Telltale Batman’s Episode 5: City of Light
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There’s definitely been a lot of turmoil during the longevity of Telltale’s Batman series, from Harvey Dent losing his mind, to Cobblepot’s plots, to the mayhem caused by the Children of Arkham. The stakes were high for an explosive finale. Did it deliver ? Yes, in a very brilliant way!
Again, I will go as spoiler free as possible during this review, but even then, I’m making a very intelligent guess that at this point, my playthrough has probably brought me to a point that could be very different from another person. On the major lines, I can safely say without going into any details that the objective of this episode is to try to eliminate the two biggest threats in Gotham: Lady Arkham, with her Children of Arkham, and Harvey Dent, losing his mind and taking the entire city in its madness. Lady Arkham’s side of the story dealt a lot of heavy blows in terms of the emotional and psychological resonance of the story and the entire dual personality of Bruce Wayne/Batman: revealing a true identity dilemma; allowing the player to actually reveal the secret or not. The way everything concludes really wraps up all of the aspects brought in since the first episode and is brilliantly executed, like every Telltale game I’ve played. For those wondering, without spoiling: yes, it finishes in a way that definitely opens the door for a second season.
I appreciate the fact that every type of gameplay sequence in the series was present in this episode; from action-packed battles to investigations. The surprising thing is that in this one, none seemed too long or convoluted, everything made sense and had the role of making the story advances to an epic conclusion. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the design of this episode.
I have to give additional praise to the decision-making aspect of the game and its implications. During this episode, more than once, the choices were really hard-to-make and I’m sure there is a lot of differences in the scenes where the player is asked to deal with a situation as Batman or as Bruce Wayne. Throughout the five episodes, a theme is always present: be the Batman you want to be. So, after finishing the entire game, I was happily surprised that there’s actually an analysis of all the decisions made and a personality announcement is made on the type of hero you are. Very well done Telltale! Here is the analysis of my playthrough.
After a somewhat disappointing previous episode in terms of the technical side of things, I can happily report that I had absolutely no problems this time around. Even the typical slowdown during each quick-time event was almost absent for me. This is by far the best experience of the five episodes for me. The production values are still through the roof, from the music to the stellar voice performances. The base for this series is strong and I can’t wait to see this world again with the same cast.
