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Spoilers for Batman: Arkham Knight, of all things.

§ August 12th, 2024 § Filed under batman § 8 Comments

So I am a sporadic video game player, with a probably soon-to-be-supplanted modern system at home, and a variety of games. Having grown up in what was basically the Golden Age of Gaming, I have lots of Atari 2600 games converted to my system (including the excellent documentary/game collection Atari 50th Anniversary), as well as several compilations of arcade games of my youth (gotta play my Dig-Dug.

But the other genre of game I love is “open world,” where to at least some extent you are given free reign of the playing field to adventure and explore as you please, without necessarily having to play the game’s story as scripted (though of course you have to sometimes to get into new areas and acquire new tools and skills). Red Dead Redemption I and II and the various Grand Theft Autos are prime examples of this.

Another good example would be the Batman: Arkham series of games…Arkham Asylum and Arkham City I’ve both played and enjoyed on a previous system, and there’s Arkham Knight which I have for my current console. They all feature relatively good-sized maps (the first game concentrating on the asylum’s massive grounds, and the latter two in Gotham, or portions thereof), and plenty of opportunity flip around rooftop to rooftop both causing and stopping mayhem in equal measure.

I was playing Arkham Knight a while back, and got stuck at a particular part of the game, one that, despite several replays, I just couldn’t get through. Specifically, the tank-drone assault on the GCPD which you have to fight from within your Batmobile. Now, while having the ability to drive the Batmobile (or at least this weird tank-version of it) can be fun, the game-specific missions involving the vehicle can be a real slog. Especially when you’d rather be ziplining your way through the Gotham skyline.

Being frustrated at the game, I decided to put it aside for a while and play other things, letting it rest while I thought occasionally about alternative strategies.

Well, I finally returned to it, figuring a year or so off may have recharged my enthusiasm for the game, and started it up again, determined to finish what I had left behind…which is when I noted the last save on the game, the last time I played it, was in mid-2020.

To paraphrase an example I presented on social media when I discussed this there, that’s like if I got stuck on Pitfall II on the 2600 before I started high school, put it aside, then got back to it as I was preparing to enter college.

But you may be pleased to know that, having returned to Arkham Knight, I finally figured out a strategy to get through that sticking point and moved onward in the game’s plot. In fact, I got to one of the major endpoints of the game…not the endpoint, there’s still plenty of game to go, but it was definitely a wrap-up to one of the main storylines. [SPOILERS] at this point, where during the ending of this particular plot, Batman’s identity is revealed to all.

How it’s revealed is interesting, in that Commissioner Gordon is the one forced to pull off Batman’s mask. The interesting bit is that we don’t really get Gordon’s reaction to the revelation, at least not so far as I’ve seen in the game. (Maybe there’s more when the main plot resumes.) We do get lots of reactions from the street thugs Batman’s monitoring equipment catches (lots of amusing comments like “the mystique is gone” and “I can beat up that rich boy anyday” and so on). My favorite reaction is from one of Batman’s police allies, who tells him “Bruce Wayne, huh? All the same to you, I’ll stick with ‘Batman.'”

And to finally get this back to comic books, this got me to thinking about the status of whether or not Commissioner Gordon knows Bruce Wayne is Batman. In this age where heroes are revealing their identities left and right to allies and loved ones…well, maybe not that often, but secret I.D.s in comics are a little less cut ‘n’ dried nowadays. (Especially in TV shows, where I.D.s would get revealed right away and suddenly the superhero has a support team of friends, coworkers and family.)

There are two pretty famous examples of Gordon vis-à-vis Batman’s identity. One of the most famous ones is from Batman #407, part four of “Year One” by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli which Batman out of costume rescues Gordon’s son.

Batman is basically face-to-face with Gordon, unmasked, but Gordon does give him this out:

As I recall (I don’t have the specific reference in front of me) it was Miller’s intention to leave it ambiguous as to whether or not Gordon is in on the secret.

Now usually Batman comics are written as if the secret is not shared, and that’s the general status quo for the characters. But there’s an event a few years later where the amnbiguity is brought to the forefront yet again, and I’ll discuss that later in the week.