Arkham Shadow is Proof That a Like-Minded POV Could Excel

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home November 29, 2024 11 Views 6 Min Read
Arkham Shadow is Proof That a Like-Minded POV Could Excel



The Arkhamverse predominantly comprises third-person, over-the-shoulder perspectives. The only Arkham games that have chartered new courses in genre perspectives are the delisted mobile fighting game Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, the 2.5D side-scroller Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate, and the standalone VR experience Batman: Arkham VR. The latter isn’t a game as much as it’s technically a lightly interactive VR treatment of the Arkhamverse and a prelude of sorts to Batman: Arkham Knight, though, while the Meta Quest 3-exclusive Batman: Arkham Shadow has plunged the Arkhamverse wholly into the realm of VR/MR with comprehensive gameplay superbly adapting the flatscreen Arkham games’ tried-and-true formula.




It’s no surprise that the biggest point of contention regarding Batman: Arkham Shadow has long been its VR exclusivity, either. Besides the fact that the Meta Quest 3/3S title concretely earns its praise on the platform, it makes the case for the possibility of a flatscreen entry in the Arkhamverse bearing a first-person perspective.

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Batman’s Arkhamverse is No Stranger to First-Person Perspectives

One of Batman: Arkham Shadow’s primary design challenges was obviously having to adapt the mechanics and features that the Arkhamverse is known for with VR functionality, and it does so incredibly well. Gestures are immersive with Rats in Batman’s chokeholds, for example, and striking enemies in guided motions is remarkably fluid.


It’d be easy to see how a casual player might be taken aback by the Arkham formula’s transition into Batman’s POV, too, and meanwhile the Arkhamverse has proven countless times that an Arkham game with a first-person perspective could not only be feasible, but also equally immersive and fluid. There are a handful of instances across the Arkham games where the camera assumes a character’s POV instead of its ordinary over-the-shoulder perspective, such as when players discover Scarecrow’s secret hideout within a ship in Batman: Arkham City.

Every instance of Batman crouched and slipping through a ventilation duct has been experienced through his POV aside from in
Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate
’s 2.5D perspective.


Moreover, Batman: Arkham Knight makes frequent use of first-person perspectives to profound effect: a cold open with Officer Owens’ POV in Pauli’s Diner; an expository prologue flashback with Police Commissioner Jim Gordon’s POV lending itself to a terrific Batman jump scare; and a fear toxin-induced nightmare sequence with Joker’s POV as the deceased and incorporeal Clown Prince of Crown begins to fully subsume Bruce Wayne’s mind, to name a few. None of these sequences include gameplay as robust as during regular over-the-shoulder sequences—electing to introduce first-person gunplay to the series instead—but Batman: Arkham Shadow demonstrates how that POV would look so long as the game’s controls had a pad’s familiar button scheme.

Of course, a first-person flatscreen Arkham game would abandon everything that makes Batman: Arkham Shadow unique as a VR game, including players literally holding their arms out to cape glide or retrieving the batarang from their chest, but it’d be interesting to see such a game meld the two formats and determine what a competent blend of their features might look like.


A New Arkham Game Doesn’t Seem Like an ‘If,’ But a ‘When’

Not unlike Joker’s death being confident and bold, Batman: Arkham Knight was seemingly the franchise’s cremation until Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League decided to roll around in its decorative urn. Lore, references, and Easter eggs always laid bare the potential for Arkham games to explore prequel stories taking place in Batman’s formative years, however, and Batman: Arkham Shadow was smart to hop on that untapped market a decade after Batman: Arkham Origins and its Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate companion piece.

Now, all signs point to the inevitability that a brand-new third-person Arkham game will arrive in the future given that Batman was reiterated as a focal point of Warner Bros. and DC’s success in video games, and having it be as traditional as possible would probably gain the most traction with the widest audience imaginable. Camouflaj and Meta deserve to follow Batman: Arkham Shadow with a direct sequel and there are many blank pages in the Arkhamverse’s past, present, and future where a first-person Arkham game, let alone any spin on POVs or genres, could be excellent.


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