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Hello! Chris Donlan here. As a couple of Batman's Arkham adventures are getting the remaster treatment this week, we thought it might be interesting to ponder the fate of the one game that didn't make the cut. Oh, BTW, this piece contains some major spoilers for Origins and Arkham Knight.This is the story of an orphan. Not Bruce Wayne, the crusader shaped by the murder of his parents and forced - like the rest of us - to endlessly relive that traumatic night of scattered pearls and chalk outlines in a benighted alleyway. This is a different sort of orphan, a stepchild being discreetly disowned seemingly to aid its fade from popular memory. It is the increasingly obscured story of Batman Arkham Origins, a game that could plausibly be retitled Mixed Batsignals.
This week's Return To Arkham package remasters the dynamic duo of Arkham Asylum (2009) and Arkham City (2011) for current-gen consoles. Both were critically adored on release, and are viewed as hugely influential titles, vital to securing developer Rocksteady's rock-solid reputation, even if the (outsourced) process of updating them does not appear to have gone particularly smoothly. But what about poor Origins, the stopgap game developed by WB Montreal to help ease the long wait while series architects Rocksteady delivered Arkham Knight? Why not just "do an Uncharted" and go for a triple-bill Arkham remaster?
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