Batman: Arkham Origins might be the first prequel concept to hook me in a very long time: Two years into his career as the Dark Knight, Batman is a far more brutish and unrefined crime fighter than the hero we know from the previous games. His reputation as an ominous threat to Gotham’s underbelly inspires Black Mask to put a $50 million bounty on Bats’s head one Christmas Eve, attracting the attention of eight deadly assassins. Like Arkham Asylum, Origins sounds like it could play as a self-contained comic arc, but Origins will be even larger a game than Arkham City.
Developer Warner Bros. Games Montreal has been fairly tight-lipped with its cast of characters so far, but today at their Comic-Con panel they revealed Copperhead as one of the eight main villains in the game. Copperhead is a minor character in the Batman universe who in previous iterations either wore a super-powered snake costume or inherited snake-like powers a la Spider-Man. WB Montreal decided to revitalize the character as a woman (!) who, in line with the video game series, is much more realistic in design (Thank God). Arkham Origins‘s Copperhead doesn’t appear to have any supernatural abilities, but as a contortionist she can slink around and strike quickly with what seem to be poison-coated gauntlets. Take a look at the trailer:
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According to SuperHeroHype, DC’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns liked Copperhead’s re-imagining so much they’ve decided to use the likeness in their comics, sort of like how Harley Quinn became canon following her creation in Batman: The Animated Series. It’s always nice to see more women in games and comics; I just wish they hadn’t sexualized her in the process.
Batman: Arkham Origins will be released October 25th, 2013. For a full run-down of the game’s Comic-Con panel, click here. For more of our coverage from SDCC 2013, click here!
Grizzly Bomb 