It was a foregone finis that when the Batman : The Enemy Within television game was done , John Doe would nail his metamorphosis into the Joker . What remained to be seen was how culpable histrion would feel at the death of it all . Personally , I was so exhausted and guilt - ridden that I made my Batman do something that I never thought I would .
Depending on player choice , the finale for the 2nd season of Telltale Games ’ Batman play introduces a Joker who’seither a vigilante or a villain . I did n’t plan it but , somehow , all my decision ensue in a John Doe who wants to be a crimefighter like the Dark Knight . title “ Same Stitch , ” episode five starts two week after the climactic bridge meeting during the previous chapter . My translation of the episode four ending left a deadly computer virus in John Doe ’s hands and Agency director Amanda Waller with detention of Harley Quinn and Bane .
Vigilante Joker register up in dramatic fashion in episode five , interrupting Agency operatives as they get egregiously rough with Batman and the clown ’s crew of henchmen . I ’m glad my subconscious choices spat out a Joker who wants to struggle for a twisted notion of justice because he and Batman are hilarious and poignant together . An former fight with Bane shows them working surprisingly well as a squad and , when Alfred drive in later to assist an injured Bruce , player get a pointed look at all three character interacting .
Having this Joker find the intimacy between Bruce and Alfred find transgressive . In the comics , it ’s been rare that Joker has had admission to the other side of Batman ’s lifetime , much less enough confidence where he could ask Alfred questions . The side conversations where Joker ask Alfred about Bruce ’s bedtime and other slight details about the Samuel Butler ’s biography make everything palpate so much more charged .
This Batman / Joker kinship differ from most others we ’ve go through because it ’s intensely personal . This is n’t just “ two sides of the same coin ” stuff . It ’s a deeper , “ we drank together and talked family relationship goals”-type of connection . Even after he begin call himself Joker , this character still really wants Batman to care him . But this Joker also require to shoot down and that desire repulse a sub between him and Bruce for the whole episode .
Waller threatens to expose the Dark Knight ’s clandestine identity unless Batman reach over the virus and Joker . A meeting on the Gotham City Police Department rooftop follow and Bruce come intel from Agency surgical Iman Avesta that lets him blackjack Waller into gage down and leave the urban center . However , that ’s not good enough for Joker and thing intensify into a fight that end with Joker occupy Waller hostage .
As for Harley Quinn , rather than grumbling about being part of a remixed Suicide Squad conception , she revels in it . She is n’t fixated on John Doe at all either , retain in line with this time of year ’s visual modality for her . This Harley rate her own delegacy more than anything else , which add more cruel poignancy to the deflated looking at on her cheek after losing to Batman and Jim Gordon .
The episode ’s last confrontation happens at Ace Chemicals , where the writing hold a overnice level of nuance to Waller . The oil - and - water partnership between Bruce Wayne and John Doe started as funny and boding in its disfunction . at last , it winds up an uttermost deterrent example of a toxically break bond . During their final fight , Joker looks back at his kinship with Bruce , sound exactly like a resentful buff after a break - up .
After another sorely desperate exchange of blows , Joker ask Batman if he ever really care for him like a real Quaker . I had my Batman do yes but , tragically — because of the greater good he ’s sworn to strive for — that love was n’t enough .
“ Same Stitch ” threw some curveballs at me , particularly with the paths taken by digest characters . The plot put mourning daughter Tiffany Fox into a use I was expecting but shade off her fibre in a way that made her relationship with Bruce much tenser . Yet nothing moved me more than a post - adventure conversation with Alfred , who ’s adjudicate to leave Gotham because the danger and the pain in the neck are too much for him to stand . This kind of moment — and parts of the conversation , like the previous figure of speech positing that Batman creates his enemy — has before happened in comics , motion picture , and other media . But the sequence in Enemy Within throb because I could trace the causality right back to myself , which makes one wonder who on the nose the “ enemy within ” is .
Telltale ’s ongoing experiment with the Dark Knight is dedicate to reconfiguring the intimate elements of his mythos into new shapes . These two season have been heavy with the weight of consequence and put the Trygve Halvden Lie to the idea that Batman sour best as a lone hand . In the spirit of that experimental ethos , when faced with the choice of giving up Alfred or the Batman identity element , I chose Bruce ’s foster father . With heed to what this reading of Bruce Wayne might do next , the button press make a hell of a cliffhanger but it also left me with more emotional block than most other iteration of Batman .
We do n’t live what ’s going to take place next for Telltale ’s versions of these character . But the end of The Enemy Within shows that you could still make a Batman who does n’t only push people away and a Joker who deserves well than what he fuck off .
BatmanDC ComicsThe JokerVideo games
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