When the Protagonist Has A Voice
It's the current thing I'm going for in streaming single player video games, I take a look at the writing behind it and the way the developers set up the plot from start to end. Being a video game and not a book, trying to analyse the plot is an interesting thing to do. The main quest is primary conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. At the same time, just like there are side characters to help Batman, there are also side characters who serve as mini-antagonists.
Dabbling into the side quest is the same reading a redundancy chapter in a light novel or watching a filler episode on a TV series. In most cases, it is to add depth in the design of the characters. The people that they are, what drives them, and how they might think of the big picture of the world around them.
Batman is Gotham's sentinel. A highly competent character who can, more often than not, defuse situations on his own. On the other end, there is Scarecrow, a villain who is not as iconic as the Joker but is the primary villain of the game.
Oh, by the way, there may be spoilers. For this game and for others.
Despite Scarecrow being the main villain of the game, it feels as though that his presence in the game serves a higher purpose. Instead of getting gripped into the conflict that he brings, I get the impression that Rocksteady wanted to highlight Batman's hubris and shortcomings. Being too stubborn to let his allies help him and insisting that he will take an army of private mercenaries all by himself is a good example of this. This is illustrated as I played into the later half of the game when the writing dictates that his vendetta against Scarecrow puts a strain on his relationship with his butler Alfred and his side-kick Robin.
The writers intended to flesh out Bruce's more human side, to make him feel the consequences of his actions being the Batman. This would have been more effective if perhaps they let the player into the mind of Bruce Wayne during these great moments of stress: His friends are in danger and he is also affected by Scarecrow's toxic gas. It causes The Dark Knight to be confronted by his age-old nemesis The Joker through a series of hallucinations. As the game progresses, the Joker would taunt our hero and test his resolve in what he believes is right. At one point, Batman hallucinates the death of Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Gotham City Police Department's Commissioner Gordon, Batgirl, and Oracle. Barbara played a pivotal role in the story as she is built to be Batman's eyes and ears around Gotham. Thus, it was a significant moment in the game which challenged the bat's resolve even more when his arch-nemesis is rubbing it in, pinning Barbara's death on Batman.
While the visuals do try and represent the fragility of his character through the Joker hallucinations, there's no input from Bruce himself. Unless we, the player, like the reader, were meant to be the ones to fill in the gaps. I don't believe that works. When you give a voice to your character in a video game, the player will fill in the gap and build the character based off the dialogue that is written. Initially, Dead Space protagonist Isaac Clarke was a silent protagonist who had no dialogue of his own. The only verbal queues this space engineer had were his loud grunts when he punched, stomped, or got mauled. In further installments, the writers gave Isaac a voice. In a setting of what was supposed sci-fi horror, they eroded the tension by writing Isaac to be a character indifferent to the madness that was going on.
In a train station level where the tracks were blocked by a giant alien mass, you would expect Isaac to be filled with dread at an entity which represented something greater than humanity. Instead, what we got in a conversation between him and a side character was, "Yeah, well, I'm a little busy right now with something in the way." General indifference which completely dispels any tension. The protagonist isn't afraid, I shouldn't be either.
I've read opinion pieces and generally it's a bad idea to have a protagonist that's static and just thinking. There should be other characters that can let the protagonist voice out their thoughts. In Arkham Knight, there are other characters, they're just not as strong. Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Dick Grayson all make an appearance in the game. The problem is that their resolve to bringing out Batman's vulnerable side is as effective as a mosquito trying to puncture denim. These side characters make a remark on Bruce Wayne's mental health, it gets easily dismissed, and that's the end of that. Rinse and repeat. It's a shame. I believe Rocksteady really wanted to put weight on Batman's jadedness and waning resolve.
The Last of Us has a great example of character chemistry with Joel and Ellie. My eyes still get quite watery when I watch this scene. This is in the middle of their journey with them believing it was coming to an end and everyone is given the grace of seeing the conflict in the motivations of these characters . The direction of the writing allows Joel and Ellie to express their vulnerabilities and fears. No matter how competent Joel is, there is a lot of baggage that he carried with him that, in this scene, manifested in him wanting to leave Ellie behind. Ellie is only a teenager, Joel's late daughter Sarah was a teenager too when the parasitic apocalypse broke out and set in motion the events of the game. This scene and everything that has led up to it shows the audience that some of Joel's actions are a means of distancing himself from Ellie's likelihood to Sarah. On the other hand, Ellie will trust no one else but Joel. He is the only person who has stuck through with her and has even saved her on multiple occasions. Eventually, Joel grew to be the only person who validated Ellie's existence as a person and not some tool for others to use. The conflict in this scene shows something very real because it's something very human. The argument is irrational, it's emotional, both sides are hurt. This is what great writing can bring about. This was what I felt missing from Batman.
Each one of the characters who are on Batman's side have the potential to be just that and the problem isn't on their end, it's on the Dark Knight himself. A one-way conversation where words that fall on deaf ears. Sure, that's the way it was intended to be written. The writers still want to portray that despite pushing all his allies aside, Batman will forever remain the stoic sentinel of Gotham. The only problem with that is that it also makes us, the viewer, care for him as a hero.
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