As a nerd, I was so happy that they included the comic book story about Aaron Cash losing his hand on guard duty from comics into the game. The game is so full of these little nudges that even some comic readers had forgotten and made us burst out of nostalgia.
@@StratEdgyProductions I just started playing Arkham Knight yesterday again, 'cause I never finished it. And now I think that it's because this magic is missing. Paul Dinis touch is missing, and now we have a bland Arkham Knight as a villain (whos identity is pretty obvious) and everything else feels pretty copy-pasted from the previous games.
I never really understood the complaint about the TITAN enemies. I mean, who said those were meant to be boss fights? They are just regular enemy types(I guess the fact that they have health bars is pretty misleading). They are not meant to be interesting to fight by themselves, which is why the game throws them together with regular thugs. If you crank up the difficulty to hard, where they don't go down that easily, they are actually pretty tense to fight especially in the fight right before Ivy, where you are thrown into a small arena with one of them and an endless wave of thugs. You have to keep half of your eye on the crowd and the other on them, as they are the only enemy types who can cancel your combo takedowns and counters and deal massive damage.
Why did you chose to coincidentally make a Batman Arkham video when I literally just last week decided to replay all the games in the series in order, doing everything except all the riddler stuff bc honestly fuck that there like 300 trophies and puzzles in Arkham City alone it ain’t worth it lmao
Asylum is such a great game, it's a shame the design process that produced this game likely will never be used again in the current AAA climate. I wonder if we'll get a good indie or AA successor with a unique IP one of these days.
I remember back on the 360 version of this, you could play your own music through the Xbox music player while playing the game. I played through the combat challenges for an unhealthy amount of hours with the Mortal Kombat theme in the background. Good stuff as always, Strat. Thank you for the consistently excellent work!
First time I played this game was when my dad was fixing some lady's computer. She let me play her son's PS3. This was the game I played. She said that she was selling the PS3 and games because her son had moved out and didn't want them. She gave me this game because she could see how much fun I was having. My dad had a PS3 and I would play this whenever I was able to play his PS3. I've since bought it on Steam and of course on Switch when it came out. An awesome game that happily paid for twice. Definitely scared other devs from even trying to make a Batman game
This game is a perfect example of sometimes, all you need is to perfect a premise to make a great game. It's not the most complex story, it's not the deepest combat system, it's not the best investigation or stealth game, but every aspect is perfectly executed for Batman, with a story that knows exactly what it is, a Batman story, and it's glorious. I replayed the entire series last year and this video makes me want to do it again!
Funny you bring up the Batman WB cartoon, I just found out Studio Ghibli had animated a mechanical spider episode for the show. Think about that, a Japanese company working for a western TV show not *really* known for animating machines (now at least) animating machines.
@@StratEdgyProductions 'The GHIBLI Batman' by STEVEM Start the video at 3:31 The guy is pretty obnoxious, but it's like walking into an abandoned house and there's an open safe with one golden coin in it.
I remember when this game was coming out, the developers were saying that it explicate took place within the continuity of the comic books. That this was the same Batman and world as what was in the mainline DC canon. It wasn't until Arkham City that they walked that back and started saying this was an an alternate universe so that they'd have the creative freedom to do whatever they wanted with the story.
AAA games are an absolute shitshow. The only AAA game I have purchased since 2016 is Baldur's Gate 3. I have no idea why people keep buying overpriced shovelware.
I'm not even sure what AAA games are. Largely I just buy cheaper older games with the odd big title again bought later. Like this one here. But I have a massive collection of Batman videogames. Not all of them because some go for absurd amounts like the 2nd NES Sunsoft title but.. I've got a good dozen plus going back to the 2nd one made on the ol C64. (The very first is an isometric puzzle platformer for the Spectrum and Amstrad. Computers so garbage they functionally never left Europe. They kinda tried to bring out the Speccy in the us but it got laughed at and died instantly.)
@@CaptainRufus I feel you are being a little hard on the Speccy, for many of us it was our introduction to computer games and computers in general, my brother taught himself basic coding on it. Most importantly it was affordable.
54:45 fun fact about the map trophies, they're rotating in a perfect figure 8. If you watch and see the center of the pattern, that's where the trophy is. It's not an approximation, it just throws you off a little bit.
That scarecrow scene is such an incredible, quintessential batman moment that I havent played this game in years and still had it memorized word for word.
Its because the gameplay is more refined in City (but too bloated in Knight). This is the only one I 100% out of the whole series, and I did 3 times. Once on the ps3 back in the day, again when I bought it on steam and a final time after steam added achievements and windows live died and took my achievements
I legitimately just finished a playthrough with all riddler stuff just last week when I had the sudden desire to go through the whole Arkham series once again, then this pops up in my recommendations? The serendipity is truly amazing.
I am sad that the Arkham games ended up like the way they did. Being turned into a mediocre looter shooter wasn't the thing I thought would befall this series, but I can't say I care much about Kill the Justice League. It doesn't look very fun.
On the note of diversity making more money- as somebody, for better or worse, somewhat involved in that aspect of business, it both does and doesn't make more. I, specifically, work in the film industry where this sort of thing is a bit more obvious and easy to mine data for than it may be for other industries, but I'd imagine it's the same for gaming and basically everything else. So, on one hand, it does help with money- specifically due to investors. Several years ago investors changed their tune to be more in line with what's typically advertised as ESG, so the studios I'm a part of made changes accordingly. We saw a MASSIVE increase... from our investors. However, these past three years or so we've been barely making a profit as that increased investment can no longer keep up with the loss from actual moviegoers, or rather the lack of moviegoers. So even when it does help... well, it doesn't really help anymore. Now, on the other hand, it doesn't help because the whole "people like to see themselves in media" is blatantly false. Our data, and the data from essentially every other country on the planet with movie theaters show people of color overwhelmingly choose the movie with an advertise white or white-adjacent cast when given the choice that or alternatives. That's the common data trend here in the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany where I do most of my business. We don't even really need to look at the data for Asian or Middle Eastern audiences where a white cast is so drastically preferred that even pirated movies featuring them completely overshadow any natively produced content. While pro-diversity beliefs are relatively young in a business sense (and I guess politically too, depending on the arguments you want to make), they're already outdated. They help purely with investors, not putting butts in seats. And that trend is only increasing. The only reason it seems like that's not true is because it's largely being propped up by businesses that seem "too large to fail", and even those are starting to flounder (cough cough, Disney, all of Hollywood, increasingly the gaming industry, etc). I'm all for treating people equally and giving everyone equal opportunities for things where it makes sense, but I absolutely denounce that doing things like putting one of every race into your cast actually makes a product sell better- because it objectively doesn't.
Strat i know the long videos sometimes aint the most popular, but when you talk about game design it is genuinely interesting. Keep em coming when ya feel em. On another note, are you a chad mount and blade warband enjoyer? Idk you seem the type. Its limited and janky design and the amazing work that modders do make a man think about pulling the pin and study game design
Have you watched the new fallout show? I was looking for videos from content creators that really enjoyed FO 1&2 that talk about it, and you were the first person that came to mind. I’d love to hear your take!
Someone else mentioned this but even if the games dont sell well, they likely make their money before a single copy sells through ESG payouts from Blackrock or governments.
There is a more simple answer in terms of economic incentives if loans are based on certain rule sets such as esg scores then companies are pushed economically to do those things. And of course since its money focused some companies will do it by hiring the cheapest dei companies like sbi because when you go cheap you get the lowest rung of humanity such as racist like sbi,black girl gamers etc. they are hired cheaply to tick a box for greater gains.
This feels like you REALLY wanted to make this video, it's exactly why I subbed to you in the first place after watching your TES videos. A passionate man talking about games he loves. I love this kind of content.
There was this moment in mgsv where i resorted to picking off enemies one by one with rifles and drainage grates, and the subtitles showed someone panickng, freaking out, begging and etc. I THOUGHT it was the enemy soldiers and i thought it was the coolest shit that they realized how hopeless the situation was and were losing their shit in the pauses between kills. Turns out it was just a hostage npc giving dialogue to help you find him.
Disney profits: Disney gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $30.533B, a 8.29% increase year-over-year. Disney annual gross profit for 2023 was $29.697B, a 4.86% increase from 2022. Disney annual gross profit for 2022 was $28.321B, a 27.07% increase from 2021. Disney annual gross profit for 2021 was $22.287B, a 3.62% increase from 2020. That's an ever increasing profit margin if I've ever seen one. And yes, that is Billions with a B.
If he plays Arkham City, I hope the thumbnail is the “Why can’t I hold all these limes” guy with Batman’s face holding riddler trophies. I thought 240 was a lot, I forgot they added 200 more for Arkham City.
My thing against Sweet Baby is them ganging up on a guy for making a steam curation page. That's all he did. He made a steam curation page that uses publicly-available information to make a list of games that Sweet Baby worked on. Yes, it was a negative list, but that amounts to "I don't like this company, here's a list of what they've worked on...." Then they leaned on their buddies in the press and tried to paint him as some misogynist chudmeister who hates [insert whatever minority group you like the most]. One of the SBI employees straight up called for people to mass report his steam account to try and get him banned. I don't know or care if they genuinely believe their side of the story, or if it's all a propaganda piece to protect their business; either way they're a bunch of scummy people.
It's a classic case of "rules for thee but not for me". Remember, THEY'RE allowed to use publicly available information to defame you, get your fired, or otherwise screw with you, but the moment you, the regular average citizen, do it against them YOU'RE a racist/bigoted monster.
It's that cult like mentality where they try and brow beat others in submission. Only this time they included greater society into the cult. Funny, these people think they are counterculture, but those on the counterculture side are usually not backed by big corpo and the law.
If you look at the actual curation page, the guy is some loli-defender that really likes Japanese media that s3xualizes underaged girls. He literally is the kind of jackass to whine about Miles Morales and say "He's not Spiderman".
So you might respond to this you might not but I think you have maybe a half perspective on the SBI situation. Now I'm not going to claim they are solely responsible for games tanking (GoW and AW2 not withstanding) but they are contributing and are financially thriving off a corrosive culture popping up in the games industry. Rocksteady had no idea what they were doing and probably didn’t want to make SSKtJL but that doesn't explain why the writing has blatantly misandrist, racist, and pandering writing. Nevermind what they did to Deadshot. These decisions all have to be approved by the execs on some level which is fostering in-studio cultures where it is ok to hate white men, straight people, or anyone that 'progressives' deem to be the enemy this week. Until the companies stop seeing ESG money as free then nothing is going to change because they don't care what the game sells, the investors got paid. If it flops like Saints Row '22 or Forespoken then they can just close the studio (Volition) or reconsolidate assests (Luminous Productions). Until it truly starts hurting executive's bottom line nothing is gonna change and that means these toxic attitudes will continue to grow putting more strain between devs and the consumer. It also means grifters like Kim Belaire will continue to fail upwards because she knows the magic words, 'If you don't accept our services your bottom line will be hurt because we can call your product problematic'. It's a rot that has worked top down throughout this industry and it nedds to ne cleaned out. This doesn't mean I don’t want black characters or LGBT characters or whatever. But these choice need to come from places of actually artistic integrity rather than a corporate mandate backed by race grifters. That at least my two cents.
Man, been a subscriber for years but your take on Sweet Baby is just wrong and i dont know how to express the importance other than unsubscribing. Hope you take some time to investigate.
Bye! Maybe in time you will learn that just because someone has a different belief, experience, or opinion than you do, that you don't have to throw a tantrum and ruin relationships either real or parasocial. Good luck!
This video brought me way back. I remember beating Asylum and I wasn’t very into gaming news at the time but I did pay attention and wad excited for City. I actually bought the trilogy a few days ago because of this video on Series X. Finished Asylum last night and found all the Riddler trophies. Can’t wait to start Asylum again.
I feel like this game's combat system was heavily inspired by earlier Assassin's Creed games. Oh, also Assassin's Creed games had the detective mode as well (was called eagle vision in AC). Additionally, AC games also had a tool system, and opponents armed with firearms who could just waste you if you tried to go against them head on. So, I think it was AC series which inspired all these systems in all these different games.
@@StratEdgyProductions My comment won't post with the link. Here's the quote: In the panel, Belair is discussing the importance of writing consultancy and inclusion, and when discussing AAA developers she had this to say: “If you’re a creative working in AAA which I did for many, many years: put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don’t see the value in what you’re asking for when you ask for consultancy, when you ask for research: go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility if they don’t give you what you want.”
@StratEdgyProductions it's the cdc talk, "representation as innovation." 25~ min in. I'd suggest watching thing for context and I can not tldr it very well. But she directly advises terrifying the marketing department to get what she wants done. Her word choice. I have more nuanced thoughts but at work. Will follow up
@@basition ruclips.net/video/GfMsxjWgUbI/видео.html You sort of removed the context for this quote, because she's saying you terrify them with the prospect that there could be public backlash if you do something culturally insensitive. This is the Corpo-talk bullshit that I was talking about. The big eraser that comes in to censor voices because they are deathly afraid of losing money. I have yet to hear anyone argue in a convincing way that all this shit doesn't just boil down to making more money. This didn't convince me for shit. I've worked with people like this. They have to convince people to revert creative choices, or in other words, kill their babies, and sometimes they have to use fear to do that... So they don't lose MONEY. Sorry guys. I'm not convinced.
Good video, one little thing bugged me though. That stray Disco Elysium comment is odd... I mean, come on. Saying everything other than the writing is underwhelming, you could've used so many other games as examples of only excelling at one thing. Disco Elysium kills it in art direction, world building, fkin music and sound design, UI. It's a pretty excellent overall package. Not just writing.
15:15 I've never wanted or "needed" to see myself in media. At least not in the way that they mean (skin color, gender, sexuality). I just want interesting characters to do interesting things
I actively dislike Marvel and DC sh*t. I think it's mostly inconsequential storytelling. But I had a riot with the Batman WB videogames. They are competent, atmospheric metroidvania beat 'em ups. I guess I'm weird.
If you are, so am I. I didn't play much of the batman games because I cannot stand batman as a character. I did thoroughly enjoy the Spiderman games even though I do not like superheroes at all for pretty much the sake reason you don't. Web swinging around New York is just so much fun.
It's fascinating how little the industry appreaciates and respects writers as they are the reason why anything works. You don't have a movie without a screenplay. You don't have a video game without a design doc. You don't have a painting without having some verbalizations of an idea in your brain. You don't have a book without words. Writing is basically your entire plan for the project, it's the place where you can fix all your problems in the cheapest way possible. If these companies would hire 5 freelance writers for 2 months to write every single detail out for the game, from story to game design to random clutter, they could save so much money in iteration costs as everybody would know what they were doing at all times and diverging from the design doc would only happen if the scope turns out to be too much or some feature being too complex or bugged out to work. But good writers can fix a lot of those problems already in the planning phase. And I am talking about GOOD writers, not Sweet Baby Inc type "consultants" with 0 proof or validity on the quality of their work. Imagine if these companies would rather consult ACTUAL good writers instead of whatever shady corporate money leeching scheme some consultation firm has come up with.
To be honest, I don't think that people who say the backtracking is bad even have a point. I completed the entire game blind in under a day, including challenges. Sure I'm somewhat experienced with these types of games, but I also completely fumbled, missing multiple riddler maps in plain sight.
I really do not understand how you can come to the conclusion that companies are focused purely on profit, thus anything they do must be profitable or they wouldn't be doing it. Obviously being inclusive (or "woke" or however some people like to call it) isn't inherently profitable. Just as one example, do you remember Battlefield 5 where tons of people were upset at the disabled female soldier in the trailer? Even if all of them are just knuckle-dragging misogynists, how exactly did pissing them off and the chief design officer of EA literally telling people to not buy the game help the company's bottom line? (It should be noted the game did in fact end up selling poorly and the CEO did point to the marketing among several other reasons as the cause.) Companies still consist of people, and people have their fair share of biases, irrationality, spite and bad ideas which can easily torpedo any profit. Besides, there are obviously more motivations at play for companies than money alone, though they all feed into that primary goal. Getting good publicity and avoiding controversy, for instance. Even if inclusive content isn't profitable per se, it could still be perfectly rational for a greedy corporation to put in if it garners them positive attention and/or avoids protests, boycotts and outrage. And people can of course simply be biased or mistaken. One can easily believe that being as inclusive as possible will broaden appeal, lead to more sales AND make you look like a good person without that necessarily being completely true. I mean hell, Blizzard thought Diablo Immortal would be recieved with frantic applause; people in this industry convince themselves of all sorts of nonsense. I also don't see how inclusiveness automatically translates into broader appeal. Unless we're talking about games where you generate the characters and can tailor them however you prefer, a company making the main character of their RPG asian for instance means he can't be something else (the possibility of mixed ethnicity aside). Whatever appeal you gain for one demographic you lose for others at least to some extent. Many products appeal primarily to particular groups or niches. It doesn't matter if people who don't enjoy a game unless the character is white/black/straight/gay whatever like themselves are bigots, there certainly are a lot of them and they all have money. Going back to our example of Battlefield 5, which reason would a purely rational, profit-driven company have to try and make their product which appeals largely to young men instead appeal to the vastly smaller number of women who play semi-historical FPS games? Mind you, I'm not trying to be a dick here, I'm just trying to explain why I don't understand where you're coming from.
Sometimes the joker is portrayed like hes largely harmless, like hes just a goofy guy who incidentally causes harm, but he is genuinely evil and totally psychotic
ESG is just another way companies can sell themselves as not being terrible. I am perfectly fine with ESG if it's being done seriously, in fact it's a positive thing. Protect the planet, protect people, and make MAGA as uncomfortable and angry ad possible. If it ever negatively effects the bottom line, then they will stop.
I remember not knowing much about this game as a kid, but then I saw it at a Best Buy being a demo and I fucking NEEDED this game. The gameplay just looked too good
Your point at 15:00 is half true. Inclusion is done to avoid costs of things like bad press and avoiding the well connected people who run in clusion centered companies. Its profit motivated like paying racketeers
"Inclusivity" = upping a company's ESG score. ESG score = a score that determines how much Blackrock & other WEF-associated investment corporations are are willing to invest in a company. That's all you need to know... Once you understand this, it all starts to make sense...
0:52 Ghostbusters lightning in a bottle - I understand your RLM reference. The Arkham series might be one of the most influential series in gaming and I feel like it never gets the credit it deserves. I mean that Hogwarts Legacy game is literally just a reskinned Arkham game, right down to the minigames being the same, just a new coat of paint on it. Would love to see you do all the games, even Origins.
@@StratEdgyProductionsOrigins has the best Boss fights in the franchise. City has the best aesthetics (it still has the quintessential Batman theme for my tastes). The Batmobile drags Knight down a bit
@@StratEdgyProductions City is peak for sure, I think everyone agrees on that. Origins is the red-headed step child but it's not a bad game at all. I love it's set up and take on Batman being more aggressive and angry, not to mention the boss fights might be some of the best in all the games. Knight is personally my favorite, you mention the writing of the plot isn't as strong in this video, and I agree, but I think it explores the character of Batman and what that means extremely well. Also, just wanna mention I agree with your take of brain drain and corporate greed as the causes for the lack of quality. Rocksteady got delt a bad hand for Suicide Squad and it was annoying seeing everyone say it was cause of the inclusive stuff when it was clearly because of the live service elements that Warner Bros forced onto them. Now they're doubling down on it, I pray for Rocksteady man
It’s funny you say if they thought inclusive would fuck with there money a little bit then you bet they wouldn’t do that when you got Warner bros doubling down on it. I like to look at it more like Sony. They thought doing things like this would work in the long run. That didn’t work but they still hope for a chance to hit jackpot which they won’t but they cut back on it. These business aren’t doing anything but trying to make the next game that can be exploited over long periods of time. They think that people will be either dumb or will like a game i guess to where they can get ESG funds to make the game and also get money from fans and merchandise and beyond. These people for a second don’t care about what’s ruining there money. There worried to much on how to scam. That’s just my opinion they too blind. Anyway love your work. Just gotta new sub🤫
Personally, my issues with SBI are: that they tried to completely ban that guy from Steam, removing his access from all of his games that he bought because he made a group using publicly available information so people can make informed purchases and; They have absolutely no business being involved with the process of game development. If you look at the credits of what the people who work for and founded SBI did before SBI, you'll see that they haven't done shit, just some incredibly minor writing. One of the founders did marketing for Sleeping Dogs, a game which, as far as I'm aware, had very poor marketing. So it's basically his fault there isn't a Sleeping Dogs 2; Finally, their press powerpoint presentations are really fucking weird, like they call their employees "babies" and the companies they -financially intimidate- work with "babies".
There is a lot I like about this game, especially the world building... but I despise the combat. It does NOT make you feel like batman imo. It looks like Batman, but your input is so disconnected from the actions Batman takes, the control to action connection is so abstracted, it completely disrupts the ability for you to connect yourself to the character and feel that vicariousness more manual combat systems do for you. I don't feel like Batman, because unlike him, I haven't developed the skills to look that cool, that's all batman doing it for me. It feels like I'm watching batman and pressing buttons to cheer him on more than actually being him.
One of the problems with Joker as a character is there are two distinctly different versions of him portrayed. There's The Clown Prince (who is usually the more whimsical, jokey character we're not meant to take as seriously) and then there's the version that's closer to Heath's portrayal. You never know depending on the writer which version of him you're going to get. More often it's somewhere in between. There's also the fact they argued he's "super" sane. To get around the fact he has like 60 different orgin stories and no one knows which one is the real one. So he's basically whatever the hell any given writer wants him to be, as the Foil to Bats. He was also only supposed to be a one off, originally. So that tells you something about the massive popularity (and over saturation) of this character. The key to it IS the mystery, and the "unpredictability." * Also, which wife? I'm pretty sure Gordan's had at least two of them so far. - Razorfist has explained this = Most companies start going under financially, look to Blackrock to be bailed out, and THEN get heavily into the "wokeness" crap. You're not wrong; but Blackrock's pocketbook does help the denting they'd receive otherwise. They probably do lose money out of hand, but they get it back in write offs thanks to Blackrock. So they keep doing it, because as yet, there's LESS consequence. Though Blackrock's influence eventually erodes good will enough with most core audiences of the franchises that were the draw to make their money in the first place that they do not stop the company's eventual bleeding out. They just prolong it. Unreasonably. Diversity isn't bad per say, so long as merit is also followed. Diversity for the sake of nothing but diversity, won't get you anywhere at the end of the day with 99% of your audience.
Batman does not kill the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns comic. He paralysis him from the neck down. Joker then proceeds to snap his own neck, making it look like Batman had done it. Joker's final words were something along the lines of "It doesn't matter if I couldn't get you to break your rule. You came close enough. The GCPD will kill you for this."
Not going to lie, when this first came out I was putting off playing it. I thought it was one of those licensed games. I remember playing things like spider-man and eragon and harry potter and lord of the rings and stuff. I thought arkham asylum was going to be the same as those where it was a good but ultimately dull tie in game based on the movie that just came out. Yes, this includes spider man 2 because in 2004 games like san andreas, half life 2, metal gear solid 3, etc were released. So I put off arkham asylum to play other games because I thought it would just be the dark knight but in video game form which is something that batman begins did in 2005 and was also genuinely average. When I played this like a year later after everyone kept telling me to and a friend let me have his old copy for a $20, I was genuinely surprised at how actually fun it was and it's even funnier because arkham asylum and city completely overshadow the whole franchise. Almost all batman marketing by warner bros aren't based around the nolan films or the newer snider movies or whatever else. Whenever I see anything batman related, it's almost always heavily referencing this game series. Including the new suicide squad game which while it takes heavily after those god awful movies, almost all the foundation for that game is really obviously tied to arkham asylum.
Arkham asylum felt like a game by comic book geeks for comic book geeks. Like it could just be another random comic story in Batmans history, you can tell by the bios too. The sequels kinda lost that magic when they made the Arkham universe it’s own thing
Just to add a note to the crowbcat section, Crowbcat does videos on games where the game is advertised to have a high attention to detail to its world and for anyone who is actually paying any real attention to modern gaming would know that Crowbcat isn’t just being a nit picky baby.
City is both better and worse than Asylum, in different aspects, but overall a fantastic gem. Origin is a mixed bag, but overall i liked it and it had some cool boss fights. Knight is ehh… I dunno, i really wanted to like it, but it felt a bit too over the top.
I wish people would stop using a correlation equals causation approach to things like sbi, a lot of the time I see people say that because sbi is an inclusionary company that inclusion itself is bad instead of seeing that sbi preys on inclusivity to gain money off of it through piggy backing on the current positive trend in inclusivity. Inclusivity and companies like sbi are not the same thing and a lot of right leaning people will just ignore the fact that if inclusivity killed media then movies like blade runner 2049 and games like gta would not exist and if they did they’d be seen as awful but they’re cult classics. Sbi would be excessively conservative if it paid but thing is being conservative both alienates audiences in big swathes and just isn’t interesting when it comes to more far right conservatives. X-men in its totality would not exist without the “woke” ideals that most right leaning groups claim to hate and to act like inclusivity and “wokeness” is ruining games is disingenuous at best and needlessly hateful at worst
You mentioned a few times some different games that copy the combat system, but isn't this system itself a copy of Assassin's Creed's combat? i know you can say it's a massive improvement since this game came between 1 and 2 and 1's combat isn't really good, but the basics are the same once you unlock the counterattack, mash a button and hit the counter when the enemy's head has a thinghy. Loved the video though, super interesting analisys, that's the only thing i found strange.
Strat it's good to have you back and sounding so energized about a game you love. 10 out of 10 video the opening discussion about how foolish modern money counting excecs drain talent from games was excellent
Yeah, that's a pretty appropriate way to describe the relationship. Like an ex-wife that still calls the girl who fucked her husband to call her a slut after the divorce 5 years ago.
@@StratEdgyProductions I wrote this as part of a solo comment going through the video "on Jokers character, everyone hated the "I cut off my face BATMAN" story, so using that as a hallmark of his character doesn't exactly land. It hasn't "always been stated" that there are multiple Jokers. The three Jokers thing is some new bullshit to explain away his radically differing Characterization over the years"
I think the problem with "AAA" games is instead of smaller investors, studios, etc everything has been swallowed by huge corporations, that like you said, need to squeeze substantially more and more profit out of each project. Not only that, but the bigger the organization the more inept it's run, just look at the government or Google. The other issue is they are trying to make games for everyone, giving them a larger market, but all it seems to be accomplishing is enraging everyone. Games are unique, & we all like different genres, settings, stories, etc by making a game and forcing everything into it, you just make a game no one wants. Everything is made by spreadsheet instead someone actually having a story to tell, which is why they all feel/look/sound the same. I mean look at Forspoken, Atlas Fallen, & I can't remember the other one, but they look so similar! They all have the same color scheme, a sand/desert setting magic talking bracelets/gloves, etc it's uncanny how similar they are, it's like they were all cheating off of each other. Places like Sweet Baby disgust me, they are just parasites on the industry.
Oh a I agree Arkham Asylum & City are absolutely incredible. I remember thinking years ago that these are almost perfect video games. Everything works so well together, and you can feel the care the devs put into it. Shame Rocksteady went to absolute hell, but that's usually what happens after success unfortunately.
Value isnt defined by the amount of work or labor put into a product, it is determined mostly by how much people want said product, and partially how scarce said product may or may not be Toriyama was also a major player on Blue Dragon, but that game didnt sell nearly as well as CT and isnt even half as well regarded
I didn't say that he's the ONLY reason it was good, I said that every person on the team is responsible for some percentage of the value, and some contribute more to that value than others. Supply and demand doesn't apply when the supply is potentially and essentially limitless. They can print as many copies of a game as the public demands, and the prices of NEW games don't go up or down based on the supply. Used games do, but not NEW. The market keeps the prices steady. I think you are referring to commodities.
@@StratEdgyProductions Hence why I said "partially" how scarce it is. There are many contexts in which the supply side is largely irrelevant to a product's value, but the value will still be determined by whether or not there is enough demand for a given product at the price level it is being sold at. Take the Suicide Squad game. They placed it at $70 on release, but due to the fact that consumers did not value the game at that price, it was quickly put on sale for $35, with the publishers attempting to find an equilibrium where price level incurs enough demand to turn a profit. Also, the only reason Toriyama's presence brought value to CT is because consumers subjectively value his presence. The value of the individual laborer on a given product is still determined by the subjective perceptions of the consumers
I've been playing Spider-Man PS4 again recently and I forgot how much it just wholesale takes from the Batman Arkham series. The one thing it's missing though is the parry button.
So I wanted to type a comment here, Prior to watching this all the way, I honest to god have seen this forever, i am pretty sure i own it somewhere from one of the free game things from somewhere. Mostly watching because it’s a new video, I watch this stuff on repeat when new one comes out. I’m curious though if after I watch it if im going to end up wanting to play this. I’ll reply again at the end for anyone curious after reading my comment
Watched it a few more times and read some more comments. I am definatly more interested now, but i wanted to throw out there, if anyone else is in this boat it looks like the triology is on sale on psn right now for like $6 in the US
As a nerd, I was so happy that they included the comic book story about Aaron Cash losing his hand on guard duty from comics into the game. The game is so full of these little nudges that even some comic readers had forgotten and made us burst out of nostalgia.
There's so many little touches in this game that it makes the world feel so genuine.
@@StratEdgyProductions I just started playing Arkham Knight yesterday again, 'cause I never finished it. And now I think that it's because this magic is missing. Paul Dinis touch is missing, and now we have a bland Arkham Knight as a villain (whos identity is pretty obvious) and everything else feels pretty copy-pasted from the previous games.
@@Sensenoi6 You can absolutely feel Paul Dini's absence.
That Doctor in Zsaz's patient tapes actually survived. That was Dr. Cassidy, the redheaded doctor you rescue in the medical ward.
I never really understood the complaint about the TITAN enemies. I mean, who said those were meant to be boss fights? They are just regular enemy types(I guess the fact that they have health bars is pretty misleading). They are not meant to be interesting to fight by themselves, which is why the game throws them together with regular thugs. If you crank up the difficulty to hard, where they don't go down that easily, they are actually pretty tense to fight especially in the fight right before Ivy, where you are thrown into a small arena with one of them and an endless wave of thugs. You have to keep half of your eye on the crowd and the other on them, as they are the only enemy types who can cancel your combo takedowns and counters and deal massive damage.
No mention of the secret Arkham City room? Disappointed lol
Why did you chose to coincidentally make a Batman Arkham video when I literally just last week decided to replay all the games in the series in order, doing everything except all the riddler stuff bc honestly fuck that there like 300 trophies and puzzles in Arkham City alone it ain’t worth it lmao
Because I've been watching you through your window. Nice ass, by the way.
@@StratEdgyProductions🤯
Asylum is such a great game, it's a shame the design process that produced this game likely will never be used again in the current AAA climate. I wonder if we'll get a good indie or AA successor with a unique IP one of these days.
try scar above, it's an indie take on the formular
They basically disguised a metroidvania game as a Batman game to boost sales and it worked
Throwbacks to the best of the mid-late 2000s are surely on the way, if not already are, in a bigger way.
Joker working at DMV is peak horror
Because it will teach him a thing or two?
Alexa play DMV by Primus.
I remember back on the 360 version of this, you could play your own music through the Xbox music player while playing the game. I played through the combat challenges for an unhealthy amount of hours with the Mortal Kombat theme in the background. Good stuff as always, Strat. Thank you for the consistently excellent work!
I can't believe i never did that. Thats awesome.
First time I played this game was when my dad was fixing some lady's computer. She let me play her son's PS3. This was the game I played. She said that she was selling the PS3 and games because her son had moved out and didn't want them. She gave me this game because she could see how much fun I was having. My dad had a PS3 and I would play this whenever I was able to play his PS3. I've since bought it on Steam and of course on Switch when it came out. An awesome game that happily paid for twice. Definitely scared other devs from even trying to make a Batman game
That's a awesome story :)
This game is a perfect example of sometimes, all you need is to perfect a premise to make a great game.
It's not the most complex story, it's not the deepest combat system, it's not the best investigation or stealth game, but every aspect is perfectly executed for Batman, with a story that knows exactly what it is, a Batman story, and it's glorious. I replayed the entire series last year and this video makes me want to do it again!
Funny you bring up the Batman WB cartoon, I just found out Studio Ghibli had animated a mechanical spider episode for the show.
Think about that, a Japanese company working for a western TV show not *really* known for animating machines (now at least) animating machines.
Is there a link somewhere on youtube to this? I would love to see what they did.
@@StratEdgyProductionsJust look up Ghibli Batman someone made a video about it
@StratEdgyProductions this is the only thing I could find ruclips.net/video/A7RslmcyYno/видео.htmlsi=LrdzgigJHh6H7-bd
@@StratEdgyProductions
'The GHIBLI Batman' by STEVEM
Start the video at 3:31
The guy is pretty obnoxious, but it's like walking into an abandoned house and there's an open safe with one golden coin in it.
Wasn't the series animated by an anime studio to begin with?
Also, don't sleep on Ghibli's mechanical designs.
I remember when this game was coming out, the developers were saying that it explicate took place within the continuity of the comic books. That this was the same Batman and world as what was in the mainline DC canon. It wasn't until Arkham City that they walked that back and started saying this was an an alternate universe so that they'd have the creative freedom to do whatever they wanted with the story.
AAA games are an absolute shitshow. The only AAA game I have purchased since 2016 is Baldur's Gate 3. I have no idea why people keep buying overpriced shovelware.
Hmmm, when was the last AAA game I bought. Let's see... Hah, right... Starfield. No wait, I didn't buy that. A friend bought it. Diablo 4... Oh god...
I'm not even sure what AAA games are. Largely I just buy cheaper older games with the odd big title again bought later. Like this one here. But I have a massive collection of Batman videogames. Not all of them because some go for absurd amounts like the 2nd NES Sunsoft title but.. I've got a good dozen plus going back to the 2nd one made on the ol C64. (The very first is an isometric puzzle platformer for the Spectrum and Amstrad. Computers so garbage they functionally never left Europe. They kinda tried to bring out the Speccy in the us but it got laughed at and died instantly.)
@@CaptainRufus I feel you are being a little hard on the Speccy, for many of us it was our introduction to computer games and computers in general, my brother taught himself basic coding on it. Most importantly it was affordable.
54:45 fun fact about the map trophies, they're rotating in a perfect figure 8. If you watch and see the center of the pattern, that's where the trophy is. It's not an approximation, it just throws you off a little bit.
I was wondering what the pattern was
That scarecrow scene is such an incredible, quintessential batman moment that I havent played this game in years and still had it memorized word for word.
I was so excited when you hinted this in your ESO video.
I always hated how this games seems over shadowed by its sequels.
Honestly, I prefer this game GREATLY over the Arkham City game. But, I played it a long time ago, and a revisit might change my mind on that.
Its because the gameplay is more refined in City (but too bloated in Knight). This is the only one I 100% out of the whole series, and I did 3 times. Once on the ps3 back in the day, again when I bought it on steam and a final time after steam added achievements and windows live died and took my achievements
I legitimately just finished a playthrough with all riddler stuff just last week when I had the sudden desire to go through the whole Arkham series once again, then this pops up in my recommendations? The serendipity is truly amazing.
Its how algorithms work.
I am sad that the Arkham games ended up like the way they did. Being turned into a mediocre looter shooter wasn't the thing I thought would befall this series, but I can't say I care much about Kill the Justice League. It doesn't look very fun.
On the note of diversity making more money- as somebody, for better or worse, somewhat involved in that aspect of business, it both does and doesn't make more. I, specifically, work in the film industry where this sort of thing is a bit more obvious and easy to mine data for than it may be for other industries, but I'd imagine it's the same for gaming and basically everything else. So, on one hand, it does help with money- specifically due to investors. Several years ago investors changed their tune to be more in line with what's typically advertised as ESG, so the studios I'm a part of made changes accordingly. We saw a MASSIVE increase... from our investors. However, these past three years or so we've been barely making a profit as that increased investment can no longer keep up with the loss from actual moviegoers, or rather the lack of moviegoers. So even when it does help... well, it doesn't really help anymore. Now, on the other hand, it doesn't help because the whole "people like to see themselves in media" is blatantly false. Our data, and the data from essentially every other country on the planet with movie theaters show people of color overwhelmingly choose the movie with an advertise white or white-adjacent cast when given the choice that or alternatives. That's the common data trend here in the US, Canada, the UK, and Germany where I do most of my business. We don't even really need to look at the data for Asian or Middle Eastern audiences where a white cast is so drastically preferred that even pirated movies featuring them completely overshadow any natively produced content.
While pro-diversity beliefs are relatively young in a business sense (and I guess politically too, depending on the arguments you want to make), they're already outdated. They help purely with investors, not putting butts in seats. And that trend is only increasing. The only reason it seems like that's not true is because it's largely being propped up by businesses that seem "too large to fail", and even those are starting to flounder (cough cough, Disney, all of Hollywood, increasingly the gaming industry, etc). I'm all for treating people equally and giving everyone equal opportunities for things where it makes sense, but I absolutely denounce that doing things like putting one of every race into your cast actually makes a product sell better- because it objectively doesn't.
Strat i know the long videos sometimes aint the most popular, but when you talk about game design it is genuinely interesting. Keep em coming when ya feel em.
On another note, are you a chad mount and blade warband enjoyer? Idk you seem the type. Its limited and janky design and the amazing work that modders do make a man think about pulling the pin and study game design
I own them, I haven't played them yet. Hoping to do a video at some point.
I wasn't expecting another vid so soon ❤
This thumbnail hurts my brain. Veryu good.
Have you watched the new fallout show? I was looking for videos from content creators that really enjoyed FO 1&2 that talk about it, and you were the first person that came to mind. I’d love to hear your take!
Someone else mentioned this but even if the games dont sell well, they likely make their money before a single copy sells through ESG payouts from Blackrock or governments.
www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/does-it-pay-link-executive-compensation-esg-goals
@@StratEdgyProductionsthanks for sharing.
As long as business can use other people's retirements to pay executives to push ESG, it will continue. But that money isn't infinite.
There is a more simple answer in terms of economic incentives if loans are based on certain rule sets such as esg scores then companies are pushed economically to do those things. And of course since its money focused some companies will do it by hiring the cheapest dei companies like sbi because when you go cheap you get the lowest rung of humanity such as racist like sbi,black girl gamers etc. they are hired cheaply to tick a box for greater gains.
@@braydoxastora5584 To bad its back firing on them because when people find out ESG is been use it taints the company.
This feels like you REALLY wanted to make this video, it's exactly why I subbed to you in the first place after watching your TES videos. A passionate man talking about games he loves. I love this kind of content.
There was this moment in mgsv where i resorted to picking off enemies one by one with rifles and drainage grates, and the subtitles showed someone panickng, freaking out, begging and etc. I THOUGHT it was the enemy soldiers and i thought it was the coolest shit that they realized how hopeless the situation was and were losing their shit in the pauses between kills.
Turns out it was just a hostage npc giving dialogue to help you find him.
I don't think you understand what's happening with Sweet Baby Inc, and that's ok I don't watch you for your political position
Lmao, that's a great way to put it, bud should just stick to not sharing his political opinions lol
Bro what about Marvel? What about disney? They lose millions and do the same thing over and over. Ubisoft?
Disney profits:
Disney gross profit for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $30.533B, a 8.29% increase year-over-year.
Disney annual gross profit for 2023 was $29.697B, a 4.86% increase from 2022.
Disney annual gross profit for 2022 was $28.321B, a 27.07% increase from 2021.
Disney annual gross profit for 2021 was $22.287B, a 3.62% increase from 2020.
That's an ever increasing profit margin if I've ever seen one. And yes, that is Billions with a B.
You should make a video talking about comic books. The parts in this video when you do are fascinating
If he plays Arkham City, I hope the thumbnail is the “Why can’t I hold all these limes” guy with Batman’s face holding riddler trophies. I thought 240 was a lot, I forgot they added 200 more for Arkham City.
Is there a lore reason for Strat posting this video?
Strat is a Man
Man: Arkham
Oh hell do you think there's a connection?
My thing against Sweet Baby is them ganging up on a guy for making a steam curation page. That's all he did. He made a steam curation page that uses publicly-available information to make a list of games that Sweet Baby worked on. Yes, it was a negative list, but that amounts to "I don't like this company, here's a list of what they've worked on...."
Then they leaned on their buddies in the press and tried to paint him as some misogynist chudmeister who hates [insert whatever minority group you like the most]. One of the SBI employees straight up called for people to mass report his steam account to try and get him banned. I don't know or care if they genuinely believe their side of the story, or if it's all a propaganda piece to protect their business; either way they're a bunch of scummy people.
It's a classic case of "rules for thee but not for me". Remember, THEY'RE allowed to use publicly available information to defame you, get your fired, or otherwise screw with you, but the moment you, the regular average citizen, do it against them YOU'RE a racist/bigoted monster.
It's that cult like mentality where they try and brow beat others in submission. Only this time they included greater society into the cult.
Funny, these people think they are counterculture, but those on the counterculture side are usually not backed by big corpo and the law.
If you look at the actual curation page, the guy is some loli-defender that really likes Japanese media that s3xualizes underaged girls. He literally is the kind of jackass to whine about Miles Morales and say "He's not Spiderman".
So you might respond to this you might not but I think you have maybe a half perspective on the SBI situation. Now I'm not going to claim they are solely responsible for games tanking (GoW and AW2 not withstanding) but they are contributing and are financially thriving off a corrosive culture popping up in the games industry. Rocksteady had no idea what they were doing and probably didn’t want to make SSKtJL but that doesn't explain why the writing has blatantly misandrist, racist, and pandering writing. Nevermind what they did to Deadshot. These decisions all have to be approved by the execs on some level which is fostering in-studio cultures where it is ok to hate white men, straight people, or anyone that 'progressives' deem to be the enemy this week. Until the companies stop seeing ESG money as free then nothing is going to change because they don't care what the game sells, the investors got paid. If it flops like Saints Row '22 or Forespoken then they can just close the studio (Volition) or reconsolidate assests (Luminous Productions). Until it truly starts hurting executive's bottom line nothing is gonna change and that means these toxic attitudes will continue to grow putting more strain between devs and the consumer. It also means grifters like Kim Belaire will continue to fail upwards because she knows the magic words, 'If you don't accept our services your bottom line will be hurt because we can call your product problematic'. It's a rot that has worked top down throughout this industry and it nedds to ne cleaned out. This doesn't mean I don’t want black characters or LGBT characters or whatever. But these choice need to come from places of actually artistic integrity rather than a corporate mandate backed by race grifters. That at least my two cents.
Man, been a subscriber for years but your take on Sweet Baby is just wrong and i dont know how to express the importance other than unsubscribing. Hope you take some time to investigate.
Bye! Maybe in time you will learn that just because someone has a different belief, experience, or opinion than you do, that you don't have to throw a tantrum and ruin relationships either real or parasocial. Good luck!
@@StratEdgyProductionsimagine projecting like this over a genuine comment
This video brought me way back. I remember beating Asylum and I wasn’t very into gaming news at the time but I did pay attention and wad excited for City. I actually bought the trilogy a few days ago because of this video on Series X. Finished Asylum last night and found all the Riddler trophies. Can’t wait to start Asylum again.
44:00
Just a minor nitpick but Assassins creed is the original mold for this system. Eagle vision came before detective mode
I feel like this game's combat system was heavily inspired by earlier Assassin's Creed games. Oh, also Assassin's Creed games had the detective mode as well (was called eagle vision in AC). Additionally, AC games also had a tool system, and opponents armed with firearms who could just waste you if you tried to go against them head on. So, I think it was AC series which inspired all these systems in all these different games.
Man FINALLY!! i check your channel once a week
I hope you enjoy it :)
On the sweet baby thing their ceo basically said her strategy to get things done was to go to the money people and scare them
"Nice game, be a shame if people said you were a bigot"
Source? Because I would love to read about that, being the anti-corpo I am.
@@StratEdgyProductions My comment won't post with the link. Here's the quote:
In the panel, Belair is discussing the importance of writing consultancy and inclusion, and when discussing AAA developers she had this to say:
“If you’re a creative working in AAA which I did for many, many years: put this stuff up to your higher-ups.
And if they don’t see the value in what you’re asking for when you ask for consultancy, when you ask for research: go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility if they don’t give you what you want.”
@StratEdgyProductions it's the cdc talk, "representation as innovation." 25~ min in. I'd suggest watching thing for context and I can not tldr it very well. But she directly advises terrifying the marketing department to get what she wants done.
Her word choice.
I have more nuanced thoughts but at work. Will follow up
@@basition ruclips.net/video/GfMsxjWgUbI/видео.html
You sort of removed the context for this quote, because she's saying you terrify them with the prospect that there could be public backlash if you do something culturally insensitive. This is the Corpo-talk bullshit that I was talking about. The big eraser that comes in to censor voices because they are deathly afraid of losing money. I have yet to hear anyone argue in a convincing way that all this shit doesn't just boil down to making more money. This didn't convince me for shit. I've worked with people like this. They have to convince people to revert creative choices, or in other words, kill their babies, and sometimes they have to use fear to do that... So they don't lose MONEY. Sorry guys. I'm not convinced.
inclusion part completely disregards social scoring .
Good video, one little thing bugged me though. That stray Disco Elysium comment is odd... I mean, come on. Saying everything other than the writing is underwhelming, you could've used so many other games as examples of only excelling at one thing. Disco Elysium kills it in art direction, world building, fkin music and sound design, UI. It's a pretty excellent overall package. Not just writing.
7:14 these aren’t canon. And don’t really make sense. Joker is the way he is bc his mind was ruined by chemicals.
Yeah but sometimes it’s shown that he was evil before the chemicals. The acid was just made it worse
I like that anime pfp users are seen as deranged, it gives me certain expectations
15:15 I've never wanted or "needed" to see myself in media. At least not in the way that they mean (skin color, gender, sexuality). I just want interesting characters to do interesting things
I actively dislike Marvel and DC sh*t. I think it's mostly inconsequential storytelling. But I had a riot with the Batman WB videogames. They are competent, atmospheric metroidvania beat 'em ups. I guess I'm weird.
If you are, so am I. I didn't play much of the batman games because I cannot stand batman as a character. I did thoroughly enjoy the Spiderman games even though I do not like superheroes at all for pretty much the sake reason you don't. Web swinging around New York is just so much fun.
It's fascinating how little the industry appreaciates and respects writers as they are the reason why anything works. You don't have a movie without a screenplay. You don't have a video game without a design doc. You don't have a painting without having some verbalizations of an idea in your brain. You don't have a book without words.
Writing is basically your entire plan for the project, it's the place where you can fix all your problems in the cheapest way possible. If these companies would hire 5 freelance writers for 2 months to write every single detail out for the game, from story to game design to random clutter, they could save so much money in iteration costs as everybody would know what they were doing at all times and diverging from the design doc would only happen if the scope turns out to be too much or some feature being too complex or bugged out to work.
But good writers can fix a lot of those problems already in the planning phase. And I am talking about GOOD writers, not Sweet Baby Inc type "consultants" with 0 proof or validity on the quality of their work. Imagine if these companies would rather consult ACTUAL good writers instead of whatever shady corporate money leeching scheme some consultation firm has come up with.
I remember being severly disappointed by the baned-joker boss fight.
To be honest, I don't think that people who say the backtracking is bad even have a point. I completed the entire game blind in under a day, including challenges. Sure I'm somewhat experienced with these types of games, but I also completely fumbled, missing multiple riddler maps in plain sight.
I really do not understand how you can come to the conclusion that companies are focused purely on profit, thus anything they do must be profitable or they wouldn't be doing it. Obviously being inclusive (or "woke" or however some people like to call it) isn't inherently profitable. Just as one example, do you remember Battlefield 5 where tons of people were upset at the disabled female soldier in the trailer? Even if all of them are just knuckle-dragging misogynists, how exactly did pissing them off and the chief design officer of EA literally telling people to not buy the game help the company's bottom line? (It should be noted the game did in fact end up selling poorly and the CEO did point to the marketing among several other reasons as the cause.) Companies still consist of people, and people have their fair share of biases, irrationality, spite and bad ideas which can easily torpedo any profit.
Besides, there are obviously more motivations at play for companies than money alone, though they all feed into that primary goal. Getting good publicity and avoiding controversy, for instance. Even if inclusive content isn't profitable per se, it could still be perfectly rational for a greedy corporation to put in if it garners them positive attention and/or avoids protests, boycotts and outrage. And people can of course simply be biased or mistaken. One can easily believe that being as inclusive as possible will broaden appeal, lead to more sales AND make you look like a good person without that necessarily being completely true. I mean hell, Blizzard thought Diablo Immortal would be recieved with frantic applause; people in this industry convince themselves of all sorts of nonsense.
I also don't see how inclusiveness automatically translates into broader appeal. Unless we're talking about games where you generate the characters and can tailor them however you prefer, a company making the main character of their RPG asian for instance means he can't be something else (the possibility of mixed ethnicity aside). Whatever appeal you gain for one demographic you lose for others at least to some extent. Many products appeal primarily to particular groups or niches. It doesn't matter if people who don't enjoy a game unless the character is white/black/straight/gay whatever like themselves are bigots, there certainly are a lot of them and they all have money. Going back to our example of Battlefield 5, which reason would a purely rational, profit-driven company have to try and make their product which appeals largely to young men instead appeal to the vastly smaller number of women who play semi-historical FPS games?
Mind you, I'm not trying to be a dick here, I'm just trying to explain why I don't understand where you're coming from.
Sometimes the joker is portrayed like hes largely harmless, like hes just a goofy guy who incidentally causes harm, but he is genuinely evil and totally psychotic
Your content is always top notch! Asylum was my favorite since I played it as a kid and you did a great job covering exactly why it was.
no your wrong, you need to research what investors are doing and how theyre pushing esg and if you DONT then no investment for you.
ESG is just another way companies can sell themselves as not being terrible. I am perfectly fine with ESG if it's being done seriously, in fact it's a positive thing. Protect the planet, protect people, and make MAGA as uncomfortable and angry ad possible. If it ever negatively effects the bottom line, then they will stop.
I remember not knowing much about this game as a kid, but then I saw it at a Best Buy being a demo and I fucking NEEDED this game. The gameplay just looked too good
Your point at 15:00 is half true. Inclusion is done to avoid costs of things like bad press and avoiding the well connected people who run in clusion centered companies. Its profit motivated like paying racketeers
27:51 Look at that ragdoll shmoovin!
I've never played this game but I have one question: who the fuck puts gargoyles on the inside of a warehouse? Like seriously
Bruce used his fiscal influence to mandate grotesques via the building codes.
Flapjacks was a cultured reference.
"Inclusivity" = upping a company's ESG score.
ESG score = a score that determines how much Blackrock & other WEF-associated investment corporations are are willing to invest in a company.
That's all you need to know...
Once you understand this, it all starts to make sense...
Nice, nice, vid from Strat!
FIRST!
0:52 Ghostbusters lightning in a bottle - I understand your RLM reference. The Arkham series might be one of the most influential series in gaming and I feel like it never gets the credit it deserves. I mean that Hogwarts Legacy game is literally just a reskinned Arkham game, right down to the minigames being the same, just a new coat of paint on it. Would love to see you do all the games, even Origins.
I've only played through half of City, and none of Origins and Knight, so I would love to do those vids too.
@@StratEdgyProductionsOrigins has the best Boss fights in the franchise. City has the best aesthetics (it still has the quintessential Batman theme for my tastes). The Batmobile drags Knight down a bit
@@StratEdgyProductions City is peak for sure, I think everyone agrees on that. Origins is the red-headed step child but it's not a bad game at all. I love it's set up and take on Batman being more aggressive and angry, not to mention the boss fights might be some of the best in all the games. Knight is personally my favorite, you mention the writing of the plot isn't as strong in this video, and I agree, but I think it explores the character of Batman and what that means extremely well.
Also, just wanna mention I agree with your take of brain drain and corporate greed as the causes for the lack of quality. Rocksteady got delt a bad hand for Suicide Squad and it was annoying seeing everyone say it was cause of the inclusive stuff when it was clearly because of the live service elements that Warner Bros forced onto them. Now they're doubling down on it, I pray for Rocksteady man
I think i NEED a Batman game built like a mix between the Arkham series and the Soulsborne formula.
Asylum is my favorite arkham game.
Love your video, don't ever stop ❤️
It’s funny you say if they thought inclusive would fuck with there money a little bit then you bet they wouldn’t do that when you got Warner bros doubling down on it. I like to look at it more like Sony. They thought doing things like this would work in the long run. That didn’t work but they still hope for a chance to hit jackpot which they won’t but they cut back on it. These business aren’t doing anything but trying to make the next game that can be exploited over long periods of time. They think that people will be either dumb or will like a game i guess to where they can get ESG funds to make the game and also get money from fans and merchandise and beyond. These people for a second don’t care about what’s ruining there money. There worried to much on how to scam. That’s just my opinion they too blind. Anyway love your work. Just gotta new sub🤫
Personally, my issues with SBI are: that they tried to completely ban that guy from Steam, removing his access from all of his games that he bought because he made a group using publicly available information so people can make informed purchases and;
They have absolutely no business being involved with the process of game development. If you look at the credits of what the people who work for and founded SBI did before SBI, you'll see that they haven't done shit, just some incredibly minor writing. One of the founders did marketing for Sleeping Dogs, a game which, as far as I'm aware, had very poor marketing. So it's basically his fault there isn't a Sleeping Dogs 2;
Finally, their press powerpoint presentations are really fucking weird, like they call their employees "babies" and the companies they -financially intimidate- work with "babies".
God I remember when this game came out. My dad let me take a day out of school to play it all day
There is a lot I like about this game, especially the world building... but I despise the combat.
It does NOT make you feel like batman imo. It looks like Batman, but your input is so disconnected from the actions Batman takes, the control to action connection is so abstracted, it completely disrupts the ability for you to connect yourself to the character and feel that vicariousness more manual combat systems do for you. I don't feel like Batman, because unlike him, I haven't developed the skills to look that cool, that's all batman doing it for me. It feels like I'm watching batman and pressing buttons to cheer him on more than actually being him.
One of the problems with Joker as a character is there are two distinctly different versions of him portrayed. There's The Clown Prince (who is usually the more whimsical, jokey character we're not meant to take as seriously) and then there's the version that's closer to Heath's portrayal. You never know depending on the writer which version of him you're going to get. More often it's somewhere in between. There's also the fact they argued he's "super" sane. To get around the fact he has like 60 different orgin stories and no one knows which one is the real one. So he's basically whatever the hell any given writer wants him to be, as the Foil to Bats. He was also only supposed to be a one off, originally. So that tells you something about the massive popularity (and over saturation) of this character. The key to it IS the mystery, and the "unpredictability."
* Also, which wife? I'm pretty sure Gordan's had at least two of them so far.
- Razorfist has explained this = Most companies start going under financially, look to Blackrock to be bailed out, and THEN get heavily into the "wokeness" crap. You're not wrong; but Blackrock's pocketbook does help the denting they'd receive otherwise. They probably do lose money out of hand, but they get it back in write offs thanks to Blackrock. So they keep doing it, because as yet, there's LESS consequence. Though Blackrock's influence eventually erodes good will enough with most core audiences of the franchises that were the draw to make their money in the first place that they do not stop the company's eventual bleeding out. They just prolong it. Unreasonably. Diversity isn't bad per say, so long as merit is also followed. Diversity for the sake of nothing but diversity, won't get you anywhere at the end of the day with 99% of your audience.
Batman does not kill the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns comic. He paralysis him from the neck down. Joker then proceeds to snap his own neck, making it look like Batman had done it. Joker's final words were something along the lines of "It doesn't matter if I couldn't get you to break your rule. You came close enough. The GCPD will kill you for this."
Not going to lie, when this first came out I was putting off playing it. I thought it was one of those licensed games. I remember playing things like spider-man and eragon and harry potter and lord of the rings and stuff. I thought arkham asylum was going to be the same as those where it was a good but ultimately dull tie in game based on the movie that just came out. Yes, this includes spider man 2 because in 2004 games like san andreas, half life 2, metal gear solid 3, etc were released. So I put off arkham asylum to play other games because I thought it would just be the dark knight but in video game form which is something that batman begins did in 2005 and was also genuinely average. When I played this like a year later after everyone kept telling me to and a friend let me have his old copy for a $20, I was genuinely surprised at how actually fun it was and it's even funnier because arkham asylum and city completely overshadow the whole franchise. Almost all batman marketing by warner bros aren't based around the nolan films or the newer snider movies or whatever else. Whenever I see anything batman related, it's almost always heavily referencing this game series. Including the new suicide squad game which while it takes heavily after those god awful movies, almost all the foundation for that game is really obviously tied to arkham asylum.
Arkham asylum felt like a game by comic book geeks for comic book geeks. Like it could just be another random comic story in Batmans history, you can tell by the bios too. The sequels kinda lost that magic when they made the Arkham universe it’s own thing
Just to add a note to the crowbcat section, Crowbcat does videos on games where the game is advertised to have a high attention to detail to its world and for anyone who is actually paying any real attention to modern gaming would know that Crowbcat isn’t just being a nit picky baby.
City is both better and worse than Asylum, in different aspects, but overall a fantastic gem. Origin is a mixed bag, but overall i liked it and it had some cool boss fights. Knight is ehh… I dunno, i really wanted to like it, but it felt a bit too over the top.
I wish people would stop using a correlation equals causation approach to things like sbi, a lot of the time I see people say that because sbi is an inclusionary company that inclusion itself is bad instead of seeing that sbi preys on inclusivity to gain money off of it through piggy backing on the current positive trend in inclusivity. Inclusivity and companies like sbi are not the same thing and a lot of right leaning people will just ignore the fact that if inclusivity killed media then movies like blade runner 2049 and games like gta would not exist and if they did they’d be seen as awful but they’re cult classics. Sbi would be excessively conservative if it paid but thing is being conservative both alienates audiences in big swathes and just isn’t interesting when it comes to more far right conservatives. X-men in its totality would not exist without the “woke” ideals that most right leaning groups claim to hate and to act like inclusivity and “wokeness” is ruining games is disingenuous at best and needlessly hateful at worst
Le heckin unpredictable jonkelerino! I understand the Joker. He's just the edgelord version of lolsorandumb "humor". Literally bottom tier trash.
You mentioned a few times some different games that copy the combat system, but isn't this system itself a copy of Assassin's Creed's combat? i know you can say it's a massive improvement since this game came between 1 and 2 and 1's combat isn't really good, but the basics are the same once you unlock the counterattack, mash a button and hit the counter when the enemy's head has a thinghy.
Loved the video though, super interesting analisys, that's the only thing i found strange.
Oh, i was waiting for this one
The hell is he talking about? Ghostbusters 2 were even better than one. And so was batman arkham city than asylum
"The anime pfp havers" ... So when can I meet Dr. crane and Quinzel M.D face to face?
Yeah, why do you complain about stuff in some places and not others? Seems a little inconsistent if you ask me. And in a way, you did.
Strat it's good to have you back and sounding so energized about a game you love. 10 out of 10 video the opening discussion about how foolish modern money counting excecs drain talent from games was excellent
Huh...Today I learned that The Joker is basically the ultimate incarnation of a bitter ex. Kind of pathetic when you really think about it.
Yeah, that's a pretty appropriate way to describe the relationship. Like an ex-wife that still calls the girl who fucked her husband to call her a slut after the divorce 5 years ago.
@@StratEdgyProductions I wrote this as part of a solo comment going through the video "on Jokers character, everyone hated the "I cut off my face BATMAN" story, so using that as a hallmark of his character doesn't exactly land. It hasn't "always been stated" that there are multiple Jokers. The three Jokers thing is some new bullshit to explain away his radically differing Characterization over the years"
I never would have expected that scene from the shitty Oldboy remake to show up in a Strat Edgy video
Wasn’t the fear system sort of done in the movie tie-in game for Batman Begins? Or is that just the Mandela Effect?
Personally, my favourite Batman/Arkham game is Mad Max.
I think the problem with "AAA" games is instead of smaller investors, studios, etc everything has been swallowed by huge corporations, that like you said, need to squeeze substantially more and more profit out of each project. Not only that, but the bigger the organization the more inept it's run, just look at the government or Google. The other issue is they are trying to make games for everyone, giving them a larger market, but all it seems to be accomplishing is enraging everyone. Games are unique, & we all like different genres, settings, stories, etc by making a game and forcing everything into it, you just make a game no one wants. Everything is made by spreadsheet instead someone actually having a story to tell, which is why they all feel/look/sound the same. I mean look at Forspoken, Atlas Fallen, & I can't remember the other one, but they look so similar! They all have the same color scheme, a sand/desert setting magic talking bracelets/gloves, etc it's uncanny how similar they are, it's like they were all cheating off of each other. Places like Sweet Baby disgust me, they are just parasites on the industry.
Oh a I agree Arkham Asylum & City are absolutely incredible. I remember thinking years ago that these are almost perfect video games. Everything works so well together, and you can feel the care the devs put into it. Shame Rocksteady went to absolute hell, but that's usually what happens after success unfortunately.
Bro I had to stop the video because you talked the game up so much now I have to go play it lol
1:15:55 and according to SS:KTJL she's also a chemist, despite the fact that she's a psychiatrist.
Value isnt defined by the amount of work or labor put into a product, it is determined mostly by how much people want said product, and partially how scarce said product may or may not be
Toriyama was also a major player on Blue Dragon, but that game didnt sell nearly as well as CT and isnt even half as well regarded
I didn't say that he's the ONLY reason it was good, I said that every person on the team is responsible for some percentage of the value, and some contribute more to that value than others. Supply and demand doesn't apply when the supply is potentially and essentially limitless. They can print as many copies of a game as the public demands, and the prices of NEW games don't go up or down based on the supply. Used games do, but not NEW. The market keeps the prices steady. I think you are referring to commodities.
@@StratEdgyProductions Hence why I said "partially" how scarce it is. There are many contexts in which the supply side is largely irrelevant to a product's value, but the value will still be determined by whether or not there is enough demand for a given product at the price level it is being sold at.
Take the Suicide Squad game. They placed it at $70 on release, but due to the fact that consumers did not value the game at that price, it was quickly put on sale for $35, with the publishers attempting to find an equilibrium where price level incurs enough demand to turn a profit.
Also, the only reason Toriyama's presence brought value to CT is because consumers subjectively value his presence. The value of the individual laborer on a given product is still determined by the subjective perceptions of the consumers
You and @underthemayo should collab on an arkham knight vid
Hey strat would you consider checking out broken roads?
1:13:30 So you would think, but you can actually meet the doctor that Zsasz tried to kill, and a tie-in comic shows that Batman saved her.
They aren't the paint brushes. They're more like the colors they choose to use.
I've been playing Spider-Man PS4 again recently and I forgot how much it just wholesale takes from the Batman Arkham series. The one thing it's missing though is the parry button.
When I first played Arkham, I couldn't help but think how the basic Combat suited Spider-Man more. Batman even has Spider Sense in it
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Still waiting for the post release Starfield video
I used to love scaring the fuck out of the guards
Good timing. Doing yearly arkham replay now.
So I wanted to type a comment here, Prior to watching this all the way, I honest to god have seen this forever, i am pretty sure i own it somewhere from one of the free game things from somewhere. Mostly watching because it’s a new video, I watch this stuff on repeat when new one comes out. I’m curious though if after I watch it if im going to end up wanting to play this. I’ll reply again at the end for anyone curious after reading my comment
Eh maybe. Maybe i never played this because im just not super super huge on Batman. Idk
Watched it a few more times and read some more comments. I am definatly more interested now, but i wanted to throw out there, if anyone else is in this boat it looks like the triology is on sale on psn right now for like $6 in the US