Note: This article contains small spoilers for the start of Batman: Arkham VR.
We were introduced to Batman in May of 1939. In Detective Comics #27, we first met this iconic hero, then known as The Bat-Man. Bill Finger and Bob Kane introduced us to a mysterious figure that we would come to understand better that November in Detective Comics #33. We read about the tragedy of young Bruce Wayne, the prince of Gotham that watched his beloved parents gunned down by a cowardly criminal in one of the city’s streets. We mourned his loss and followed him on his journey to becoming the Caped Crusader.
Jump forward 50 years and, finally, we watched Bruce’s story on the big screen. After several animated and live-action series, Tim Burton delivered a stunning rendition of the Dark Knight for a mainstream audience. For the first time the gunshots that took the Waynes from us deafened our ears and we got lost in the muddy detail as Bruce’s popcorn spilled into murky puddles alongside his mother’s pearls. Martha Wayne’s screams echoed hauntingly through movie theaters before a shocking silence fell on the scene. We looked on in with inevitable dread as Batman relived the horror of his parent’s loss in his mind, and would do so again in Batman Begins 16 years later in 2005 with a decidedly grittier rendition.
Then, in 2009, we played Bruce’s story with Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Asylum. In a flashback sequence we got to relive the horror that a young boy had thrust upon him at such an early age. We pushed on with our analogue sticks, knowing what was to come, all the time wondering what this kind of experience might do to ourselves. Each footstep we took was a heavy burden, the events unfolding entirely out of our control in a world that we otherwise had complete agency in. We’d later pay tribute to their deaths ourselves in sequels to the series.
In 2016, nearly 80 years on from when we first met Bruce Wayne, we might well have completed the cycle. In Batman: Arkham VR, we are Bruce for the first time. In Rocksteady’s dramatic opening to its short VR experience, we get closer than ever to that defining event, one that we’ve seen told and retold countless times over the past eight decades. We cower behind Martha Wayne with a sense of fear and danger, we stare into the cold, dead eyes of Joe Chill for ourselves, flinch at the venom in his words, perhaps even pity the sheer desperation we see in him. It’s a visceral and unforgettable experience.
To me, there’s no better example of the power of VR than finally letting us live one of the most historic scenes in comic book history for ourselves. Comics are very similar to the early cave paintings that humans first used to tell stories and so, in a sense, the origin of Bruce Wayne is one of the few fictional moments that we’ve seen or heard play out in every medium (I’m sure a radio play is out there somewhere).
Arkham VR itself isn’t the greatest VR experience, but this moment alone made it worth it for me. It was just another case of legitimizing my love for this technology, and I hope we have many more moments like this to come.
