Batman: The Enemy Within- The Telltale Series - Episode One Review

Telltale have released a follow-up to BATMAN: The Telltale Series, with Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series. Episode One is called The Enigma, and as the story begins the Riddler has returned to Gotham. With the GCPD on the ropes, a mysterious governmental organisation called The Agency has come in to capture the lunatic. And they want Batman to help...

I had a number of misgivings about this new season of Batman, after the first one proved so desperately dire in tone. Basically, the first season of BATMAN was poorly written and hit every single trope possible while making every single character a complete git. It’s just not fun to go from plot point to plot point, when every single time it’s just “Now THIS person is ALSO awful!” I’m not entirely hopeful, as the writers (Shanon Ingles & James Windeler) of the original season are back on this one, though joined by two newcomers (Chris Hockabout & Michael Kirkbride). What’s more, your choices from the previous season can be imported, or you have the option of making the choices manually or starting with Telltale’s decisions.

This didn't happen in my playthrough, I just forgot to take screenshots

With the new season, Telltale introduces some new characters - hopefully they aren’t revealed to all be complete bastards by episode five… The biggest new character is the leader of the enigmatic Agency, and someone familiar to almost any DC fan - Amanda Waller. The Agency, under her command, have been after The Riddler for a long time now, and she doesn’t care who she has to beat a confession out of to catch him.

Speaking of Riddler, he’s older than he’s usually portrayed, having last operated as a masked criminal in Gotham when Thomas and Martha Wayne were alive. The voice acting is superb throughout, and Robin Atkin Downes is no exception with a perfect amount of smarm. He still manages to give Batman a run for his money, both in his riddles and in the couple of fights you have.

Thankfully, Telltale seem to have finally taken some criticism on board. There is more to do in this episode than any single episode of the last season. Puzzles to solve, crimes to analyse, riddles, and they managed to make the quick time events more interesting. For instance, some of them give you a choice on what to do - will you snatch the gun, or tie up the goon? Haymaker or kick? For a developer that prides itself on choice-based gameplay, it sure has taken them a long time to implement that change.

"Lucius, that desk cost more than you've made in your entire career. Shoes off."

One change I did like seeing was that you are told outright that some of your choices have affected your relationship with the character. It doesn’t say whether it’s improved or not, but it’s better than everyone remembering everything.

Of course, this being Telltale Games, Batman: The Enemy Within - The Telltale Series uses their out of date engine which they just cannot optimise to save a life. During the opening cutscene - the first two minutes - I had a three second drop in frame rate to literally nothing. Batman leapt to jump off of a building and stopped mid-motion for three seconds before continuing. Most of the drops happened when there was nothing happening. A character paused for breath and the frame rate plummeted. I noticed it happen at least five times through the two and a half hours it took to finish the episode.

Riddle me this, something something choked up?

However, it was a fun two and a half hours. I remember getting bored and annoyed during the first BATMAN, but apart from two groans of annoyance (I was five steps ahead of “World’s Greatest Detective” Batman), I had a lot of fun. There’s variety and a really good plot - this episode felt like a full story, but with an overarching subplot.

Full disclosure, this started as a video review, but the program I used managed to mess up the recording. I’ll probably do the rest of the episodes as video reviews, if I can get things running correctly. I’m eagerly awaiting the next episode, titled The Pact, as several of the plots The Enigma began look promising, and incredibly interesting.