REVIEW – Woah, where did this episode come out from? We didn’t even expect it to arrive this quick, and until July, we didn’t even think that Telltale would hop onto the sequel as fast as possible, but here we are, roughly eight months after the finale of the first season, the devs and Batman are back.

With The Enemy Within, I started with a clean slate, and instead of importing the previous save, I chose my past, similarly to The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. Am I the enemy within? (The chorus behind me says yes.) After the answer, a riddle: I protect the city wearing a mask, is there anyone up to snuff to pass the test? Who am I?

No stopping

Bruce Wayne is immediately in the middle of an undercover mission, and in just a few minutes, you end up becoming Batman, and I just remembered now that you could choose your tech’s color as well before starting the episode proper. The new villain shows up – I referenced him in the previous paragraph -, and I’m not going to spoil who this person is. There’s some combat (get ready to QTE!), someone gets caught, you get something which ends up being your burden, then a highly antagonistic person shows up with a team behind the character as well. Then, you get to go home.

Coming home always feels good, although Alfred doesn’t seem to feel as good as he should, and in no time, we realize what we are up against in the rest of the episode. The box was suspicious to me right from the start. Workplace, a new character steps in, and we’d follow an older person, but we end up being held up by two agents. Alert, evacuation, someone dies.

Hold on, Telltale knocks the chair out already in the first episode! Interesting, but the pace is nice. Funeral – this place is where I decided to go full on bastard and negative for the second season right after being a kind person in the first one. The first „victim” of this U-turn was the relative of the person who just died. Another character makes a return, which unfortunately halts the pace, but he seems to be a key character for the future, and he is already suspected.

We then end up in a trap where we have to get out before our organs explode inside, and this goddamn safe thing and the handling of it can seriously go avry. We get out with a rocket; then another investigation launches with the choice of who to visit. You end up with more rockets regardless, as well as with a few agents, along with the villain. The relationship – which is changing throughout the game, and when it does, it will be noticed, and it happened to me with three characters – changes with Gordon, especially because of this goddamn woman, whose final two words in the episode managed to pull off an extremely clever cliffhanger.

No improvements

…okay, fine, the controls got a bit of improvement (aside from that ridiculous safe portion in the episode!), but graphically, I noticed a few extremely low-quality textures, especially in the second casino portion. Oh, my God. The helicopters also look questionable regarding visuals. There were a few jumping animations (as seen in all the other episodes), the voice acting is still excellent (Troy Baker), but the music is another nitpicky thing. I just didn’t like the piano soundtrack, which didn’t fit into the ambiance whatsoever for me. There’s a lot of room for improvement in this aspect.

Decent start

After eight months, we got a sudden continuation. That’s great. The pace is fine except for the funeral – that’s not good. The plot, however, looks intriguing, as Bruce Wayne is likely going to be pushed through the mud even more than before, making the second half of 2017 exciting for those who gives no fucks about Minecraft blocks and the Marvel universe. I also loved how the episode was two hours (!!!) long instead of the usual 80-90 minute deal. If Telltale can keep this quality up, they will gain success, which financially didn’t happen with Tales from the Borderlands (which explains why it was in Humble Bundle, haha). I give it a solid 7.

-V-

Publisher: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genre: episodic, adventure

Release date: August 8, 2017