12 Reasons You Were Wrong About Batman: Arkham Origins

4. A Vibrant Environment

A recurring gripe that many have with Origins is that Montreal's Gotham lacked vibrancy and felt just a tad lifeless.

Whilst the lack of any Gothamites doing last-minute Christmas shopping is disappointing, Gotham during the winter really does look hauntingly beautiful. The inclusion of 'Old Gotham' - the future resting site for the monolithic Arkham City - gave many the chance to look at the environment in a new light. Christmas lights aplenty and covered in snow, the setting is completely transformed under Montreal's direction, in turn breathing new life into a setting gamers had traversed countless times before.

As well as the low, narrow streets of Old Gotham, Montreal also saw fit to introduce a completely new area as well - one much more vertical in nature. Towering above the impoverished areas of the city's suburbs, Gotham's financial centre is littered with interesting new locations to explore and really enables players to stretch their wings as Gotham's protector.

The increased verticality of the New Gotham area not only spices up navigation, but also Invisible Predator as well - players have to be aware of snipers watching their every move, and it all encourages a faster paced style of stealth not present in other titles.

Even though the citizens of Gotham may be absent as well as a distinct police presence, Gotham is a character in itself - something Montreal realised.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.