The Snipe-Happy Deadshot, Boxart and New Voices for the Bat and the Joker in Our Latest Batman: Arkham Origins Update

We're all acquainted with the eight assassins converge on Gotham City to murderize Batman in a Die Hard-esque Christmas shitstorm premise of Batman: Arkham Origins. (Unless you aren't. In which case return to the previous sentence, with your eyes open this time). Said rogues gallery of mad, mad bastards is being steadily filled out, with Black Mask and Deathstroke and Killer Croc and Scarecrow confirmed to appear in some violent capacity or other. Now they have another playmate: the sniping supervillain Deadshot.

Legendary marksman Deadshot first appeared in the Batman comic in 1950 (issue #59, superfluous nerdy fact fans!). After a failed bid to seize control of all of Gotham's seedy, piss-stained underbelly, he becomes a contract killer, aided and abetted by a funky metal faceplate with a targeting system built into the eyeball-region. In his illustrious career of cast-iron asshole-ism, he has served as a member of the Suicide Squad (supervillains performing hazardous black-ops duties for the government in lieu of prison sentences), been thwarted moments before assassinating the Joker, and... taken a good ol' fashioned ass-whuppin' from Green Lantern.

He was most recently seen in the new Arkham Origins trailer, intervening in the fight between Batman and Deathstroke from afar ("Not so fast, Deathstroke. He'smykill!"). With this element of competition and lack of cooperation, the stage is set for a demented narrative of betrayals, multi-way battles and repeated screwings-over of ‘colleagues.'

In other Bat-news, the game's official box art has been revealed. It depicts everybody's favorite not wearin' hockey pads crimefighter smiling gleefully at the camera, like a small child finding Willy Wonka's golden ticket in their candy bar. Except it doesn't, and he's just doing that broody, stubbly and pissed right off face that hasn't left those chiseled features of his since the character's birth in 1939. The miserable bastard.

Finally, for those of us that missed the memo last month, Forbes reports that the new voices of Batman and the Joker will be Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker respectively. There's a great voice-acting pedigree here (including, between the two, BioShock Infinite, Mass Effect 3, Catherine, the Last of Us, Assassin's Creed and Resident Evil) so there's little cause for concern with that announcement.

Header image source: franky4fingers at thefwoosh.