Batman: The Enemy Within

Batman: The Enemy Within is a worthy follow-up to the first Telltale game about the caped crusader, with a strong focus on character development and one of the most unusual and fascinating renditions of the Joker to date. It’s a game about how the hero of Gotham creates his own villains: how the violence he enacts in the name of justice has ripples that end up forming the city’s greatest monsters.

The story starts with Riddler invading a casino to get back at its owner. Bruce is attending the very same casino at the time, so it doesn’t take long for Batman to crash the party and put a stop to Riddler’s scheme. The villain, however, leaves a clue for Batman to pursue in the form of a mystery box, which will lead him to uncover the existence of a criminal organization called the Pact while also having to deal with the arrival of a conspicuous agency commanded by Amanda Waller.

Riddler, the villain of the game’s first chapter, is framed as a ghost from the past, an old criminal figure from the time of Bruce’s parents, who has suddenly returned to Gotham to wreak havoc with his deadly riddles once more. His characterization here is something akin to a prideful Jigsaw, a man that builds death machines and horrific torturous contraptions with the only intent to prove that he is the smartest man in the room: with little sense of honor, this Riddler is a fiendish foe to Bruce, never hesitating to leave a pile of bodies with each of his games. The mystery box he leaves for Batman, for instance, leads to catastrophic events, making Bruce thirst for revenge.

To complicate matters, the Joker has also reappeared. Here, he is not yet the Joker, but a man simply called John Doe, who has helped Bruce escape Arkham before. However, just like with the Penguin in the first game, the Joker here is characterized as a friend at first. He talks and acts like Bruce is an old buddy from Arkham, and his tone and actions suggest that he’s being sincere. This is key for the character to work: John Doe really believes Bruce can be his friend.

The relationship between Bruce and John Doe is at the core of The Enemy Within, creating a constant source of tension. Doe may not be the Joker yet, but he still displays a worrying tendency to violence that Bruce may try to discourage or not (it’s up to the player). Since he’s a psychopath in the making, each choice that betrays Doe’s confidence – like putting a tracker on him or not believing his word – has the potential to be the catalyst for his transformation.

The strength of The Enemy Within’s narrative comes from the fact that we don’t know when Doe will turn or even if we really have any agency in the matter: the game plays with this tension, giving time and again a choice for Bruce to betray John Doe in some form. In other words, it wants us to believe it has put the responsibility for creating Gotham’s greatest enemy in our hands, making us second-guess our choices.

And the game really tries to sell their relationship as a genuine one, building moments that would seem out of place in any other rendition of these characters. One of the best scenes occurs in Chapter 3, when Bruce and John Doe go out for a cup of coffee and end up talking about their insecurities and women. Despite the comedy inherent to the premise, the scene is a touching one, with each character opening up to each other, even if just a little.

But the thing is that John Doe, true to form in this aspect, is also mingling with dangerous criminals: believing that Bruce is following the footsteps of his father, he invites him to the Pact, introducing him to the likes of Bane and the woman he has a crush on, Harley Queen. Doe’s relationship with Harley is reversed from the usual proceedings, as it’s now Doe who falls for her and is influenced by her deranged personality. It can become a tug-of-war of sorts, then, as each character is pulling John Doe to a different outcome: while he tries to save Gotham in some scenes just to make Bruce proud, he also wants to commit crimes and hurt people to impress Harley.

But Harley doesn’t take Doe very seriously, accurately pointing out how he sometimes displays a childish demeanor, being too trusty and clingy (he asks Bruce to “pinky swears” that they’ll be friends for life, for instance). “Puddin’”, then, becomes a name that reflects Doe’s most defining characteristic in The Enemy Within: his strange innocence. He is still dangerous, there’s no mistaking that, but now there’s also a softer side to him. This struggle between his tendency toward violence and his desperate need to not be alone – and so to find friends that he can trust – is what makes this version of Joker fascinating, turning him into something akin to a tragic character.

Especially because Batman’s plan is to infiltrate the Pact as Bruce Wayne, taking advantage of Doe’s trust in him. This means that even if the player decides that their friendship will grow to become genuine, it will have started on a lie no matter what. There’s suspense, then, about when John Doe will figure this out, if the betrayal will really come to light, and how it will affect his already twisted personality: his arc can play out like a tragedy precisely because of this feeling of impending doom, the inevitability of his turning despite the protagonist’s best efforts.

This is a fitting theme for a follow-up for the first game as well, as it highlighted how Bruce is a part of the problem in Gotham. In the first chapter of The Enemy Within, for example, a news article talks about an award given to Bruce that references a choice made in the previous game: “In committing the money to Arkham, Wayne himself canceled plans for a mental health facility that was to replace Arkham completely,” it states, revealing Bruce’s alarming error in social judgment. Here, this theme will be mostly explored by Alfred, whose body is beginning to feel the effect of these choices.

Finally, we also have Amanda Waller appearing in Gotham with her so-called Agency, a secret organization hell-bent in stopping the most dangerous of criminals. Although her agents rarely seem competent – they are trapped by the Riddler more than once in the first chapter alone – Amanda herself is still an imposing figure, always possessing a few secret weapons up her sleeve to use against Batman and try to manipulate him to do her bidding. Just like Batman, however, her Agency is part of the issues in Gotham, contributing to the cycle of violence that envelops the city.

Gameplay-wise, this is a Telltale game at heart, which means this is similar to a point-and-click adventure game with a focus on story instead of puzzles, where the narrative is expected to slightly adapt to our choices. Here, the changes can be more drastic than usual, however, and the game even plays with its typical “This character will remember that” lines, subverting it to create some comedic moments.  The major problem with Telltale’s formula here is that some of the big choices offer options that are just out of character, such as making Batman sacrifice the life of a friend just to maintain his cover: this is a line this established character would hardly cross. In other words, some of the big choices are not choices at all, and players will only choose the “evil route” if they are willing to sacrifice role-playing as the character to satisfy their curiosity about the outcome.

In the end, due to a compelling story and a fascinating take on the Joker, Batman: The Enemy Within offers not only a great Batman story but one of the best in Telltale’s catalog.

September 13, 2023.