Batman The Telltale Series: The Original Story
Kent Mudle has been having conversations and answering questions for the past few months. Occasionally, he has shed the light on numerous aspects about the various Telltale games he has worked on. One of these questions was about concept art for a young Harvey Dent, which was answered...with interest:
Oh man do you guys want a big post about the OG plans for Batman season one?? Cuz I’m writing it now! I wasn’t involved the entire time, but this is at least a rev I was working on before it was all blown up and redone.
So the friendship between Bruce, Harvey and Oswald was the emotional core of the season. They all knew each other as kids, each from powerful families. Little Harvey was actually a bully that Bruce and Oz worked together to overcome in a snowy flashback that served as a tutorial for the game’s combat mechanics. Harvey took a Scarf from Bruce, and Oz helped him get it back.
Then later in Bruce’s childhood, Oswald moves away. Bruce gives him the scarf. He leaves for England.
When Oz appears in Gotham again as an adult, he’s got the scarf, and that’s how Bruce remembers him.
AND NOW here’s the original structure for the season, which I really wish we’d done. The central choice dilemma is that both Harvey and Oswald are each teetering on the edge of becoming super villains. Both of them have issues, but are way less far gone than they are so quickly into S1’s final plot. Oswald used to be so much more grey, a guy that clearly wanted to do the right thing by his family name, but has little option but criminal activity to achieve it, and is ashamed of that.
At a dramatic moment in episode 3, you would get to save ONE of them from falling to the dark side, but the other becomes their canon villain form, and the resulting chaos gets Bruce thrown in Arkham.
Episode 4 was still Arkham, but it was the entire episode, instead of just half of it. Lady Arkham has the same secret identity, but she’s dealt with and defeated inside Arkham. She was not the original end villain, just a sub plot with an awesome twist.
Episode 5 Bruce emerges to find Gotham now ruled by either Penguin or Two-Face. Now free from Arkham (like Shawshank style) he must don the cowl and defeat the monster he made to save Gotham!
Looking back we took some of the good stuff here and made it into season 2. S2 really sure feel like a re-do or second draft of what S1 was gonna be, and better for it. Like a lot of John Doe is how Oswald was going to be originally (misguided friend that idolizes Bruce but is caught up in criminal activity)
Comments
Yeah i saw that,this sounded way better than what we got that kinda sucks,oh well the first season is still pretty good.
Not to mention the Robin s3 he had in mind
Oh yeah, I did catch a glimpse of that.
I'm sorta trying to stay from non-Season 1 stuff though since I still haven't played The Enemy Within.
You should definitely play TEW, it's one of the finest seasons Telltale ever made.
As I've heard numerous times.
From TV commercials to people who were otherwise hostile to anything Telltale put out after TWDG Season 2.
If that last one didn't get my attention, nothing wouldn't have.
I would have loved to have seen that version of season 1.
Care to hit me up with this Robin info? I’d love to know.
Sounds good but judging by the last paragraph, we probably wouldn't get the same Joker character we got in in season 2. Because of that, the story of season 2 would be completely different. So I'm actually happy they didn't go with this route
Wow so I went and looked and I'm pretty sure that he took it down... but basically his idea for s3 was for you to be Dick Grayson and you either meet Batman or Bruce depending on your s2 ending. You'd become Robin if you went down a good route with Batman/Bruce, Red Hood if you went down a bad route with him, or Nightwing if you reject a mentor and go on your own.
That's actually surprisingly good and makes your choices matter.
Wow, I forgot that I was the one posted this.
Guess that explains why the final choices of Episode 4 is between those two and John underwent a mild loss of memory in Season 2.
Honestly, that is kind of stupid. This was clearly a "Season 2 can end in way too many different spots, so to avoid having to carry the endings into season 3, lets just take the easy way out and make the protagonist not-Batman.''
Not really upset by this, this seems really similar to the game we got and a lot of these choices are in the game in different forms (Harvey or Catwoman in ep2) or repurposed in season 2 (Villain/Vigilante John)
Glad this game still turned out good and wasn't hit as hard with rewrites as other series were.
I'm thinking, "Just redo the story with that timeline! :P" But then that'd be a lot of work that be undone for people's current games. Things worked out like this for a reason, so for better or worse we got this storyline.
There are certain dialogue options that trap you into making choices you didn't want. All my gaming friends were blindsided by the conversation with Waller in the van, where there was only ONE very obscure dialogue option to secure Catwoman's freedom.
But I guess it was the creative team's decision. They had a story in mind to lead into Season 3. Too bad a Season 3 seems to be less and less likely.