Voice acting in video games has grown leaps and bounds over the years. At first, it was a “luxury” to have voice acting in video games. Then, it was something you did, but you didn’t always need the “best voice actors” to get the job done. Fast forward to now, and you are almost required to have top-notch voice acting and potentially bring in A-List actors to be certain characters to add clout to the game. In the case of the Batman Arkham Trilogy, they had numerous voice acting talents, making the game emphatically good. But few will deny that one of the best of the bunch was Mark Hamill as The Joker.
As many of you know, Hamill has been the voice of Joker for decades. It started out with the Batman TAS show from the 90s, and he’s played the character off and on ever since. However, the Batman Arkham Trilogy allowed him to take his role as the “Clown Prince of Crime” to new heights. He said so himself in a tweet honoring the second game of the trilogy:
For those not in the know, while the cartoon series he debuted in was very dark, brooding, and sometimes violent, it never showed death. They even went to painstaking lengths to make The Joker a threat without him ever killing anyone. But with the Rocksteady trilogy, they had no such issues showcasing The Joker’s violence. He could do a more “mature” take on the character and truly live it up in various ways. Heck, if you recall the first two games, Hamill did “recordings” as The Joker to further along the plot in certain ways, and you could tell he was having a ball doing it and showing off just how nuts The Joker was.
Furthermore, after Arkham City came out, widely considered the best superhero video game ever, Hamill was so praised for his performance that he won an award for his role at The Game Awards! He even voiced a small clip accepting the award before “spoiling” that a third game was in the works.
Fast forward all these years later, and the trilogy still mostly holds up, especially in the voice acting department. While Hamill isn’t likely to do Joker’s voice anymore due to the loss of Kevin Conroy, he still clearly feels attached to the role and is willing to praise the times he got to be one of the best villains in history.
