Telltale had a lot to live up to with Episode Five: City of Light. The character and story of Batman are no strangers to artistic interpretations, and Telltale already put out four strong episodes leading up to this. Once again, Bruce, not Batman, was the star.
Last episode ends with a decision that shapes how the first act of Episode Five plays out. With either Harvey or Oswald out of the picture, the other must be dealt with at the beginning of City of Light. I happened to take care of Oswald previously, so that left Harvey at a burned down Wayne Manor. This is where Bruce needed to appeal to the old Harvey, not Two-Face, in order to save civilians that he was keeping hostage and slowly killing. I did manage to placate Harvey enough to release a few of the people, but it still ended in a confrontation where I snatched Two-Face’s coin before he could make a decision whether to shoot Bruce in the head or heart. This causes Two-Face/Harvey to crack even further as he can’t make a decision without the coin, showing how much his mind is ruled by that one object. Afterwards, Harvey is taken into police custody, and I can’t help but feel sorry for him, as he clearly needs psychiatric help.
The rest of the episode deals with finding Alfred, who was kidnapped by Vale, but we do get a brief goodbye scene with Selina first. While in the Batcave, Bruce notices that some of his tech is on the move, and surmises that Selina must have stolen it. Bruce and Selina have had a unique relationship throughout the series. They’re both aware of each others’ identities. One is a hero, the other a thief. You never really know if they’re both on the same page or where they stand with each other. I love their relationship, and Bruce’s final conversation with her when she is confronted about the stolen tech is too short in my mind, yet also fits Selina’s character perfectly.
Vicki’s story throughout this series is something I never expected. At the beginning, I didn’t think of her as much of a threat. This was a mistake made very apparent by the end of Episode Three. In Episode Five, we see the culmination of her work and get a better picture as to what turned her into Lady Arkham. After finding out last episode that she wasn’t born a Vale, City of Light delves deeper into her upbringing, and it’s more tragic than I imagined. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s easy to see where her anger comes from, even if some of her actions are inexcusable. In the end, Batman and she have one final fight. I’m still confused as to the significance of the location of it, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the answer to that, but the fight itself is awesome.
My biggest complaint is that it isn’t quite clear what connected Vicki and Oswald to begin with. There is a scene where the entire purpose is to find a link between Oswald and Vicki, yet other than knowing they helped one another and both have strong reasons to dislike Bruce and Arkham Asylum, I still don’t understand their connection. Maybe that is all there is to it, but I was expecting something more. Unless I missed something, there are a lot of pieces of their partnership that went unexplained.
As with any episode in a Telltale series, including this one, City of Light has a few technical problems. Some episodes run better than others, but you can generally count on frame rate issues and stuttering no matter what. Luckily, those were the largest issues that I encountered this time, but I know other people may experience worse problems.
Summary
Telltale’s first dive into the world of Batman shaped up to be a memorable and successful experience. Episode Five reached an inevitable conclusion, but the hints dropped as to where the series can go left me eager to play a (unannounced) season two. City of Light offered a decent closure to Vicki’s short reign of terror as Lady Arkham. Overall, even with its missteps, Telltale still created an entertaining Batman series with fantastic character development.
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.