REVIEW – Ehh. I understand what Telltale wanted to do, but the result is somewhat weak in more aspects. It builds the basics for the future episodes. The Pact is packed with tons of dialogue, primarily due to a few baddies showing up. Us included.

Right after the events of the first episode (where Waller managed to cleverly hit a cliffhanger by just saying two words), The Pact has Waller asking us to not get on her bad side and perhaps try to work together with the Agency. Of course, this will risk your relationship with Gordon, which might already change after encountering a certain muscled guy named Bane.

Knockout!

This time, our hero doesn’t leave unscathed, and still, he goes to do some investigation in the cave. This is the point where I have to stop and say that Telltale screwed up BIG TIME. A Russian ambassador to Turkey, namely Andrei Karlov, shows up on Bruce’s supercomputer’s display, completely unrelated to Gotham City altogether as background graphics. What the fuck is this?

Okay, I understand that there may be some tight deadlines due to working on more than one episodic game simultaneously, but please don’t do such a stupid thing as such! Look at the image below – by the time you read the review, it got patched out…

You can look for it on Google; you will find it (not the entire image, just the corpse – the rest is, thankfully, modified). Whatever. You’ll go to a little meeting, where another not-so-good personality enters the fray after a car getting jacked. Shortly after that, you will break into your company. Yeah, that sounds stupid, but that’s what you will end up doing. Another character is in your way, then Alfred’s worries follow (he should be taking a break as he’s shaking…), and after a little chit-chat, you’ll meet a gang in some… unusual clothing.

Here, you’ll find that someone cold is also part of this group, and your goal will eventually be to get most of the team to support you. You’ll need two people to say in, and one of them will likely say in, and you can quickly pick up another supportive vote if you help that person to achieve their goal. At least that’s what I got: two ins, one out…

You’ll join the bad side; one partner will leave you disappointed, you get the item, which itself is a twist, then someone else joins the party, even though – if you played your cards right – someone might be left behind. That’s it. It’s quite a thick episode. There are QTE scenes (where you can choose your attacks), but here, it seemed like the focus was on the plot progressing forward more than in your usual Telltale game.

Animation

The episode has the usual visual quality, but come on; the animations are still jumping here or looking robotic there. This issue should be addressed. However, I did like how John Doe wasn’t the boss character around – hey, Telltale might be driving his personality towards a different route than you would initially have thought!

The question, however, is that how can a billionaire just merely join villains? This scenario doesn’t look too polished to me, but if Telltale just wanted to take a bullet now for the sake of high-quality future episodes, then I can understand this approach to an extent.

Your relationship with Batman: The Enemy Within has changed

I’ll throw a 7 out of 10 for this episode because it did build the basics of future events in just eighty-six minutes (ah, so we’re back to the short chapters?), and it brought along the usual things you’d expect from Telltale. I just hope that we won’t scrape the bottom of the barrel, The Walking Dead: Michionne levels because that was mostly a failure in my opinion. I don’t recommend the episode on its own, though, there’s no point of that…

-V-

Publisher: Telltale Games

Developer: Telltale Games

Genre: episodic, adventure

Release date: October 3, 2017