Batman: Arkham Shadow Would Be Ideal for Harvey Dents Two-Face

Batman: Arkham Shadow is a blank canvas for Arkhamverse lore and revels in the opportunities it has as another prequel entry. Ratcatcher and the Rat King are presently billed as key figures in Batman: Arkham Shadow’s story, for instance, while doctors Harleen Quinzel and Jonathan Crane are surely up to no good and will likely have their fill in the narrative as well. Regardless, it cannot be understated how vital it is to witness District Attorney Harvey Dent in the flesh—before that flesh is halfway disfigured, anyway.

There is a chance Harvey goes the entirety of Batman: Arkham Shadow without becoming Two-Face, but even if that physical transformation occurs at the end of the game with a late boss fight it could be wholly worthwhile and unique in its presentation for once in the Arkhamverse’s lackluster history with the character. As a villain who’s been given boss fights so that he amounts to other antagonists in the Arkhamverse, Two-Face has only ever amounted to stealth encounters and if that’s how he was brought back to be interpreted as in Shadow it could at least be more interesting through the lens of VR and consequently the eyes of the Dark Knight.

The Arkhamverse’s Two-Face is Two for Two in Disappointing Boss Fights

At the tail-end of Arkham City, after credits have rolled and Catwoman is made freely playable so she can retrieve her belongings, recover loot throughout Arkham City, and finally get her claws on Two-Face, the half-scarred coin-flipper becomes a genuine boss. His health bar appears when players arrive deep enough into the museum to find him and a group of his thugs and defeating him ends the encounter without any of his lackeys needing to be taken out first.

Rather, Arkham Knight’s Two-Face boss fight has him show up after Batman has subdued a number of goons in Miagani’s Kingston bank. Two-Face can be taken down as swiftly as any regular henchman in this encounter—making him prone to a Multi-Fear Takedown—but all enemies need to be dealt with to complete it successfully. This puts a damper on the encounter altogether and truly renders Two-Face as an inconsequential and underwhelming villain relative to every other character Batman personally escorts to the primary GCPD holding cell in Batman: Arkham Knight.

That said, it would be difficult to conceive a boss fight for Two-Face as anything other than a stealth encounter since he’s an ordinary man wielding an assortment of guns and all of his most interesting traits are psychological, which doesn’t translate easily to actual gameplay. Therefore, Two-Face has overstayed his welcome in traditional third-person Arkham games and a VR title might be one of the last chances he has to demonstrate that he has anything new or nuanced to offer.

Batman: Arkham Shadow features the same gameplay formula as other installments in the franchise, but what it has that other entries don’t is an authentic POV with which to view and experience encounters differently. Stealth is incredibly faithful in Shadow, and if Harvey does become Two-Face and is given another stealth encounter it might feel unique enough to emerge from a floor grate and literally strike Two-Face with players’ own hands as they grip remotes before grappling away to a perch.

There’s no telling how a Two-Face boss fight could look in Shadow since it’s genuinely difficult to predict if he will even make that transition in the game or not. Either way, Shadow has a few ways it could give Two-Face a boss fight and not simply recycle old designs because its adaptation of mechanics and systems in VR will be refreshing alone, and that’s not even considering how special it will be to have quality face time with Harvey himself before he ever decides to start flicking coins in the air for murderous purposes.