I'll admit that I wasn't immediately drawn in by a recent hands-on demo of the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins, currently scheduled for an October 25 launch on PC, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii U. Though the PR team presented the prequel to the first two Arkham games as a new experience that presents a "rawer, scarier Batman" who is "more energetic, athletic and aggressive," the gameplay seemed incredibly similar to the games that came before it.

That's not a bad thing, really. In Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City, Rocksteady Games created what's probably the best system of third-person, open-world exploration and melee combat we've seen this generation. Warner Bros. Montreal hasn't messed with this formula for Origins, keeping the feeling of gliding gently from rooftop to rooftop and the timing-based, improvisational punch-and-dodge battles that made the first two games so enjoyable.

Still, the demo felt very familiar. PR reps took pains to highlight a new enemy type that features heavy armor and takes mighty, easy-to-avoid swings and another that can actually counter Batman's moves, but battling these baddies didn't feel especially different from taking out the kind of thugs that Arkham fans have already dealt with hundreds of times in the past.

Then the demo showed off the new Detective Mode, and I started to sit up and take notice of what was going to make this game different.

The canonical story explanation for the new Detective Mode involves Batman using high-powered sensors in his cowl linked up with a powerful bat-computer to recreate the circumstances that led to an unseen event. In practice, all this means is that players can view a holographic projection of an event after the fact, fast-forwarding, rewinding, and pausing the action in real time as they explore a crime scene.

It's a striking visual effect that seems quite novel, but it's also integral to new gameplay that highlights Batman's role as the world's greatest detective and not just a vigilante who can punch bad guys. In the demo, for instance, Batman sees a distant helicopter crash and goes to investigate the site of the wreckage. By examining the dead pilot, he determines that he was killed by a bullet and not the crash itself. By tracking down the missing tail rotor (which is only found by tracing its projected path back in time holographically) he can determine the exact point in mid-air where the pilot was hit—and where the bullet came from.

From there, he can trace the trajectory back to a sniper who was actually aiming in a totally different direction. A telltale chunk missing from a nearby wall shows that both the sniper and the helicopter pilot were taken out by the same ricocheting bullet, which could only have been shot by one person: Deadshot.

The demo holds players' hands through this process, walking them through the steps needed to find the culprit. Still, the whole sequence provides a much more engaging way to reveal crucial information than just showing it in a cut scene or explaining it through pure dialogue. We can definitely envision the system potentially being used for more freeform investigations elsewhere in the game as well.

Outside of that, the other changes Origins makes to the now-familiar Arkham formula are more subdued. There's a new gadget that allows you to draw a taut tightrope wire between two points, which can also be used to drag a fire extinguisher into a bad guy's head or drag a foe's ankles up to hang from a gargoyle. There's a new XP system that grades you on every battle and gives you a detailed breakdown of what you did well (and how you messed up) in each skirmish. And there's a 911 tracking system that lets you track nearby crimes, deciding whether or not to intervene.

There are also new voices for some familiar characters in the game. Roger Craig Smith, who voiced Ezio Auditore in the Assassin's Creed games, is now the voice of Batman, an off-putting change for fans accustomed to Kevin Conroy's version of the character (though Conroy will apparently be involved in the game in some other capacity). The Joker is now being played by Troy Baker, just off his lead performance on Bioshock Infinite and doing an excellent impression of Mark Hamill's familiar and creepy take on the character. The story they'll be presenting focuses on eight Batman villains getting together to take out that Dark Knight on Christmas Eve. It was inspired by the Legends of the Dark Knight series of comics, according to the creators, but it was hard to gauge much of that from the short demo we were shown.

While we'd be more than satisfied with a new Arkham game that just offered more of the same stuff we loved from the first two titles, the new features in Origins have us really excited for the direction the series is taking under its new developer.