While initially the reaction was mixed, since then there has seemed to be a unanimous appraisal of this title as some secret masterpiece. Or at the very least criminally underrated, but to say I disagree would be to downplay how truly awful the game really is. So awful that it makes an interesting case study (and I in no way mean to bully the people who worked hard to make it reality. It was obvious they wanted to make Arkham Origins 'good', it’s clear that they certainly didn't phone it in). The game was neither incomplete nor a cheap knock off. It was an attempt at something great which fell flat on its face.
Fast travel should only exist when it must, as a necessary evil, which makes it a bad or questionable design. Yet a big portion of the game is structured around unlocking towers to gain access to fast travel locations.
Well, is the world a massive open world? No, but there is a long bridge... The developers designed this world by slapping on the Arkham City map and then connecting it to a lesser inspired version of that map via a long bridge. A long bridge with nothing. To compensate they add wirings that allow you to grapple boost across, but all the bridge does is force you to fast travel. Once you have unlocked the fast travel point in both Islands, you don't need the rest, they are just filler.
One aspect of the Arkham City map was the wonder tower. You had to go around this walled off area and take longer routes. It has a story purpose to reinforce an idea that you are in a prison complex. Arkham Origins took place before this part of the city was sectioned off, so I guess this would be an opportunity to fix that problem. But no, the developers just slapped on a giant complex called "GOTHAM CITY LIGHT & POWER" that we can't glide over. So now we don't just have the wonder tower area, but several other large monoliths stuck in our way. And unlike in City it is not marked on our map, so we have no idea. We are given this illusion that we have this open area to explore, but there are giant red blocks and invisible walls blocking our way. There is the Petroleum Facility where Enigma is headquartered, the Hotel, and the energy complex.
The Enigma trophies are just copied and pasted from the last game but with less context. We don't 'know' who enigma is at this point, so we need an excuse for more puzzles and hacked cameras. They had an entire universe of alternatives to the Riddler but instead we get ‘enigma’ without the riddles.
It doesn't revitalize the combat system; it just brings the same things and thinks more is better. Now new enemies exist to break your combo which goes against the principle of the combat system. So now when thrown into a group of baddies we must stop the flow to stun an enemy, hammer them, vault over another enemy, rinse repeat. It makes the encounters long and boring, not difficult. So, what is their solution? They add the shock gloves which defeat the purpose of even having the stun move in the first place. The Ninjas meant to break your combo with double counters are just lazy QTEs thrown in to slow the pacing. If Batman flies across the room to hit them, we want a continuation of his chain of attack. The ninjas and Bane enemy encounters exist just to slow the pacing and break up the combat.
So, what about new items? Same as before but less useful. The glue grenade is the ice grenade. The stun grenade is the glue grenade but does even less. It is bad game design to even have repetitive items. The upgraded bat claw can be used to stun enemies together, which is already pointless since we have two stun weapons. Making bad level design and then giving players the tool to cheat the design isn't a solution; it is just a sign of how bad things are. The Predator maps are like-whys very bad.
Visual design? 2-D fire sprites are painfully obvious in the End Game when emotions are running high. This supposed blizzard also goes a long way in turning the world black and white. Colors don't pop out, everything is dry and depressing. Which is more egregious considering this is set on Christmas Eve, where there are lots of lights in windows and trees that not only aren’t very green, but the lights are so rough they look like they’re from the N64 era of the 90s.
The dungeons? Straight lines. No seriously, there are no obstacles at all. Every building is just a one-way route to the boss fight. Areas like the Hotel are made to look open, but you can only play them in one order. No backtracking either. Why is this bad? It ruins the purpose of clever thinking and restricts the level to just a sequence of beat-em' ups. There is literally a roller coaster segment which if the developers had any sense of irony, would be gestured to how "on-the-rails" everything is.
Story? Oh, this is the part people praise, some people even claim it is as good as a classic Batman graphic novel. What if I let you on a little secret? There is no story. Don't get me wrong, there is a premise. Black Mask, an old-time mob boss, puts out a hit on some vigilante nut job on Christmas. Great, we have a premise, let’s build the story. But it just doesn’t go anywhere or develop into anything.
The assassins have nothing to do with the story. They appear at random times as detours and then get relegated to SIDE QUESTS. So, what did they replace that with? Nothing. No, really, nothing.
SPOILER: it turns out Black Mask was actually the Joker. So why does the Joker care about Batman? Because Batman saved him from falling down a bui- wait, that hasn't happened yet. Joker has no reason to care about Batman. He doesn't care about the profitability of his crime network. He is introduced as a nut job who wipes out half of the black mask thugs (somehow, never explained how), so he has zero reason to keep this ♥♥♥♥ going because he doesn't care.
He has a supposed meeting in the Hotel to discuss this issue pretending to be Black Mask, but he has ZERO reason to pretend. He reveals himself openly and people just accept it. So, he has no conflict. He is just playing the role of Black Mask and stringing us along on this fake Assassin quest until surprise: Batman saves Joker. So, what about Bane, why is he working with the Joker? No reason at all. He doesn't want the money. He doesn't like the Joker. So why is he in this 'story'? Because there is no story, it is just a montage of character relationships with no central conflict. Batman isn't famous yet and Bane is dedicated to killing him for some reason. And yet he works with Joker for no reason since Joker doesn't even want him dead. Joker wants to perform a messed-up game to prove Batman can kill, so why does Bane care? Why does he go along with this? Why is Bane even here? Who cares, this story doesn't have to make sense because it is just an excuse to stick a bunch of characters together.
The Boss Fights? Deathstroke is glorified QTE. Copperhead? Just another combat arena. Killer Croc? A less inspired version of the titan battles in Arkham Asylum with a QTE. Firefly is straight-up tutorial QTE slapped in at the end of the game. The final Boss? Sneak around and get Bane next to an electric fence but with no detective vision, and it doesn’t have to be at an electric fence, actually; you could just slam him to a wall. It’s like they knew it would be too tedious to have to wait for him to walk around and be near a fence and deal with the clunky prompts. Deadshot is horribly buggy, and a side quest that’s just slapped wherever in the game, so you could tell it was rushed.
It is bad not from a lack of effort, but misplaced effort. They copied Arkham City without understanding what made it good and ended with a soulless game that plays it safe yet somehow fails on every level. And while everyone is entitled to their own opinion, I suggest people who harp on the fact that Arkham Origins is underrated go back and actually play the game. Which is not in the end a worthwhile experience.
