A Chicken's Impressions on Shadows Mode
Here, AChicken will post his impressions on various Episodes of Batman: Shadows Mode.
Yeah, I know this isn't really "discussion material", but I wanted to post this somewhere where it was relevant and didn't clog up some other thread, like the WOYM General Thread.
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So, Batman Shadows Mode. I have played the first episode, and I think it's alright. Feels weird to be paying 7$ for a filter, but it's still pretty cheap, and a way to give back to the new company.
So far, so black-and-white.
Personally, I think that the style of presentation they were going for with bland colours for everything but a few key textures was achieved. I don't really think it enhances the experience, but it's enjoyable enough to see what the team decided to highlight.
There are a few changes to fit the style and to make some colours pop out a bit more. You might notice a lot more Red in this version. The intro's sky is red, Catwoman's rappelling gadget has been changed to Red... Yup. It all fits together though.
There's a nice detail in the opening Wayne Manor party scene where Oz's yellow tie and handkerchief can be brightly seen for a few seconds across the room (though we already knew that). But, the idea of highlighting features on important characters can bring them out from the background even better, as later when the guests are leaving after Bruce's meeting with Falcone, you can slightly make out Oz's same yellow tie from the blurry crowd leaving in the background. Now that's something I've never noticed.
Stylistically, I do think the filter ultimately feels tacked on no matter what. The team were going for this noir-aesthetic, but for the presentation of the game -- when dealing with the Film Noir style -- certain tropes and characteristics are to be expected from that style, and the game obviously wasn't made with this in mind. Flashbacks, Voice-overs, a depressing sometimes paranoiac plot. Batman has the story revolving around crime, law enforcement, and a flawed, morally questionable protagonist, but that's where the similarities end I think (though they do have a the low-lighting/black-and-white visual style now.) Trust me, I studied this last semester.
But, that's just for episode 1. A lot of it feels too heroic and "good". Maybe it'll line up more with film noir in future episodes.
There are a few bug fixes so far in the series, and it feels like the performance is a little bit better this time around the opening certainly didn't feel as choppy as usual.
Alfred still chastises Batman for "taking things too far" with the criminal, though I think we already found out that they just never recorded a second version of the line for the pacifists.
The scene between Gordon and Bruce when handing over the info on Falcone no longer results in Bruce doing an Exorcist head-turn. So that's good.
There's no previously on segment in the episodes though, judging by the ending of the first. Probably because they didn't modify those, and some don't quite line up with future events anymore.
It should also be mentioned that the Batman: Unmasked behind-the-scenes episodes can no longer be found in the Main Menu. Unfortunate, but that's kinda actually good because I could never get those things to work. It'd stream for 5 seconds and kick me out every time.
At least they can still be found on YouTube (and Telltale's Channel). Unlike another external-media project they made that was very insightful coughcough Player's Space coughcough...
It's still pretty interesting to see though. Blood, fire, lights, pieces of clothing... the design team I think did a good job highlighting important cues. (Though sometimes I think there's a bit too much B+W and not enough highlights. Show me Falcone's golden tie at least! Have Bruce's family portrait or smaller picture frame be in colour, then change it back to B+W for the rest of the series! That'd be a cool touch.)
Also, some lit objects tend to get very bright, almost radioactive like. Notably light-coloured walls and Batman's holograms.
We have the first confirmation of this being an LCG owned product now. The logos and licences before the main menu now show Copyright LCG Entertainment.
The Credits have a section for The Shadows Edition, where we get LCG's details, Athlon Games, and their QA Team who goes through the company QLOC S.A. It's still a product of its time, as Kevin Bruner is listed as CEO of Telltale, Inc. and Job J. Stauffer as Community Manager among others. Not that they should have been changed, given that this was the original Telltale team behind the game, it's just something weird to notice what with Telltale being comprised of totally different people now.
PHOTOS.
When switching to the Shadows Mode in the main menu, it changes the visual style of the menu, too. Hooray for details.
Gameplay Photos. Pretty cool, IMO.
FORESHADOWING
This post was not made the Ps4 gang
(Also great review. Now the waiting has evolved from vexing to mild-suffering.)
I never saw them on the main menu back when I played the game in 2018 lol.
They really went all out with Shadows Mode. It doesn't come off as super lazy like TWD Definitive Edition. It comes off like they remembered everything. If you look through the game files. they essentially created 10 new episodes technically speaking. They had to repackage all 10 episodes and all 2 menu files individually, changing ALL the textures in the ttarch files to match the Noir filter. They EVEN CHANGED ALL THE UNUSED ADVERTISEMENTS THAT HAVENT BEEN SEEN SINCE THE EPISODE 1 RELEASE ON MOBILE. It's crazy how much they changed. They forgot NOTHING.
I don't know how you never noticed the "Videos" option in the main manu with the constant blue light that never went away. That's where they were, even up to last month before the announcement.
Apparently there was originally supposed to be 6 or 7 Unmasked episodes in total according to the menu's list, though we have no idea what the 2 episodes after the Episode 4 Discussion video was (Pre-Release; Post-EP1; Post-EP2; Post-EP3; Post-EP4; Post-EP5?; Season/Sequel Discussion?) -- Shortly after the release of Episode 5, I think it was updated to only include the original 5 episodes they made, and nothing else on the list. They never worked though so it's not like it's still needed today.
Wow. Nice. I was going to ask someone on PC to go through the files, see what's in those 5/8 GB files.
Since it's the season's textures in total, that's really impressive. Either they hired some expert file compressor or most of what makes up each episode's file size are the voice lines. Each season ended up being about 20GB in total by the end, and yet here the new files take up less than 10?? Wow.
And what were these mobile advertisements? All I've noticed is that they changed the Crowd Play feature box in the main menu. (Though does it even work anymore? Maybe last time I looked at it Telltale's servers were just dead.)
OMG Enemy Within is 47GB Total. Bigger than TWD Final Season, or even something like Detroit: Become Human or RE7. What an absolute unit.
Enemy Within and Guardians of the Galaxy are monsters in terms of file size
re: anything i found in the files, nothing pertaining to Wolf 2 or LCG.
Been playing Batman episode 1 with the Shadows mode. Its overall pretty ok but I do wish they focused harder on the little dash of color. Characters that have that little bit of color really makes the filter pop which is why its kinda weird how Batman and Bruce have no color other than the cat scratch. For example I really dig Oz and his very yellow tie.
Overall I enjoy the shadows mode, but I do wish each character model had just one bit of their design have color.
I agree. Sometimes it's a bit too black-and-white, the colour adds so much style and identity to characters. Even Batman's UI Hologram colours are muted (mostly in the Batcave). Maybe it's dependant on the colour, I chose red. Still, there are some more pieces of colour that need to stand out.
Gimme some gold accents on Falcone's suit, gimme Harvey's red striped tie. Heck, gimme that one Street Punk's pink mohawk in Episode 1! I truly missed that in the park scene...
It's why I'm personally so excited to reach Season 2. Not only is its story much better paced, there's lots of great choices, performance/design improvements, and all those wonderful colours. Harley, Bane, Freeze. Riddler! I wanna see those costumes! I wanna see the Joker's Funhouse in this bleak world!
Yeah, about Batman, while having more colour on him or Bruce is nice, it's been mentioned that it's intentional to keep Bruce's isolationist and brooding nature in Black and White tones to reflect that. Unfortunate, but cool I guess.
I am kinda reluctant to play out the whole game in black-and-white, but yeah, my absolute favorite scene was Joker's funhouse (Villain route) in S2 Ep5. I know Vigilante suppose to be the more 'correct' route blah blah blah. But story sequence was so meh compared to Villain. And Harley's appearance was so unsatisfactory in Vigilante.
Maybe I might play through S2 just for Villain's funhouse scene on my iPad...when I'm on a long flight. haha.
shadows mode isn't on mobile
So... It appears that I've encountered a game-breaking bug. I died during the EP2 Bar Fight scene, (specifically for taking too long deciding between throwing a goon to the pool table or bar) and the checkpoint that saves just before the fight begins will not load. The game crashes, even when continuing from the menu.
This, plus the fact that you can't restart an episode you're currently playing absolutely suuuuucks and has impeded my progress. (Technically I can advance to Episode 3, let that save, then restart Episode 2.)
Just a heads up for you all.
LCG, please, patch in the ability to restart an ongoing episode. And for the love of everything that is holy, implement the Rewind feature (Scene Selection) for future titles.
I played Episode 2 recently.
Okay, well, I already noted all my important opinion stuff about Shadows Mode in the first post, and I can't really go deeper than that or repeat myself, so... I guess I'll review how well the episode's held up.
Can we talk about this other lingering bug? For some reason, News broadcasts often display this warped image of Hervey Dent's campaign poster instead of the actual image that's supposed to be there. Now, I don't know what causes it, but I'm pretty sure it's got to do with choosing a campaign slogan for Dent that isn't "Put a Dent In Crime". Every time I've replayed BatS1 there's this bug that plagues the news channel.
The debate section is nice, and there's some great colouring outside with the flashing police cars.
PHOTOS
The colored beak looks pretty nice. It's a shame Harvey doesn't get anything like that unless you let him get his face burnt. Oh well.
I see you included the most important screen - that is with our man Frank. Always a delight to see him.
When I got stuck with the episode crash a few days ago, I had to move to episode 3, get to a checkpoint, then I could restart EP2.
In it, I saw the non-injured Harvey. He gets some blood/bruise marks around his left eye, kinda like what Selina had in Episode 1. However long that mark lasts though is anyone's guess. Burnt face is a definitive, permanent colour addition. ...Unfortunately for Harvey.
Okay, a couple weeks ago I played Episode 3.
LOTS OF PHOTOS THIS TIME
Yay it's sunrise!
This next one is meme-worthy
Mid-lightning flash. Doesn't look as good all in Black and White, I think.
For the episode itself, well, it's decent. Overall I feel that this episode is the one where Bruce's story gets more interesting and Batman's kinda gets a bit blah and convoluted. Because here, we've got Bruce Wayne ousted from his own company and replaced by Oswald Cobblepot. Yikes.
There's also the issue of his increasingly unstable friend, Harvey Dent. Who -- for me -- I had half his face burnt off. Which I really regret because while he looks cool, I now remember that doing so causes him to hate Batman for not saving him. Damn it. Soon he'll be hating Bruce, too.
In terms of Batman stuff, there's the awesome fight scene at the Monorail yard. But, Lady Arkham's plans seem to go off the rails a bit (pun not intended), probably due to rewrites. We know that her goal is to take out anyone related to The Big 3 old rulers of Gotham, who falsely imprisoned and forcefully drugged people to send them to Arkham. But if we stick to that philosophy driving her, it doesn't line up with her plan to send a train into the most populated station of Gotham and release her crazy-drug to make people kill each other or follow her command or something... So, it could be explained later on that LA's want to do this is driven by her abuse from her adoptive parents -- manifesting as a hate for society for not saving her. But as it stands, it just feels weird at this point in the game for her plans to spiral out into "everyone dies now" territory.
Luckily, in this episode, Batman eventually destroys Lady Arkham's monorail apparatus, so her supervillain plans of indiscriminate violence don't last long.
Bonus points to this episode finally introducing Lucius Fox, voiced once again by the mighty Dave Fennoy.
I really love how in the scene just before Bruce arrives at Wayne Tower at 7am, they changed the lighting in the sky to be a sunrise. I always remember that scene being set at night, in the dark. So, it's been really weird and jarring and plot-holeish to have Batman be in conversation with Lucius over the phone, say "I'm on my way" as he's driving straight towards Wayne tower, and then all of a sudden it's 7am and bright daylight outside.
The colouring in this episode is fantastic. Lots of scenes and rooms have some different bits of colour flair and they all pop really well. I particularly love the monorail station, given that the Arkham drug glows like a toxic chemical, all the red lights stick out nicely. They're all spaced out really well and just look cool.
Thanks for the review. My friend could download the Shadows edition for the Xbox when it came out but I couldn't for PS4.
Since we all already know the story, I'll just gun for maximum color spectacle. Don't care about Harvey anyway. He's a born loser.
That's pretty neat that they changed that. Are there any other things that are differnet?
So far that's the only time-of-day/retcon change they've made. I don't know if that change is in the Classic Mode with all the colours intact (or if the shot of Arkham in Episode 1 has that Green/Purple foreshadowing hue). But it could very well be changed for all modes.
I've actually got this set as my desktop background, I like it so much.
Episode 4, the episode where John Doe/Joker gets introduced, and the plot dives a bit further into who Lady Arkham/Vicki is...
LOTS OF PICTURES AGAIN:
Now about John Doe... In Shadows Mode I'm pretty sure his hair and eyes are greener than normal. I don't remember his hair being such a vivid green in Season 1, and I definitely don't remember his eyes sticking out so much (though that may be because everything else is monochrome).
Regardless, I really love the colour choice for his character here.
One thing I noticed is that this episode's murder of the Vales actually has an important connecting thread to Episode 5 I never noticed before.
We know that Vicki was abused by her foster parents, and their current child might be abused in a similar way, too. So, when Vicki embraces her Lady Arkham persona, she cuts all ties with her previous life, including murdering her foster parents -- this is also revenge for their abuse.
Now, what I didn't notice is that the ends up killing Mr. Vale with the same tool she would get abused with. A belt. As we eventually find out in Episode 5 that Vicki was usually abused with belts -- often caked in blood.
This is going to get into real theory territory here, but hear me out.
While Batman provides a solution to how the murders were committed, I have a theory on how the preceding situation carried out: Mrs. Vale was alone at home and was looking to punish her son. She had a belt with her. The young boy, scared for his well-being, hid in a cupboard under the stairs. It was then that Vicki showed up. She subdued Mrs. Vale with the drug and killed her. Mr. Vale now walks through the door, and Vicki turns her rage towards him. She takes the belt that Mrs. Vale was using and beats Mr. with it, as revenge for the abuse she faced. She then ties him around the neck with it, hooks it up in the closet, and he dies.
I'm betting that Vicki never saw the child in the house, and if she did he would have surely been another victim, as he's a witness.
This is why Batman finds the kid hiding in the closet, surprised to find his foster parents dead.
This is probably obvious to most, but I guess I never put too much thought into how the whole thing went down before Vicki got there, and how the kid factored into it. I think he dodged a bullet there by hiding from his parents' abuse.
Anyway, episode is pretty great apart from the fact that there's a lot of choices that offer little difference in playthroughs. Luckily Episode 5 gets a tailored, if similar-ending intro for each scenario.
I copied the save file and went through both Penguin and Two-Face scenarios to see the cool Black-and-White textures for each. I'm also interested to learn if they fixed the Episode 5 Penguin Introduction, since that's infamously known to me to be a slideshow for the first 10 minutes.
Ooh, in terms of bugs: The final Two-Face fight sequence and Penguin Lab Fight scene both have sound-effect bugs where about only half of the sound-effects plays. There are a lot of silent gunshots and silent punches. The music also cuts out early in some parts.
Damn, that shot of Two-Face and Wayne Manor burning down looks really good.
Man, Bruce with those red circles under his eyes looks really creepy.
I don't think Vicki would kill the kid if she saw him there. IIRC there's a photo of her and him in Episode 5 where it shows they had good relationship. Although I find it strange she didn't make sure that he wasn't in the house since she obviously knew about his existence.
Ah yes, I remember the 'no sound' bug in episode 4. It was especially jarring when Batman broke Penguin's leg and there was no crack or anything. One would expect that it'd be fixed by now. Guess not.
Are you going to play both Penguin and Harvey scenarios in episode 5? 🤔
I am and I did. I made sure to quit before the choice so I could copy my save file and choose the other path. Damn you, no Rewind feature.
Best bug fix so far: THEY FIXED THE EPISODE 5 PENGUIN INTRO!! Usually, this thing would be a slideshow! But somehow, they optimised it and you can actually understand what's going on now! I thought it was another case of Telltale's engine dying from the new tech installed, but no it was just bad optimisation that was fixable this whole time...
I finished Episode 5 last night. Still a pretty cool episode, and I like how it ties up Vicki's revenge plot against her parents/the world. I don't quite understand how that rage fuels into her "I'm gonna drug a whole subway station of innocents so they kill each other" plan, but that's the problem with Telltale episodic/multi-team writing. There's gonna be some inconsistencies.
ALL THE PHOTOS. 60 OF THEM.
Whats up with the time on Bruce's watch lol. [60:00]?
The biggest inconsistency for me is how Bruce gets reinstated as CEO. I mean, he really hasn't done much to improve his stability, innocence and standing with the public. The major Bruce Wayne events that the public would hear about is how he had a psychotic episode, was thrown in Arkham, was released by his lawyers/GCPD two days later, then either saved his house from becoming a bloody hostage situation with Harvey or stopped Cobblepot Park from becoming a police mass grave on lockdown.
The Board of Directors initially had Bruce step down because he was hurting their image. Just think of what crazy scenarios he's been in since then that further hinders that! Plus, with Oswald exposed as a criminal, shouldn't they go to candidate #2 on their replacement list? Although, Oz simply lied to get to the top of their list, so they're probably weary of others who might seek the position.
Argh, I'm thinking about this too much!
One of the things that I unfortunately have to do is cause the most characters the most pain. What I mean is that I try to get characters maimed so that they can bleed. With the black-and-white colour of this mode, the blood really sticks out nicely, so I had to get Alfred to lose an eye. Sorry, buddy. It's for the sake of artistic merit. (Unfortunately I didn't get a shot of him. Now he's just got a black eyepatch.)
I'll also go for the Villain Joker route in Season 2, since from the Shadows blog post, John Doe's evolution to the Joker is really interesting in that they add a few more colours the further into madness he slips. Once he becomes a villain, he's full of colour, and that's got to be a sight to behold.
I'm really excited to get into Season 2, since in that Bruce will be paired up with lots of colourful villains a lot, so there should be plenty of nice black-and-white-and-other colour contrasts. Also the plot is (mostly) way better there, too. (Smh they should have had Deadshot be the assassin in the end. He was set up so well in the tie-in comic.)
Also also, the models are way more improved in the second season. God, the Zellerbachs in Season 1 look like they have melted faces!
Also, I find it funny how Selina was able to guess correctly Bruce being Batman, all because of a small scratch on his face, and yet with the amount of time Batman pursues Vicki she still can't get the hint. Plus, when Bruce went into the Asylum for 2 days, Batman disappeared too. From an outside perspective, it's just really ridiculous how so many characters are blinded by Bruce's simple businessman persona.
Oh no, you didn't pocket the coin. You meanie. >:(
Lel, they probably went "You know what? We just employed a terrorist. We can't do worse than that. Bruce Wayne isn't so bad after all. And he just saved some hostages, public loves him now!" But yeah, it's probably for the best to not overthink it. Sometimes things happen just because of plot.
Oh, does that mean no vigilante Joker at all? Shame, I wanted to see Frank in his clowny colors.
I haven't read it. How is the comic?
Hm, I'd give Vicki some benefit of the doubt, because she put this idea in her head that Bruce is an awful person and for her Batman=Bruce just simply does not compute, so she chooses to ignore the obvious hints. Even her first reaction reaction after you remove the cowl is asking if it's a joke. Oz, however, is an idiot.
I like how in the second season pretty much everyone knows who's Batman, because let's be honest, it's not that hard to figure it out.
Anyway, I'll be patiently waiting for your S2 review. It's nice to read your thoughts about it. (and see some black and white screens in the process)