Let's talk the Joker.

First off, let me start by saying i am enjoying this game very very much. In my opinion, it is the best batman game they have made. The story is intriguing and actually makes me want to keep playing continuously.

I am this far in the game:

I just interrogated the penguin and fought all his dudes with the help of nightwing. I am now on my way to check out the airship.

Now yes, I think we can all agree that Joker is in this game quite a bit. But what do you think about his presence?

Personally, I think it is really great. And I think it adds a really nice touch to the story. I love that they are using him as an internal monologue of sorts, especially because of how the Joker has always been positioned in the batman universe.

My favorite spot so far to where I am in the game and the Joker has appeared would have to be During the part within the tunnels, where you are trying to intercept the arkham Knight transmission. As you zipline through the tunnels to find a way to open the door, I love how he moves with you and the game allows you to progress through this section with the Joker as a voice in your head sort of thing.

I just wanted to get everyone's opinion on him. Judging by jeff's reaction in the quick look, I can only assume that the amount of presence he has in this game is really going to rub him the wrong way. But I am loving it so far.

His presence really killed the story for me and Rocksteady's insistence that they have him fucking doing his annoying ass monologues felt shoehorned in and took away from the arkham knight & scarecrow storylines. It just felt forced and as uninteresting of a story as they could have made.

I fucking loved the use of Joker in the game. The Joker is my favourite villain of all time in any medium, and his use in this game perfectly exemplifies the relationship between him and Batman. If you're heavily invested in the story of Batman and Joker the use of him in this game is amazing. I was very pleased with it, especially the ending sequence when Batman finally triumphs over the Joker in his mind. Fantastic, fantastic stuff.

I think its lazy that you can't move past the Joker, hes a good villain but enough is enough.

So writing "let's talk about the joker" in the headline is a pretty big spoiler. Thank you @xseanzx

it kinda bugged me first but the explanation that its not because of scarecrow gas its joker toxin made me feel better about it.

I was under the impression that the Joker wouldn't have a large presence in Arkham Knight and I was like "Hey cool! A Batman game where the Joker doesn't have a large presence!"

And then I saw the Quick Look and I was like "oh. The Joker's here. Crap."

I'm not a big comic book guy but there are way more interesting things you can do with Batman and his enemies and allies than just juxtapose Batman's character, personality, goals, motivations, etc., against the Joker's again.

I have not played Arkham Knight and I know that the Joker isn't the main antagonist - or isn't supposed to be the main antagonist - and he appears to be nothing more than a hallucination or something. I don't know if that's true, but the stuff I saw of him in the Quick Look was more than I wanted.

The moment where you know who shows up in the game is genuinely surprising, and I think it's a dick move to just blurt it out like that in a thread title.

I think that the Joker is being used in a more interesting way than he usually is handled. He's been an agent of chaos, he's been a man with a plan, he's been a psychotic serial killer, but you never really saw Joker as the devil on Batman's shoulder. I think it's an interesting angle to take with the character; having Joker act as the voice of selfishness in Bruce's head tempting him to fall into hedonism and revel in life's chaos. It also does a lot to humanize Batman since it reminds the player that he's a human being. A man in a funky robot suit billionaire playboy, sure, but he's not just the hero of a greek tragedy, he's got wants and desires that he often sacrifices for the greater good of his city.

I don't know if you guys who complained about the thread title are trolling or what.

Either way i changed it.

they're not; though it's brought up early and in a big way a lot of people still haven't played it and would prefer not having it spoiled though i personally don't really care. thanks for changing it though.

anyway, i'm watching it being played, and as much as i want them to move on i think they've really done a great job with him so far. it's fun hearing mark again for one last (?) time. i would have preferred maybe that they moved on, as Scarecrow is a compelling enough character to hold up a story on his own i think. it's hard to argue with the quality of the material joker's in. I especially loved the song when he was in charisma's place.

hopefully the next one will finally move on but i'm digging this regardless.

It pays off.

Mark Hammill is such a liar.... He has just as many lines as he did in the past games if not more. I've always thought the Joker to be Bruce Wayne's ultimate nemesis, so having him not mentioned at least in some aspect in a story where the stakes are this big would be weird to me (The Joker was supposed to come out in Dark Knight Rises...) I knew that the rippling effect of Joker's death would be important in this game, having it to this extent was a real shocker though, but I'm loving every second of it.

Its a shame they couldn't develop another villain into something more but, like the comics and the films, it all comes back to Mr. J.

@xseanzx: Get used to Joker, he's in it all the way through, around almost every corner; I liked it, and it makes sense. I just finished the game, no credits though... I feel like I didn't finish it. To get the real ending I think you have to get all the Riddler trophies. I watched that ending on YouTube, and it was kind of lame honestly, especially for doing everything you have to do to get it. Anyways, it was a really great game! Glad I stuck with it from the start in 09, though City was the downside to it all for me personally, I was disappointed in it. Maybe I'll go back to it though if they do a remaster. As I type this, I just read this, and it's very much true, at least it was for me. Oh, and no spoilers.

"Rocksteady makes a strong push for players to see all of it, so much so that it hurts the end-game experience. Once the final story mission is complete, some semblance of closure is delivered, but specific plot points are left dangling, and the credits don’t roll like you expect them to. The player is then asked to clean up some of the side content to initiate another story sequence that brings a new ending and, at long last, the credits. Getting this ending requires a fair amount of time be spent tracking down villains and cleaning up side activities, like rescuing all of the firefighters or taking down Arkham Knight’s outposts (both of which are welcome endeavours). But that isn’t it. To see the real, real ending, you need to complete all of the side content, including every Riddler challenge – which, if you’ve done this in previous games, is a serious time commitment. Most people will probably retreat to YouTube to view the final act."

I don't know, I might try to do it all. The Riddler trophies I don't really care to do though. I did it all in Asylum, that was less than what's in this, and less than what was in City, and that was enough for me.

@ntm: the only issue is that the riddler stuff also includes a lot of races and I damn well know I wont be able to finish the final ones

@xseanzx: I love the Joker. If they were going to force Joker into this game, I think the way they have implemented him in this game is great and makes sense story-wise

I thought the Joker stuff was handled superbly. He's not only been the main villain of the past two games, but he's Batman's most important villain, so I think it makes sense that Rocksteady couldn't let go of him. The Joker scenes were some of my favorite scenes in the game. Getting to see some important Joker moments pulled straight from the comics was awesome. Also, I really just enjoyed how dark the things Joker said were. He's a total dick and doesn't let up in this game.

I'm enjoying the Joker stuff and I think it's done well for the most part, but I would have preferred if they had ended the Joker story in City and not included him in this game. It makes sense thematically with the whole Arkham thing and Batman seemingly becoming more crazy over the course of the game, but I would have preferred the other villains to have the spotlight rather than Joker overshadowing them.

I was kind of bummed out when I heard he's there because Batman got exposed to gas. When I first saw him I immediately concluded that Joker is there talking to Batman because Batman is crazy and he cannot be Batman without Joker. Batman just doesn't know how to deal if he's not being taunted by his soul's counterpoint. I love anything that gets to how fucked up and crazy Bruce Wayne is. If there is no Joker, it is necessary for Batman to invent him.

@bradbrains: Eh, those are funner to me than running around the world and figuring out how to get a trophy. I haven't run into any though aside from what you have to do when saving Catwoman.

So I'm near the end of the main story and have found myself to be completely tired of Joker now. It was nice in the beginning and even a little amusing to have Batman stand completely still as he suffers his imaginary friend's verbal jabs in stoic silence, but now I don't even wait for Joker to reach mid-sentence before bailing out. He just pops up after nearly everything. Main quest checkpoints, during side quests, sometimes even just out and about in the world and always with at least 10 seconds of dialogue. I am enjoying the rest of the game a lot more than I thought I would, but this part of it got incredibly annoying. It's a bit of a shame as well because there have been a few moments that I thought were really well done and I just can't help but think about how much more impactful they would have been if Joker wasn't a thing every few minutes.

When they said Joker was dead dead, I was happy they are finally moving past having the Joker as the central villain. Then I read the Kotaku review that said the Joker was in it and my excitement fell rapidly because even though I knew they were lying about Arkham Knight being a totally new character, I still hoped they would keep their word about the Joker. But now that I know how the Joker is back, I'm torn. On one hand there's way too much Joker but on the other hand I like the way the Joker is reintroduced into the universe, just a figment of Batman's imagination.

The amount of times he appeared during the quick look started to get absurd and I totally understood Jeff's reaction.

I've always found Joker's fan-service importance to the Batman mythos to be a negative.

As other's have said, Batman is so much more than just The Joker. It feels like 1/100th of Batman's personality is explored because fans demand so much of Batman vs. The Joker instead of seeing how he relates to villains like The Clock King or Lockup,

I always really enjoyed the dichotomy the animated series showed between villains that Batman believed could be talked to vs. villains he knew just needed to be beat. I wish they would show more of that in his other media appearances.

I kinda dont understand why you have to do all of the riddles in order to get the secret ending. My playthrough was 97% and i have done about 125 riddles out of the 250+ riddles in the game.
Just couldnt be bothered to do them all.

As this is Rocksteady´s final Batman game (if they dont change their mind) I think that including Joker into the game kinda completed the circle which started in the original Batman game. Joker is Batman´s arch nemesis after all.

One thing that I did notice is that this game really didnt have traditional boss fights. The objective in most of the fights was to do something to the adds and then take the boss down with a couple of special moves. Previous games had bosses with multiple phases where you whittled down their hp bar.

The Joker is a villain overload much like the one they had in Arkham City. Too many bad guys onscreen: Two Face, Ivy, Clayface, Penguin, Ras, SolomonGrundi, Mad Hatter (totally unnecessary), Deadshot, Dr. Strange, Joker, et al. I know, RockSteady's trying to give everyone a bit of screen time but it undercuts the tension and focus of the game. Having Joker back - again - is another unneeded distraction that steps on the toes of Scarecrow. We already got one effed up psychopath in Scarecrow. Do we need more with Joker?

The part of the story that bothered me wasn't the Joker stuff. It was the identity of the Arkham Knight. Having it be Jason Todd just seemed very predictable to me as someone who knows a bit of Batman Lore.

I thought it worked, god in heaven did I want him to shut up occasionally though. I know that was purposeful of course.