3 again give us hope and raised the bar of what we had played until then.
One of the points that still does not work is the duality of personalities Batman / Bruce Wayne . The hero has generally been trying to hide his identity and here, thanks to the background of Thomas Wayne as a former crime boss, we do not believe Wayne Enterprises or its purpose for society. It is hard to believe that the Masked Crusader who at night watches over the guarantees and freedoms of Gotham is, in turn, the same one who infiltrates a band of criminals without really knowing their purpose. In fact, there is an unforgivable sin in all this: the identity of the hero goes into the background and the characters who know who is Batman do not end up having the necessary weight.
Much more successful is the power struggle between the Agency, led by Amanda Waller, and the Gotham Police Department, with Commissioner Gordon in command . Batman is an intruder among the members of the law and he does not just trust the hero, no matter how much good he has done in the city. Within those differentiated paths that are usually in Telltale games, the most interesting part of the season is long: to know who you are going to be faithful to, whether your main supporter or the new authority in charge.
As for the new additions, highlights especially the Harley Quinn . The Gotham Crime Princess burst in with force and the character convinced us both at the design level - you can compare in this visual story of Harley Quinn - as well as personality, no matter how disastrous a dubbing it was to insist that it no longer stand out. To begin with being clearly the party corduroy, in a dominant role rarely seen, to be simply the subject of the Joker once the character of John Doe ended up exploding.
The character of the Joker, the main historical villain of Batman , is the one who once again has to come out to save the season. Already in the first, and simply as the breeding ground of what could become, was the highlight, but in this second round of episodes is where the character is truly built. The performance of Anthony Ingruber is the most prominent in the cast of voices of the title and it helps perfectly to go believing the metamorphosis from John Doe to Joker.
However, as we feared, we are not facing a perfect Joker. First of all because perhaps in a vision of the villain in which they have taken 10 episodes (5 of the first and another 5 of Enemy Within) in its construction, the final change occurs too abruptly and in a matter of minutes. The most important moment should have pampered more. On the other hand, we may see the best that the villain can give himself in the future - if Telltale recovers from his financial problems and dismissals and has a third chance - because for the moment his evil plans have been something "childish" .
Mechanically, Batman: The Enemy Within will not be the video game that revolutionizes Telltale Games' conversational adventure formula . The feeling or not of satisfaction has varied greatly since the first episode of The Council came to our lives and showed that there is still hope for the genre and you can have some originality by adding progression elements to the RPG style and true differentiated paths , elections that matter and that make each of the games have given you different information and not that we choose what we choose, everything will be directed towards the same end. Telltale's big lie still exists.
The game ends up lacking in situations in which there is real action. In each chapter, the highlights are the Quick Time Events scenes to simulate a fight or in puzzles, but they do not abound. In its place we will have the classic four conversational choices in which we feel that if we let time run and we do not select any, the result does not change either. In turn, there are many scenes of "investigation" stuck with shoehorn, simply to make us feel like the "Best Detective in the World", but they do not get their job.
On a visual level, you will see that Telltale starts to have its graphic engine worn out and it would not hurt if it were renewed to a certain extent. The cel-shading can be effective to some extent to recreate the effect of moving comics, but it ends up affecting the overall result especially in facial animations and combat sequences. A more realistic touch would not be bad, because it ends up giving the feeling that little progress has been ahead since he won the GOTY in 2011 for The Walking Dead.
The game, on the other hand, continues to have the same adaptation problems due to the interpretation in Latin. You will have the feeling, the Joker is not the Joker , the Batmobile is not the Batcoche and so on. All this not to mention other grammatical failures in the adaptation from English, such as literally observe "we do not give coarse", instead of "we do not supply", which is its correct form. This type of errors in the text, in a game with such relevance of the conversations makes it increasingly difficult for the general public to follow the thread,
Game Details
Developer--------------------Telltale Games
Publisher---------------------Telltale Games
Writer----------------------Meghan Thornton
Composer-------------------Jared Emerson-Johnson
Engine----------------------------Telltale Tool
Platform------------------------------------iOS,
Android,
macOS,
Microsoft Windows,
PlayStation 4,
Xbox One,
Release Dates
Episode 1: August 8, 2017
Episode 2: October 3, 2017[1]
Episode 3: November 21, 2017
Episode 4: January 23, 2018
Episode 5: March 27, 2018
Genre---------------------Graphic adventure
Mode-----------------------------Single-player
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Windows Mac OS X
MINIMUM:
OS: Windows 7 64Bit Service Pack 1
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
Memory: 3 GB RAM
Graphics: Nvidia GTS 450+ with 1024MB+ VRAM (excluding GT) - LATEST DRIVERS REQUIRED
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 15 GB available space
Sound Card: Direct X 11 sound device
Mac OS X
MINIMUM:
OS: 10.12 Sierra
Processor: 2.3 Ghz Intel
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: 1500 MB NVidia or ATI graphics card
Storage: 15 GB available space
In Conclusion
Not even with a character like Batman in hand Telltale is capable of doing something different. They have accommodated themselves, they present the same playable formula in all their titles and they are not even surprising at a visual or historical level. The second season is acceptable especially thanks to secondary characters like Joker, Harley Quinn or Catwoman. However, it seems an unforgivable sin that the duality in the figure of Bruce Wayne / Batman gives equal and end up turning the character - and the dubbing of Troy Baker - so tedious. Games like The Council have shown us that much more can be done in the genre and having raw materials available like the cast of Gotham's villains and one of the most legendary heroes of DC, it seems that Telltale Games has again missed the shot . His formula shows clear symptoms of exhaustion and only when he has comic licenses in his hands like Borderlands or Guardians of the Galaxy seems to unleash his creativity in terms of dialogue.
Happy Gaming!!!!!
Tell Tale games are always 50/50 and I have barely played them, but others have mentioned they are sometimes good and bad in certain aspects. But they are still cool games, if I had plenty of spare cash I would get a few.
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Really nice and detailed review. Unfortunately, Telltale games have slowly lost their appeal for me, since one always seems to use a similar formula.
So far I have played by Telltale: The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among us, Game of Thrones.
But I can understand why they remain true to them. They always tell a good story.