The former. People are all over the place about it, with most people who are negative on it saying that it was due to fatigue. I didn't play Origins so maybe that won't affect me but it seems like the trajectory of the series has been downward (Asylum being best and everything else being a step down). I'll still pick it up at some point
Finished now, 100% completion because I hate myself.
Fatigue is definitely a factor, but it's not the whole picture by itself. It's difficult for the proceedings not to feel at least a little stale in the fourth installment of a series that doesn't see much growth in core gameplay. That was already the case in Origins, so I'd imagine it a likely response even skipping that game (and AK's credits, which are otherwise a slideshow of the whole series, do ignore Origins, although there are definitely references to it in-game). But I probably wouldn't care so much if it was at least presented with some more panache. I just don't get the impression that the creative team felt very inspired making this game. It's a fairly long game if you do everything, probably moreso than the rest of the series, but it doesn't
feel like you've really done all that much by the end. I definitely think it's a case of more content not necessarily equating to more entertainment, as though a set amount of creative energy were just averaged out across the game. Riddler stuff in particular really just feels like a grind, but at least it's something different. Almost all the other sidequests just boil down to beating up mobs of random dudes, and nothing novel is done with any of the returning supervillains. The only real bosses this game has are tank battles. If you're ever facing someone important on foot then in practice all it is is beat up waves of mooks and the boss gets cutscene shanked in between rounds. You know, pretty much in practice just like the Joker fight in Arkham Asylum, because everyone loved that bit, right?
Arkham Knight's not entirely without new developments, but the most notable one is ultimately to the game's detriment. I really don't know why someone should have thought that what the series' calcifying formula really needed to shake things up was Mako. It makes sense for the Batmobile to
exist in the game, because sometimes Batman's gotta get somewhere in a hurry. I don't really dig driving in games, but if you really want to put it there, at least there's an excuse. But wow it just accounts for too much of the game. Especially early on, it's required for basically every plot mission, like they really wanted to make sure you got used to its presence by not letting you do anything else. It's just too much. I wouldn't have minded it in moderation. You guys want to play a version of FFX where Tidus stops the party for a blitzball game every time you enter a new zone? Also holy shit Batman is responsible for so much property damage. Nothing short of buildings will stand in its way. Signs, fences, pedestrians, chimneys, trees, rebar overpass supports, all crumble before the irresistible force of a vehicle cruising at slightly over walking speed. Are Batman-related repair costs tax deductible? Oh wait it doesn't matter because everything magically repairs itself if you leave the screen for a few seconds.
Otherwise, there's a few battles where you've got another hero around for backup and you can swap between them and do combo attacks and whatnot? And that's pretty neat, but these instances are also very infrequent. If you skip sidequests you'll almost totally miss this altogether. I kinda got the impression with all the alt character DLC in Arkham City that it was meant to be the groundwork for something more substantial than we actually saw here (although I guess the answer to this might be "That's right: Arkham Knight DLC.")
I think the best new thing in the entire game is just the ability to selectively mute dialogue, and I'm sure anyone who played Arkham City can attest to how immensely fucking welcome that is. Now I don't have to listen to the same half-dozen thug voiceclips repeat on the radio when I'm out hunting Riddler trophies! Of course, it also means I miss out on Riddler's bitching while I'm doing so, which is a shame because I quite like his voice acting. I'd prefer the option to just specifically turn off KTHG, but ultimately any means of turning it off is something I'll eagerly use.
Anyway, endgame stuff. Mr. Vengeance is out of the picture for the last 10-15% of the game, so hey, here's Deathstroke for some reason to fill time. Oh by the way you fight him in a tank and the fight's almost exactly copy-pasted from the first Arkham Knight battle, except now I can fire a dozen rockets at once and that almost knocks him out immediately. Yawn.
The ending's a mess. I'm not really interested in going into detail, although I will mention, just to prove that the universe hates Grefter as much as the other way around, that we learn that if Joker had a tank then its limit break would be called The Killing Joke. I wish I was making that up, except wait no I don't because then I'd hate myself even more. It's probably fair to expect something psychedelic since Scarecrow's the main villain, but I'm not inclined to think that
that was exactly what we needed. Also apparently Scarecrow's principal fear is just Batman, which I guess makes sense while also feeling trite when you just throw it out there and go what else would it be, right?
Oh shit I said Joker was in this game. Spoilers you guys Joker's in this game. Whatever, you learn this on like the first mission. Anyway, if you didn't expect this then you've probably never read a comic book in your life. I didn't actually mind this in execution, most of the time, although the idea justifying it in plot was so incredibly dumb that it could've come from MGS2. The game's story is a fitful mix of questionable ideas that somehow didn't work out quite so terrible as expected in practice and potentially worthwhile ones that it doesn't seem like anyone actually thought about very much past gestation. I guess I'll go to proper spoiler text now.
Arkham Knight himself is so obviously damaged goods that I wonder how he got an army.
Scarecrow's conceptually better, but wildly uneven as an antagonist. He has negative charisma but this isn't the primary problem. The game just can't seem to settle on what he's really trying to do in practice, which is frustrating because there's the core of a good idea in what he actually wants to accomplish on a personal level. "Hey, gassing might be sufficient to instill terror in ordinary people, but it's not good enough for Batman. I tried that once before and it didn't work. If I want to beat him, I will have to approach this like a psychologist and arrange events to emphasize how futile his crusade has been by demonstrating the severe personal cost everyone close to him has had to pay." This is a reasonable M.O. for a very unreasonable person to adopt, and if he stuck to that more consistently it might've made for a good Batman story, but a lot of what he does seems either unnecessary or even counterproductive to that goal. Like, what is your real plan here, can we just decide on one and stick with it? Do you want to blow up the chemical factory, or do you want to play with the military grade chemical dispersal weapon, or do you want to actually buckle down and do something *personal* already? The grand acts of terror, which make sense as things Scarecrow would just generically like to do in a vacuum, are ultimately superfluous to his immediate goal of ruining even the concept of Batman as a hero. This is one of those stories where the villain's schemes fail time after time and everyone acts like all these earlier failures are really just feints to set up his ultimate victory, complete with billboard/radio taunts--even after we've completely decimated his army and destroyed all his gee-whiz super toys--about how our TOTAL DEFEAT is just around the corner. After a while it just makes him seem comically oblivious. It's a shame because somewhere in there was the seed for a more competent plotter to arrange a satisfying conflict of personalities.
Anyway, Joker's function, for most of the game, is to act as the nagging voice of Batman's conscience and taunt him along the above lines. I'm pretty okay with this. If you're going to have someone manifest as the protagonist's voice of doubt, it's reasonably appropriate for it to be his most persistent and deranged adversary. And the more Bruce alienates or loses his friends in trying to protect them, the more it starts to feel like Joker's your only actual friend, which is just surreal enough to work. So if Joker was always going to come back from the dead--and you know he always was--I can accept this as the least obtrusive way to do it. And frankly the game's primary villains are so categorically humorless that it's actually a relief to at least see someone enjoying himself.
The actual plot explanation for why this is happening, of course, is what echoes Kojima at his worst: Joker snuck some of his blood into other people through transfusions just before he died, and wouldn't you know it Batman was one of those people (that was actually an Arkham City plot point, though for much more credible reasons), and now everyone infected is literally turning into Joker clones. Because transferring one person's memories and personality into someone else is totally what happens with blood transfusions, right? It's just...you know, guys, come on, really. Batman gets hit with high-grade fear toxin in the opening mission, that is all the excuse you need for him to be hearing crazy things, you don't have to go full pants on head stupid to justify Joker's presence.
I'm also still not clear on why Ivy helped Batman at all. She doesn't appear to care about humans any more than she did in the earlier games, I.E. at best they're useful as brainwashed drones and at worst they're fertilizer. Yes, Scarecrow's drugs were killing her plants, but they were only killing her plants because she was overtaxing them using them to mass drain fear gas across the entire city. You'd think she wouldn't object to something that thinned out the human population. She certainly doesn't raise moral objections to mass murder. We could assume she acts out of vengeance since Scarecrow DID try to kill her in the intro, yes, but this was also dumb on his part. So she didn't want to help out with your plan? Big deal, you don't need her anyway. Why pointlessly antagonize someone who just doesn't care?"Wasted potential" really does sum up the game pretty succinctly. I do still have some preorder DLC to mess with, mind. I guess playing as other characters is at least a novel thing.
