• As with all titles from Telltale Games, I will keep spoilers as minimal as I possibly can.

 

It’s fair to say the first episode of Batman: The Telltale Series “Realm of Shadows” is one of the developers most anticipated games to date, and so it should be, it’s a friggin Batman game after all.  Telltale promised to deliver a narrative story that would see both roles of the Dark Knight and Playboy billionaire Bruce Wayne having equal roles with each alter ego offering their own tough choices and challenges, with each choice affecting the narrative on both sides of the coin.  This is also a tale that is not set in any other Batman universe that we know of, so it will not be linked to any of the comics, movies or any of the games such as the Arkham series.  But is the story as unique as we had hoped?  Unfortunately not, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun playing the balancing act between day and night.

 

Episode one “Realm of Shadows”, as briefly hinted upon, will effectively play two different storylines with each entwining with one another.  As the Dark Knight, Batman is up against Gotham’s most infamous gangster organisation run by kingpin Carmine Falcone.  But with this comes a tough balancing act as Falcone is a controversial supporter of Harvey Dent’s campaign as he aims torun for Major of Gotham, and with Bruce Wayne being Dent’s major backer, this brings a big conflict of interest for Bruce and Batman.

 

 

During the day, Bruce must show his best poker face to insure that Dent gets the support he needs to become Major of Gotham, but at the same time, Batman must end the corruption and violent crimes in Gotham, and that means bringing down the Falcone organisation.  However, Dent’s campaign and Falcone’s corruption is not the only worry of Batman/Bruce Wayne as his path crosses the vixen Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, and an old friend of Bruce’s returns to stir up the hornets’ nest.

 

Gameplay wise, this is the tried and tested formula from Telltale Games, if you’ve played any of their other games, then you should know exactly what to expect.  In essence it’s a living, point and click graphic novel equipped with multiple dialogue choices and actions that could affect the outcome of your story.  If anything else, I would say that this first episode is possibly more QTE heavy than other games from Telltale than I remember, but that kind of makes more sense for the game to be that way inclined, especially during the combat sequences.

 

Batman is of course known as the world’s greatest detective and taking inspiration from the Arkhamseries, Bats must piece together evidence in a crime scene to determine the events.  Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much of a puzzle element here, as its pretty much just a case of linking together the correct pieces of evidence to reveal the outcome.

 

 

From what I can tell, it’s not possible to incorrectly piece together the wrong pieces of evidence or even miss some evidence (from my experience in episode one at least).  You pretty much attempt to link together certain pieces of evidence until it lets you progress. This is a little disappointing, as I was hoping for more of a challenge in this area.  However, there are some pieces of dialogue with key characters for which you could choose the incorrect assumption about a particular character or moment, so it will be interesting to see if I made the wrong assumptions with some of my dialogue choices.

 

One of the issues that have plagued Telltale Games since the very beginning is jittering graphics (especially during the opening of a new scene) and frame-rate issues.  With this being a totally new game from the studio, I was really hoping that this issue would be eradicated, sadly that doesn’t seem to be the case.  In-fact, I can’t remember a Telltale game that has so many frame-rate issues as Batman: The Telltale Series, which is very disappointing to say the least.  I just really hope that this is fixed in not only this opening episode with a patch, but also for all forthcoming episodes.  I can expect that issues can come with any game, but for an issue that has been so consistent with Telltale Games, it’s long overdue that this problem is fixed.

 

 

Now, one of the first things Batman fans might notice is that the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne may sound a little different.The reason being that his voice is not provided here by Kevin Conroy, instead the voice of Bats is provided by industry in-man Troy Baker.  As you can expect from Mr Baker, he does a great job in being the voice of such an iconic character.  However, this is not his first rodeo in a Batman videogame, as he was also the voice of The Joker in Batman: Arkham Origins.  Likewise, Laura Bailey does a great job in introducing her version of Catwoman and she certainly has the luring tone that you expect from the iconic character.  Laura Bailey is also the voice of Supergirl in the upcomingInjustice 2 and Kai Diaz inGears of War 4.  In-fact all the voice-cast members do a great job with their characters and as each episode releases, I can’t wait to see their performances grow and make them their own.

 

All in all, while episode one Realms of Shadows doesn’t really offer anything new as of yet to the lore of Batman and there are little surprises in this opening episode, it’s certainly set a strong foundation for the series to grow.  The opening episode to any series is always a tough one to judge, whether it’s a videogame or a TV series, because we have to grow accustom with the setting and characters and judging from previous games from Telltale, business won’t really start to pick up until the second or third episode.  But with that said, Realm of Shadows was a very enjoyable and intriguing opening and I can’t wait to see this series grow.

 

Do you want reveal the Review Score?