After giving me a bad impression from my previous game, Batman: The Telltale Series, after three years, I revisited the Batman game developed by Telltale Games, this time introducing the last interactive story game with a superhero story theme before the company collapsed: Batman: Enemy inside.
This game is the orthodox sequel after the ending of the previous game, because the previous game has been lost, I thought that I would lose the choice options made in the previous work, which led to an imperfect game experience, fortunately, after entering the game, the system will give the player the option to choose one or the other to let us reconstruct the story plot, this approach is very clever, not only can take care of the first time players, but also for the old players who have played the previous game quickly review the previous plot summary, after the selection is over, Batman's new adventure officially begins.
Set after Bruce Wayne became Batman, after a series of events resolving crimes involving Penguin Man, Two-Faced Man, Catwoman, and Arkham's son, Gotham City Police Commissioner Gordon began to identify with Batman's philosophy and worked with him in private to solve countless cases.
Unfortunately, the former Gotham City major criminals who claimed to be "riddlers" returned again for unknown reasons, and his return also attracted another faction of ill-intentioned forces, the hard-line and disregard for human rights Director Waller, who led the "Sky Eye Society" organization to intervene in the Riddle Man case, which made Gordon very dissatisfied, hindering the other party's class from being higher than himself, so he had to accept it silently.
Taste the pain of losing your family again, the ultimate challenge from the Riddler
The story content about the first chapter is all around the riddle man, "Batman: The Inner Enemy" appeared in the riddle man similar to the original, always love to throw out a bunch of difficult puzzles to the victim to solve, the price to be paid for not successfully cracking is life, this value of human life as a child's play is just batman's most disdainful thing, even if there is no Waller and Gordon's help, he will take the initiative to arrest the riddle man.
But just when he was almost able to successfully arrest the riddle man, the riddler handed Batman a puzzle, which was a riddle box loaded with strange electronic devices, and batman who did not know how to crack it, and then entrusted the puzzle to Lucius, the main person in charge of Wayne Technology, as Bruce Wayne, who knew that after successfully solving the puzzle, there was an explosion accident in his laboratory, Lucius died tragically in the laboratory, with apologies and hatred, Bruce Wayne decided to bring the riddle man to justice to comfort the spirit of his old friend in heaven.
However, things did not go well, in order to keep his identity, as well as to protect the safety of Lucius's widow, Bruce Wayne was questioned by Lucius's daughter Tiffany, chose to avoid the core of the problem, did not expect this kind act to be misunderstood, Tiffany believed that Bruce Wayne had a shady secret, so that his father became the victim of the terrorist attack.
Even if his friend died, he was misunderstood by others, and the depressed Bruce Wayne found an uninvited guest who also came to the funeral site, that is, the "Zhang San" he knew when he was imprisoned in the Arkham Sanatorium in the previous work, Zhang San had bright green hair and pale skin, and behaved like he was out of touch with the world, thinking that Bruce Wayne was his friend, and directly admitted that he had intersected with the riddle man, and would do everything possible to reveal the whereabouts of the riddler.
After a series of investigations, Batman finally finds the Riddler's hiding place, and after the baptism of the Death Trap, the player can choose two ways to find out the location of the Riddler, one of which is to incarnate as Batman and use a tough method to interrogate the detained Riddler's men, and the other is to meet with the arms dealer who has a commercial partnership with the Riddler as Bruce Wayne.
Depending on the options, although it will not affect the end of the chapter, it will change the game flow to a certain extent, and the player can freely choose the way they like to tell the story, which is the charm of telltale Games game works. Batman eventually stops the Riddler's plot, but just as he is about to hand him over to law enforcement, a small needle is shot from afar.
The poisoned needle instantly ended the criminal's life, who shot the poisoned needle? What did the Eye of Heaven, led by Waller, go to great lengths to come to Gotham City? What is the purpose of the gang organization that Zhang San joined? All the answers exist in the content of the game, and in order not to spoil everyone's interest, it is left to the players to experience for themselves.
Tap on the options, press the specified button, and experience the stress-free gameplay
As an interactive story game, in most cases, the player has to do is to choose one of the dialogue options within the limited time to interact with other characters, because the operation is very simple, even the QTE gameplay is not difficult, you can completely treat this game as a movie to watch, no pressure to pass the game.
It is worth noting that although the games released by Telltale Games give players extremely free choice, and even when faced with major choices, depending on the difference in options, they will tell a very different storyline, but the influence of options can not interfere with the established facts.
For example, you try to keep the annoying Director Waller out of your sight, or you want to help Zhang San, who has not yet transformed into a clown, to make him change himself and no longer engage in the behavior of the criminal organization led by Harley Quinn, but in the end there is no good result, the script directly ignores your wishes and continues the storyline you don't like, in short, the player can't change the amount of plot through the options, and it is impossible to experience a completely free plot.
Regarding Chineseization, "Batman: Internal Enemy" has the same big problems as the previous work, there is no sign of secondary proofreading, first of all, the translation of the words and sentences is far from the original meaning, for example, there is a scene where the stun gun of the Agent of the Heavenly Eye Society has lost its efficacy, according to the original translation should be translated as "dumb fire", and the Chinese translation is translated as "fire", the eight rods between the two words cannot be hit, such problems exist in various dialogue options, which is a very annoying low-level mistake.
In addition, there are also problems in the game that seriously affect the game experience, such as subtitles suddenly turning to English, place name errors, similar synonyms errors, and unclear option translation, so the author believes that if you are a player with a decent English standard, it is recommended to choose the original English text to play, so that you will not misunderstand the plot and choose the wrong option because of the mistakes of Chinese localization translation.
The enemy comes from the heart, and only the sincerity of the world can be transformed
The game's subtitle The Enemy Within can be translated as "Enemy Inside" and "Enemy Inside", the internal enemy is a reflection of the various factions have undercover, different forces surging to contain each other, even Bruce Wayne under the Batman mask also wears the mask, becoming an undercover criminal organization founded by Harley Quinn, Bane, Frozen Man, and the dead Riddler. Next, let's talk about what is the inner enemy, no matter who it is, there is another enemy in the heart, that is, the opposition between personalities, the transformation between personalities, and the conflict between values.
The best example is Batman's character building core [contradiction], in order to eliminate criminals, Batman has a brutal personality, the grief of losing his parents makes him firmly believe that violence cannot solve the problem, believe that the goodness and brilliance of human nature is the fundamental way to solve things, which is why Batman adheres to the consistent principle of not killing, in fact, there are many people who think that killing vicious criminals can solve many problems, but Batman's almost pathological principle has indirectly caused countless innocent people's casualties.
So we can find that Batman's inner enemy is a contradiction, and it is this ambivalence that makes him a righteous man different from the Joker. Since the Joker is mentioned, let's talk about Zhang San, who plays the role of the Joker in the game, what is his inner enemy? According to the author's own interpretation, his inner enemy is [desire], Zhang San from the debut to the final ending is pursuing the desire to be valued, on the one hand, he wants to be friends with Bruce Wayne, and at the same time wants to please the crush Joker Harley Quinn, and finally he regards Batman as an idol, and even betrays everyone in order to be praised by the idol in his heart.
It is such pure desire that Zhang San takes the wrong path step by step, and he usually looks like a harmless creature with an inferior personality, but this performance is regarded by others as a symbol of cowardice, and over time, once the pressure given by others exceeds the critical point, it will cause an irreparable explosion: "To create a clown is very simple, as long as the balloon of desire has nowhere to vent and makes it explode."
In addition, the player plays Bruce Wayne during the undercover period, the game conveys to us the importance of "honesty and trust", the plot has a lot of bridges that will make us choose whether to look at people with a skeptical attitude, or to let down our guard and trust each other one hundred percent, face different people, face them honestly from the heart, and lift many barriers between each other.
Just like the identity of Batman, in order to keep the identity from being exposed, Batman in addition to his most trusted old butler Ah Fu, almost all of the others are using lies to disguise themselves, and in the middle of the game, it is difficult to play themselves, but they have to deceive Zhang San, a close friend who has never hidden anything from himself, a word of helplessness, maybe this is the feeling?
Eating inside and out, the corruption caused from the inside is enough to destroy the whole fruit
With different factions checking and balancing each other, and the misunderstandings and conflicts caused by core values have always added an element of watchability to the work, there are three different camps in Batman: The Inner Enemy, namely Gordon and Batman representing the righteous side, the Eye of Heaven led by Waller representing the black and white gray side, and the gang composed of Harley Quinn and others representing the villain side.
These three camps are not exactly opposites, and the members will help each other and cooperate with each other in private, just like the symbol of justice Batman incarnation Bruce Wayne goes to the gang as an undercover, The Eye of Heaven will privately use the power of criminals to help him do dirty things, and Zhang San chooses to steal intelligence from each other in order to win Batman's favor, which is exactly in line with the core point of the subtitle The Enemy Within.
In this work where everyone is anti-bone, a few such as Director Gordon, butler Afu, Frozen Man, etc., this kind of role that has never wavered from beginning to end can be said to be very rare. From the second chapter onwards, there will be a large plot depicting Bruce Wayne's going undercover with the villain, perhaps thinking that the previous game was overly focused on the story of Batman, and the proportion of stories about Bruce Wayne this time is very high.
First from Zhang San's introduction to Harley Quinn, and then one by one to gain the trust of the Frozen Man and Bane, on the way, some people repeatedly questioned whether Bruce Wayne participated in the organization's other secret plans, but in the end did not investigate deeply, even Harley Quinn herself did not doubt his identity after seeing that Bruce Wayne had superb martial arts skills.
All in all, I think the writers weren't careful enough in describing the undercover process, there were too many places to complain about, and even in the end, i wasn't surprised that a character said he already knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman, because it was so obvious, more exaggerated than Superman wearing glasses and camouflage!
Poor people living in the worst of times, it is only a matter of time before they fall into the path of magic
This is perhaps one of the most interesting clown origin stories I have ever seen, before the clown became a clown, I wanted to use his name in the work "Zhang San" to call him, Zhang San and Bruce Wayne first met in the Arkham San San, after a simple conversation can be learned, Zhang San did not come to the sanatorium before the memory, the name should be randomly taken, his head is like a blank piece of paper, I thought that after being discharged from the hospital to find a stable job to support myself, perhaps the personality is too weird, always can not find a job Zhang San, He eventually found his belonging in the underworld, where he also found his lifelong love, "Harley Quinn".
Players can clearly find that the reason why Zhang San joined the gang is not only self-actualization, wanting to find out the value of life, another project is to try to please Harley as much as possible, even if he is caught as an animal to summon, this phenomenon indirectly explains his problem, that is, [too much trust] strangers. Zhang San, who joined the gang, is like a decoration, a rough worker can let Bane do it, there is an expert in research technology with a frozen man, and his leadership ability is far inferior to Harley, who has a doctorate in psychology, and he is useless like a jerby who pretends to be crazy and stupid next to the king and wants to please people.
In other words, before Zhang San became a clown, he was already regarded as a ridiculous clown by everyone. It wasn't until he met Bruce Wayne that Zhang San truly realized what it was like to be needed, that although betraying the organization might cost his life, he would still do anything for his best friend, and he would never know whether the player who sat in front of the screen and controlled Bruce Wayne really saw himself as a friend, which is exactly what the screenwriter is doing to create this character.
As for what makes Zhang San incarnate as a clown, the answer should be cut from two angles, first of all, his personality, too much trust in others and eager for others' attention, thinking that paying will be rewarded, not thinking that reality is cruel, once wanted to be a good clown, just because of taking a wrong step is regarded as a bad person.
The second is to wake up from the blind letter, the enlightened clown did not put down the hatred to become a better person, but chose to use radical means to retaliate against the unjust world, wrote this author thought about it, Batman is really a hero with very strong inner strength, there are many bitter people in the world, there are many bad people who have fallen into the magic path, it is difficult to calculate, and the people who can really get out of negative emotions, change their lives with actions, and even make the world better are few, thinking of this, I always feel that the result of Zhang San's transformation into a clown is the choice of most people, I'm nowhere near as strong as Batman.
The final chapter full of highlights, the supervillain you single-handedly created
The fifth chapter of "Batman: Internal Enemy" is the biggest highlight of the whole work, this chapter will be based on the first four chapters of Zhang San's options, so that the Joker's official debut of the motives and concepts are completely different, if the player has been full of kindness to Zhang San, and even told him that he can become a hero, then he will imitate the image of Batman and fight crime in a way that he believes is just.
Batman will have a good cooperative play with the Joker, they will face Bane who is controlled by the Celestial Eye, because Bane absorbs too much potion, and is fiercely necked by the electromagnetic collar, irrationally he blindly accepts Waller's proposal, as long as he works under the Sky Eye Society, he can get the opportunity to kill Batman and the Joker, fortunately, with the cooperation of Batman and the newborn hero Joker, Bane is finally successfully subdued.
After a brief collaboration with the Joker, Batman knows to be on the lookout for the untime bomb in front of him, his definition of justice is very distorted, and he can't understand the legitimate and reasonable common sense behavior, at this time Batman intercepts the confidential information from Director Waller's most trusted deputy, thinking that he can use black letters to coerce the Sky Eye Society and let them leave Gotham City forever.
However, the Joker, who has been hiding in the shadows to eavesdrop, finally can't stand it, questioning his idol worship concept for the first time, the conflict between the two finally happened, the Joker believes that Batman's principle of not killing is stupid, because there are many people outside who want to end each other's lives, but Batman proves with actions that the principle of not killing is the motivation to keep himself righteous and help others, and it is this principle that makes Batman not considered a villain, but a real superhero.
Although it cannot be called perfect, it does not affect the entertainment value brought by the story
In addition to the hasty release of the Chinese part without secondary proofreading, resulting in many translation errors that differ from the original meaning, "Batman: Internal Enemy" still brings players a high-value interactive drama game, and the proportion of the literary drama part of this game is higher than that of the previous game, which changes the stereotype that Batman games are only suitable for action games. Although I would like to give the script of this work a very high evaluation, after re-examining the details of each chapter after breaking the barrier, the author found that many of the choices and foreshadowings made in the previous chapters were too hasty at the end of the final chapter.
Chapters two to four use a lot of side plots that have nothing to do with the main plot to deliberately lengthen the number of game hours, and when the game ends, you will find that these so-called side plots are not hastily concluded, or forgotten by the screenwriters, and they do not seem to intend to explain those foreshadowing contents.
Finally, I want to talk about Telltale Games, I personally love this company very much, the news about the company's collapse is believed to be a little heard, according to the foreign media Gamenformer interview content, we can know the reason for the company's collapse, that is, after experiencing the success of the "Walking Dead" series, the creativity of employees has gradually been stifled, the company's founder Bruner said: "As the company expands more and more, we also focus more on popular games. You can't repeat the game in the same way, and there's a lot of pressure to replicate The Walking Dead to succeed."
If a game is messed up, consumers will ignore their previous efforts, or even deny its existence value, so they decide to invest more money to make the game, but unfortunately the quality of the finished game is not enough to make the majority of players pay, the result of the lack of income is the company's collapse, fortunately Telltale Games has been signed by Athlon Games to make five games of the production agreement.
Leaving aside whether there are any drawbacks to signing an agreement with Chinese investors, from the perspective of benefits, there will still be opportunities to play interactive drama games with quality assurance.