Paul Dini is what annoying people on the internet incorrectly think George Lucas is; a shadow of his former self, a hack who puts spectacle over story.
Arkham Asylum is what people incorrectly think the prequels are, minus the claims of bad acting those films get, as the cast is...Mostly fine. The wickedly talented Arleen Sorkin is so off her game I didn't even recognize her and Mark Hamill's performance is nowhere near the quality of what he gave us in The Animated Series. Hell, he's scarier in DC Universe Online than he is here in an overdesigned Joker where I can't even tell what direction they were going for. It's almost as bad as what was done to the character on Gotham. That being said, Kevin Conroy, Tasia Valenza and Dino Andrade turn in great performances and I'm an enormous fan of all 3. But the character writing is absolutely atrocious. It's the kind of thing that would be laughed at if it were in a comic and compared to a Rob Liefeld story with art design that's the shitty imitation of a 90s Image comic. Just total grimdark nonsense where nobody is a character outside Dini just projecting his weird misogyny that was rampant in his work around this time (look at his Detective Comics run and it feels like it was written by an incel)
Boss fights are unimaginative and none of the characters feel like who they're supposed to be. Bane has no intelligence, Ivy is a strawman of an eco-feminist, Scarecrow is weak and totally ineffective, Joker is weirdly brute force focused in a way that feels like Dini was poorly attempting to write The Violator rather than the Clown Prince of Gotham.
Fuck this game. Arkham Knight is the only good game in this wretched trilogy even with all its flaws in gameplay. It has a story that's interesting and coherent and characters that felt mature and fleshed out as people and not just caricatures.
Arkham Asylum is what people incorrectly think the prequels are, minus the claims of bad acting those films get, as the cast is...Mostly fine. The wickedly talented Arleen Sorkin is so off her game I didn't even recognize her and Mark Hamill's performance is nowhere near the quality of what he gave us in The Animated Series. Hell, he's scarier in DC Universe Online than he is here in an overdesigned Joker where I can't even tell what direction they were going for. It's almost as bad as what was done to the character on Gotham. That being said, Kevin Conroy, Tasia Valenza and Dino Andrade turn in great performances and I'm an enormous fan of all 3. But the character writing is absolutely atrocious. It's the kind of thing that would be laughed at if it were in a comic and compared to a Rob Liefeld story with art design that's the shitty imitation of a 90s Image comic. Just total grimdark nonsense where nobody is a character outside Dini just projecting his weird misogyny that was rampant in his work around this time (look at his Detective Comics run and it feels like it was written by an incel)
Boss fights are unimaginative and none of the characters feel like who they're supposed to be. Bane has no intelligence, Ivy is a strawman of an eco-feminist, Scarecrow is weak and totally ineffective, Joker is weirdly brute force focused in a way that feels like Dini was poorly attempting to write The Violator rather than the Clown Prince of Gotham.
Fuck this game. Arkham Knight is the only good game in this wretched trilogy even with all its flaws in gameplay. It has a story that's interesting and coherent and characters that felt mature and fleshed out as people and not just caricatures.