![]() ![]() As John, now sprung from Arkham, approaches Bruce with an opportunity to get the drop on Gotham City’s biggest villains, an intriguing hypothetical wormed its way into my brain: If this guy wasn’t already the Joker, maybe he didn’t need to become the Joker.Īnd so I spent the rest of The Enemy Within-culminating in the final episode, which dropped earlier this week-trying to prevent John Doe from becoming the Joker. It wasn’t until getting deeper into the second season of Telltale’s Batman-subtitled, tellingly, The Enemy Within-that I realized I had been treating John Doe’s villainy as a foregone conclusion when the game was treating it more like a question mark. My contempt for John Doe was borne out of accumulated baggage about the Joker, drawn from the Batman movies and TV shows and video games and comics I’ve consumed over the years. This was, of course, exactly what Telltale’s Batman was counting on-setting up one story every Batman fan thought they knew, and twisting it in a totally different direction. He’s the Joker, right? Why would I ally with this psychopath? This version of Bruce Wayne might not have known how evil this maniac could be-but I did, and I disliked and distrusted John Doe immediately. So in Telltale’s Batman, I initially made the choice to minimize the time I spent with John Doe, and to brush him aside whenever he approached me. Telltale’s Batman is essentially the video game equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel-heavy on story and light on gameplay, with a branching plot based on the tough choices each player is forced to make along the way. ![]() The Joker? Again? Did I really have the patience for yet another face-off between Caped Crusader and the Clown Prince of Crime? So when the first season of the episodic video game Batman: The Telltale Series introduced an Arkham Asylum inmate going by the name "John Doe"-a dude with green hair, a rictus grin, and a propensity for breaking into unnerving peals of laughter-I rolled my eyes. Give me Clayface! Give me Man-Bat! Give me Black Mask! Give me the Court of Owls! After Heath Ledger’s Oscar-winning, arguably definitive take on the Batman villain in The Dark Knight-and Jared Leto’s confused, forgettable take in Suicide Squad-it seemed obvious that it was time to push Joker aside and give one of the literally dozens of underutilized villains in Batman’s rogues gallery some time in the spotlight. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |