Azrael is finally in a Batman Arkham game! I'm so fucking stoked about this!
It appears they went with the Michael Lane variation for it which is totally cool. I'm told he's a better character, but I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about that. It doesn't matter, though, because it's still Azrael.
Oh man, I've been waiting years for this. I'm so happy happy happy
Oh, and YOU GET TO PLAY AS HIM TOO!
Brief synopsis of my love for Azrael.
Azrael was originally introduced in the 90s when Bane broke Batman's back. Not only did Batman have to recover, but he also lost his sense of self. He became afraid, suffered roughly from what I assume was supposed to be PTSD, he lost his abilities to fight and he went on a journey of self discovery in order to find himself again.
During this time Azrael took over for Batman. Even so much as running his batcave, and basically his home if I recall.
Originally Azrael was Jean-Paul Valley who was the latest in the line of Assassin enforcers (much like Desmond Miles in Assassin's Creed now that I think about it) for what is known as The Sacred Order of Saint Dumas. Basically they brainwashed him.
There's a long story behind him, but basically he came into play (and my most memory) after Batman was broken by Bane because he took up the mantle for a short time. He thought Bruce's ideals were too soft and so Azrael actually killed his enemies (I remember him having a gun attached to one of his armbands actually). He also had the coolest cowl (which kinda looked like Batman Spawn!).
Anyway, Azrael was insane (because of his brainwashing) and caused a lot of problems for Batman and Robin. I won't get into all of it because you can read it on wikipedia if you want (which has a lot more information on him now a days than it did for a long long time). To sum up, though, Jean-Paul presumably died at the end of his short time with Batman (presumed because his death leaves it open to doubt, but he never truly came back).
Around 2009 they resurrected the Azrael line with Michael Lane who also was used for a short time, and had to atone for it. I don't know as much about this version other than that he was almost used by Ra's al Ghul to destroy Gotham. His outfit is more of the Holy Crusader (from the crusades) variety.
The only other thing you should understand is Azrael is not a singular person, but a line of Assassin's. Normally they try to do what's good, but often they have issues with their own psyche (for various reasons usually having to do with brainwashing somehow- with Jean-Paul it was often thought to be his cowl).
In my opinion Azrael is the coolest side character in Batman often because he is maybe the darkest "good" character in the Batman series. So often people forget about him, and maybe that's due to his early beginnings and how he was kind of a copy of Spawn in a lot of ways. Or maybe it's just because he lasted a fairly short amount of time, and he doesn't get into story arcs all that often.
I'm glad they finally decided to bring him into the game. This is so cool!
Log in to comment