• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Batman: Return to Arkham announced (AA AC Demaster), UE4, Virtuos (of FFX fame)

Wow I'm down. Using UE4 is a good move. I wonder if people remember how bad Origins is compared to the rest of the series. It felt like a spinoff from a lesser studio that was filled with bugs, shitty open world design with very few grapple points and some terrible boss fights. It was okay but I get why Rocksteady wouldn't want to remaster a game they didn't make.

It had better boss fights and a faaar superior batman voice. I know Conroy, cartoons etc. But that guy has just given up trying at all
 

Hostile_18

Banned
You know these are one of the few games I don't want to go back to for some reason. I think it's because like Assassins Creed there's just too much busy work given to the player as "extra content". For example, the riddles all over the place are at the detriment of the main game IMO.
 

Garlador

Member
It had better boss fights and a faaar superior batman voice. I know Conroy, cartoons etc. But that guy has just given up trying at all

I think it was just the material. Arkham Batman leans just a tad too far into psycho territory.

The Animated Series plays to his strengths. His Batman is more cool and collected, yet also still charismatic and even at times charming.

I think Conroy just is out of his element barking out lines like "talk or I'll break the other arm" or "tell me where RIddler is or I'll crush your ribs".
 
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg
 

K' Dash

Member
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous.

Remaster
http://gearnuke.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg[IMG]

Original
[IMG]http://gearnuke.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

It does look really bad.
 

Gnilres

Member
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg

I have never played the originals so I was interested but man this is upsetting
 
And yet it remains the only game is the series where's Batman's face moved and animated like that of a human being.

Blow off the Joker origin if you want, but the Red Hood segment was a welcome surprise for me. Origins also added something actually interesting to the Detective investigation segments, and really turned them into something more than timewasters and bread crumb following.

You're also wrong about the boss fights, particularly Bane, who got his first proper, non-shitty Boss fight ever in the series. Also enjoyed Deathstroke, Deadshot... many more. Sure nothing approached the Mr. Freeze fight from City...

...but then again Origins had the DLC for the origins of Freeze... Cold, Cold Heart. It's about the best piece of DLC for the entire game series and it never got a proper on-disc release.

My tune on Origins never changed. I thought the WB Montreal team did a great job, and I think people would be pretty upset if you put out the Uncharted Collection, but h yeah #3 didn't score as well on the Metacritic so fuck it. We all know that didn't happen because Uncharted was all from the same studio, whereas in this situation, a separate studio having worked on Origins seems to be the main reason it was passed over for this collection.

Whether the separate of talent and assets led to technical reasons why this is so, if it is due to "studio beef," we will never really know, I think.

The free pass that Rocksteady gets in comparison to WB Montreal is astounding. Rocksteady delivered Arkham Knight eight months late and the thing still launched full of bugs, online leader boards not working, and full of absolute filler content like endless tank battles instead of a proper Deathstroke fight. Conversely WB Montreal was forced to push Origins out the door despite it being full of bugs because WB wasn't going to risk delaying a profitable title, highlighting the double standard these separate developers faced. In spite of that, WB Montreal delivered a game with far better "dungeons," real boss fights, more appealing sidequests, and a three dimensional Batman. Origins was the first game in the series where the people in Batman's life meant something. We see his relationship with Alfred and the forming of bonds with Jim and Barbara Gordon. We see a Joker and Nygma fall into their obsessions with Batman. Most of all we see how quixotic the Bat's quest to make Gotham a better place is, yet it doesn't deter him from trying. I can concede that City and Knight have better overworld hubs but that's about it. The characters in Rocksteady's games are just flatter and less interesting. And it's laughable that despite all the references that Knight makes to Origins and even the one or two for Blackgate, there are still some people on a crusade to insist the games aren't canon. Rocksteady had opportunities in Knight to delegitimize Origins and instead made callbacks to it. Even the Assault On Arkham film gives a nod to Origins and Blackgate when Deadshot and Joker cross paths.
 
You know these are one of the few games I don't want to go back to for some reason. I think it's because like Assassins Creed there's just too much busy work given to the player as "extra content". For example, the riddles all over the place are at the detriment of the main game IMO.

Yeah collectathon games that rely on unlocks for skills aren't very fun to replay imo. I love this franchise but i don't think I ever want to revisit them because of the daunting task of going through all that again
 

Garlador

Member
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg

Ow. That... does not look good.
 

icespide

Banned
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg
uh oh
 
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg

Ugh. That Hugo Strange opening is one of my favorite visuals from the Arkham games and that upgrade ruins it.
 
More screenies courtesy of gearnuke..the rest of these dont appear to be such of an outright downgrade as the Hugo Strange screenie, but the Joker pic looks kinda off in the remaster too, less detail in the hair.

Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-1.jpg
 
At least that bug doesn't seem to have ruined your game.

I was 10 hours into Origins before I fell through the floor into a void and the game autosaved, forcing me to restart the entire fucking thing because it doesn't have multiple saves.
XDhqGFg.jpg

JGJVevG.jpg

Even if the game wasn't buggy, it's still my least favorite because of how they slowed down Batman's punches in the combat when the enemies seemed to be the same speed. It just made it feel like he was stuck in molasses when he slowly winds up his punch and a random goon lightly bops you on the back of the head ruining your combo.
Same thing happened to me, but I know my way around CheatEngine and was able to edit myself back to where I'm supposed to be. It was an interesting experience for an AAA title, though.

I'll never understand the love that Origins gets. The one thing they did right was the story. Gameplay was worse in nearly every imagineable way (I did like the challenges thing). There's the weird timing thing with the punches that you mentioned (which throws off all semblance of combat flow), and let's not forget that Origins also had the worst designed Predator rooms - the ones that weren't copy-pasted from Arkham City, that is.

More screenies courtesy of gearnuke..

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-2.jpg
Oh my god... Bruce, what did they do to your face??
 

bman94

Member
My lord, how did they make it look worse than the originals? The hair on Hugo Strange looks so unsettlingly fake, the Joker looks like a toy doll and everything looks brighter with no depth to it.
 

Garlador

Member
More screenies courtesy of gearnuke..the rest of these dont appear to be such of an outright downgrade as the Hugo Strange screenie, but the Joker pic looks kinda off in the remaster too, less detail in the hair.

Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-1.jpg

This can't be from the final, can it? It looks like they went backwards.
 

bman94

Member
People saying that Origins wasn't included because it was a buggy mess...wouldn't that be more of a reason for it to be remastered? Fix the bigs, alter the elements that people didn't like and align it more with the Rocksteady games would be a great solution.
 

icespide

Banned
People saying that Origins wasn't included because it was a buggy mess...wouldn't that be more of a reason for it to be remastered? Fix the bigs, alter the elements that people didn't like and align it more with the Rocksteady games would be a great solution.

aka extra effort
 

Nokterian

Member
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg

That looks terrible like the beard and eyebrows are like fake ones dear god..

Sick-Laugh-GIF.gif
 

Ridley327

Member
The weird part about those new screens is that if I'm not mistaken, those bits are taken from what were originally pre-rendered cutscenes. I wonder if they're doing all of those in real time now.

AA would definitely need it, since those cutscenes were 720p and full of compression blocking.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
This looks way worse than the original. The hair looks much more artificial and there is no reflection on the glasses....lighting looks worse too. This is making me a bit nervous. I really hope Im wrong but this kinda looks like some quick and dirty job.

Remaster
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-2.jpg


Original
batman-arkham-remastered-comp5-1.jpg

Most of the videos where batman is not directly in control are video files, not real time which i am assuming all of the current gen versions are. It would probably be hard to emulate that 100%, and i am assuming they are just using the models they remade for gameplay for this remaster for those cutscenes as well.
 

Hesh

Member
I'm getting Silent Hill HD Collection vibes from this. No bueno. I'm sticking with my PC versions of these games since they still look phenomenal and run at 60 FPS. I just played through Arkham Asylum over the winter, too, and it holds up really well.
 
He's making that same face in the original, but its hidden by shadows a bit more. This is the TPHD thread all over again.

I've played Asylum a hundred times and his lips aren't swollen like that. He actually had a tiny resemblance to Michael Keaton in Asylum. It almost looks like Sly Stallone in the remaster.
 

icespide

Banned
The weird part about those new screens is that if I'm not mistaken, those bits are taken from what were originally pre-rendered cutscenes. I wonder if they're doing all of those in real time now.

AA would definitely need it, since those cutscenes were 720p and full of compression blocking.

ah that would make sense, and they wouldn't want to re-render those because they probably wouldn't match the UE4 look
 
Most of the videos where batman is not directly in control are video files, not real time which i am assuming all of the current gen versions are

Someone correct me but Im almost positive that the Hugo Strange part was in real time, pretty sure you could move the camera around.

The other scenes, yes, those were absolutely video files in the originals.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
I'm getting Silent Hill HD Collection vibes from this. No bueno. I'm sticking with my PC versions of these games since they still look phenomenal and run at 60 FPS. I just played through Arkham Asylum over the winter, too, and it holds up really well.

I think we should cut out the hyperbole before it gets embarrassing.
 
One thing I immediately notice with all those screen comparisons is that the hair is so much worse than the original. At this point, I'd have rather they kept the games the same and just bumped them to 1080p60 instead.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
One thing I immediately notice with all those screen comparisons is that the hair is so much worse than the original. At this point, I'd have rather they kept the games the same and just bumped them to 1080p60 instead.

We don't know the actual circumstances for the video files Rocksteady made for that hair detail. In real time on current gen, i'd assume they have only 1 LOD in place, shared between the cutscenes and actual gameplay to save time and costs.

Does anyone have a direct screencap of that sequence from their own game? The screen provided for the original has a lot of artifacting and is very low res
 
One thing I immediately notice with all those screen comparisons is that the hair is so much worse than the original. At this point, I'd have rather they kept the games the same and just bumped them to 1080p60 instead.

agreed, it looks phony and just plastered on. The originals look like they blended the hair in much more naturally.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
It looks like they tried to add in a lot of detail without actually having a sense of the art direction the game was going for.

It reminds me of the new lighting scheme for Deus Ex: Human Revolution's Director's Cut, where it was more complex, but it didn't necessarily look better (or even as good).
 

Ridley327

Member
I've played Asylum a hundred times and his lips aren't swollen like that. He actually had a tiny resemblance to Michael Keaton in Asylum. It almost looks like Sly Stallone in the remaster.

Edit: Here, I just took this picture from the PC version since the one gearnuke has is blurry.

Yeah, I'm convinced that they are straight-up redoing the pre-rendered cutscenes in real time now. That's not a small task, given that every cutscene in AA was pre-rendered, and the vast majority were in AC, as well.

Batman: Return to Arkham |OT| Not the Same Games, Not the Same Cutscenes
 
We don't know the actual circumstances for the video files Rocksteady made for that hair detail. In real time on current gen, i'd assume they have only 1 LOD in place, shared between the cutscenes and actual gameplay to save time and costs.

Does anyone have a direct screencap of that sequence from their own game? The screen provided for the original has a lot of artifacting and is very low res
I took one a few posts up.
I guess I'll just move it here since it was an edit:
 
The original screenshots look like the game was actually ported to UE4 unlike the trailer. However, I wonder if they re-rendered the video cutscenes. Let's just wait until we actually get direct-feed footage of the actual remaster folks before jumping to conclusions. *Sigh*

EDIT: Nevermind.
 
Not sure I'm down for this, UE4 sounds like awesome but those screens just don't look like an upgrade. Guess we'll wait and see.
 
Jesus hell, are those screenshots flipflopped or something. The remasters look noticeably worse.

This was what I thought until I noticed the redone textures. Only one that looks remotely better to me is the Solomon Grundy shot. I guess some of the changes to Fries are nice

Never played any of the Batman games but i'll probably pick this up as i'm hooked on Gotham just now :D

Man, you are in for a treat. My favourite new series from last gen. I genuinely jealous that you get to experience them for the first time.
 
More screenies courtesy of gearnuke..the rest of these dont appear to be such of an outright downgrade as the Hugo Strange screenie, but the Joker pic looks kinda off in the remaster too, less detail in the hair.

Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp2-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp4-1.jpg


Remaster

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-2.jpg


Original

batman-arkham-remastered-comp3-1.jpg

To be fair. Some of those shots were pre-rendered. The re-release might have them all in engine?

The Hugo Strange shot is definitely originally in-game in both shots though.
 
Top Bottom