This Batman Game From 12 Years Ago Has Largely Been Forgotten, But Still Deserves a Sequel

Batman is one of the most recognizable characters in fiction thanks to not just incredible comic books, but revolutionary films, TV shows, and video games. The character of Batman has shaped entire industries and genres, whether you realize it or not. The Dark Knight trilogy became a gold standard for how to make a comic book movie or even reinvent a legacy character in a grounded and serious way. The Batman Arkham games innovated melee combat with its rhythmic action and gadget-heavy mechanics, influencing games like Marvel’s Spider-Man and non-superhero franchises like Assassin’s Creed. Needless to say, it’s easy to recognize Batman’s many successes, but some stories are underrecognized.

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Batman: Arkham Origins is one of the more unappreciated Batman and superhero games as a whole. Today, Batman: Arkham Origins turns 12, and it often gets left out of the conversation when talking about the Arkham series. Many refer to it as the “Arkham trilogy”, primarily because Origins stands on its own and wasn’t developed by Rocksteady, the studio behind the other three core games in the series. It’s an important piece of the franchise, and personally, I think it’s one of the best Batman games ever made and deserves a sequel.

Why Is Batman: Arkham Origins Ignored?

As noted, Batman: Arkham Origins was not developed by Rocksteady and that was a very intentional decision. It is still canon despite some minor continuity errors and an essential installment in this Batman’s story. After Batman: Arkham City was released in October 2011, Rocksteady began to think about what it would do next. It was eventually decided that the developer would need a longer development cycle in order to deliver a trilogy capper for the incoming next-generation of consoles.

However, Warner Bros. liked the cadence of having a new Batman Arkham game every two years and decided to put WB Montreal in charge of a new prequel game to fill the gap. Not only did this fulfill Warner Bros. overall desire to keep Batman present in the gaming world, but it also allowed the storytellers the opportunity to flesh out the history of this world. Joker had also just died in Arkham City, but with a prequel, he can come back without having to undo anything at all! It was an opportunity to give fans more Batman content without compromising on the time that was needed to make Batman: Arkham Knight.

Batman: Arkham Origins was treated oddly, even in its lead-up. Some people saw it as an illegitimate entry in the series as Rocksteady wasn’t developing it, and actor Kevin Conroy was replaced by Roger Craig Smith in order to provide a younger voice. Fans were also still riding the high of Arkham City, a game that was showered in high review scores and Game of the Year awards/nominations. However, Origins couldn’t really surpass that.

Given it was developed in just two years, its innovations wouldn’t be as significant as Arkham Knight, which finally let players drive the Batmobile. Generally, reviews weren’t negative, but they weren’t necessarily glowing either. IGN noted in its 7.8/10 review that Arkham Origins was “a disappointment in its lack of new ideas” and “the least interesting of the trilogy.” GameSpot gave it a 6/10 and stated that it was a “deeply predictable game.”

In what was one of the most negative reviews I could find, Destructoid gave the game a 3.5/10 and claimed that it “contemptuously pissed all over what Rocksteady accomplished with the previous Arkham games and shat out a soulless wreckage of a game.” Needless to say, some people weren’t thrilled with a game that sort of felt like Arkham City 2.5.

In terms of sales, Batman: Arkham Origins ended up being the 15th best-selling game of 2013, a step down from Arkham City, which was the 8th best of 2011, and Arkham Knight was the 9th best of 2015. It’s possible that word of mouth slowed things down for Arkham Origins, but it also launched at a historic time. It came out a month after Grand Theft Auto V and just weeks after GTA Online, but also just days prior to the highly successful Battlefield 4 and a few weeks ahead of the releases of Xbox One and PS4, where Arkham Origins would not be available. In a way, the game got buried by a busy time in the industry.

An okay reception from critics and modest sales led to the game became treated as a black sheep in the franchise. The eventual Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch remasters of the Arkham series notably excluded Batman: Arkham Origins, meaning the only way to play it on current hardware was either through a PC or via Xbox’s backward compatibility.

However, Xbox’s backward compatibility still had a bit of an asterisk that stopped people from playing it. The only way to play Batman: Arkham Origins on Xbox One or Xbox Series X was to have a disc. It straight up isn’t playable digitally on Xbox consoles, which means you can’t play it at all on the Xbox Series S because it has no disc drive. As time goes on, Arkham Origins slowly becomes lost to the console generation it was released on.

Why Batman: Arkham Origins Is Great and Deserves a Sequel

To say I was excited for Batman: Arkham Origins would be an understatement. I loved the other Arkham games, and a new one, even from a different team, was really enticing. I was 12 years old when the game came out, and my mom told me I’d have to wait to get it. However, being a bratty pre-teen, I threw a total tantrum over the idea of having to wait a second longer. Full-blown waterworks were on display, something that I, honest to god, had grown out of at this age, but for whatever reason, my excitement for Origins moved me to literal tears.

Despite my relentless and embarrassing pleas to my mother, I did indeed have to wait a bit longer for Arkham Origins, but once I got my hands on it, it lived up to my hype. The gloomy atmosphere of a snowy, crime-ridden Gotham City, the angsty nature of an inexperienced Bruce Wayne/Batman, and the epic boss fights against characters like Deathstroke absolutely rivetted me. Even though WB Montreal was clearly building off the foundation of Arkham City, there was enough meat on the bones to feel different.

For starters, actually playing in Gotham City and not being trapped in some kind of prison was refreshing. The Christmas aesthetic and blizzard created a unique look and feel for the game as well, all of which made the story feel more fun and engaging. What’s more comic book-y than Batman having to survive a bounty during the most wonderful time of the year?

In many ways, WB Montreal was deepening a lot of things that the previous Arkham games had already teed up. There was an added emphasis on Batman being a detective by reconstructing crime scenes, a mechanic that would carry over into Arkham Knight as well. Players had to use holograms to rewind and fast forward through crime scenes to try and find evidence, which provided a welcome break from paralyzing goons and allowed Batman to show off more of his intellect. You could even find false evidence that would throw off your investigation briefly, forcing you to be more analytical.

The thing that makes Arkham Origins stand out the most is its interpretation of Batman. In the other Arkham games, Batman is pretty quiet, reserved, and hardened. It’s a completely different point in his life where he has a lot of this superhero thing figured out. However, with Arkham Origins depicting his second year as Batman, we get to peel back some layers.

He’s still driven by rage and vengeance at this point in his career, almost developing an ego for his ability to successfully drive fear into Gotham City. He sees the bounty against him as a sign that the Batman experiment is working and having an effect; it’s causing the criminals to push back and get rid of him because he’s a problem. He’s so arrogant and naive that it nearly gets him and Alfred killed, despite his butler’s desperate pleas to stop his self-destruction.

What makes Batman powerful isn’t that he’s equipped with sweet gadgets and has the strength of an ox, but that he has the bravery to take on evil without any kind of superpowers. He’s the man who is willing to stand up to injustice. But it’s also not just him. It’s the people that he inspires around him by doing so as well. Batman isn’t a one-man army. He’s at his most capable when supported by equally courageous allies such as Alfred and Jim Gordon, two figures who ultimately help him stop the villains terrorizing Gotham City. Batman isn’t a symbol of vengeance, he’s a symbol of hope, one that can inspire others to stand up to evil forces against all odds.

That is what makes Batman: Arkham Origins stand out from its counterparts. It’s a thoughtful story about Bruce Wayne learning who Batman is and what he needs to be. I would’ve loved to see WB Montreal run further with this and use this more vulnerable, emotionally confused Bruce Wayne to tell new stories. It could also give us proper introductions to characters like the various Robins/Nightwing, ultimately furthering the themes of Origin and why Batman’s allies are a powerful asset.

It should be noted that the excellent Batman: Arkham Shadows, the Meta Quest VR game that was released last year, is a successor to Arkham Origins. However, I think we can all recognize that the VR market is quite niche and there are a lot of people who won’t be able to experience that game due to the cost of entry. What a lot of fans want is a more traditional Batman: Arkham Origins sequel on consoles, even though Shadows deserves praise for being a brilliant game in its own right.

There are years of untold stories between Arkham Origins and Arkham Asylum. In Rocksteady’s trilogy, we see all these villains that have interacted with Batman before. Why not show us the stories that led to their feuds in this universe? It’s heavily rumored that Rocksteady is working on a new Batman game right now, so it seems somewhat unlikely we will ever see a continuation of the Origins story outside of VR… but we can dream.