What a time to be a Batman fan. With Matt Reeves’ The Batman slated to start filming sans Ben Affleck in the near future, we’re once again hearing rumblings about an Arkham game, but this time from WB Montreal, rather than Rocksteady.
It was a scant five years ago when Rocksteady was making the press rounds concerning Batman: Arkham Knight and when talking about the game with IGN, the discussion was that this marked the end of the series for them.
“Anything we do is a collective decision between Rocksteady, Warner Brothers, and DC Comics. But it was something that we were really pushing for because we had a really clear vision for how this story should end, and the way we wanted it to end. We’ve done all we can do here… it’s kind of time for us to walk away from it.”
That’s why the reporting of rumors that Rocksteady is developing a new Arkham game feel a little all over the map. In November of last year, Valerie Vezina of Warner Bros. Games Montreal tweeted a picture meant to tease a new game from the studio and the shirt being worn in the picture could lead gamers to believe they were developing a game involving the Court of Owls. You may remember that WB Montreal was responsible for Batman: Arkham Origins.
[Redacted], best. DevTeam. EVAR. pic.twitter.com/fUV8WCkDnI
— valvez @ home (@valvez) November 16, 2018
RELATED: Matt Reeve’s Batman Film Gets An Official Release Date, Fate Of Ben Affleck Revealed
Later, in December, Sefton Hill of Rocksteady games tweeted that he and his team were deep in development of something. He also noted that it wasn’t the previously rumored Superman game people thought it was.
Looking forward to #TheGameAwards this year! We’re still hard at work in our development bunker so don’t expect an announcement from @Rocksteadygames. When it’s ready to show, you’ll be the first to know. Spoiler: it’s not Superman 😳
— Sefton Hill (@Seftonhill) November 30, 2018
Now, we’re hearing fresh rumors as reported by YouTuber Salvage1009, who was reporting based on a Discord discussion that an alleged Arkham 2019 playtester was having with a Discord server. Did you get all that? Now that you’ve managed to find a quark-sized grain of salt to take this rumor with, let’s get into it. The highlights are as follows:
- Will be released in October or November of 2019
- Expected to be revealed in March Game Informer
- Codenamed: “Knightfall: Redacted,” but the actually title is “Arkham Crisis”
- Under development for 2 years
- Court of Owls are the main villains
- The playmap is 1.7x bigger than GTA V
- 12 act story structure, each is an hour long
- Dick Grayson leaves for Bludhaven in act 3, but is replaced with Jason Todd in Chapter 6
- There’s a day night cycle
- Spider-Man (2018)-like NPCs (alive, going to work and about their normal days)
- Batwing will be playable vehicle, replacing the Batmobile for transportation and combat
- There’s some form of multiplayer
- Hand-to-hand is becoming more challenging and skill based
- Stealth will be difficult to master
- Side missions are 3 hour stories featuring Harley, Black Mask, Mr. Freeze, Riddler
- No Riddler trophies, but there will be 31 complex challenges, unique to different players
Taking all of these things together, a couple of things should be noted. First, with Rocksteady saying they were stepping away from the Arkham series, Vezina of WB Montreal wearing what could be a Court of Owls shirt and the playtester’s comments, if this game turns out to be real, it’s more likely that the developer is WB Montreal, not Rocksteady.
Another interesting thing to note is that the playtester alleges that one of the 3-hour side stories will involve Harley Quinn breaking the Joker out of Arkham. If you’ve played the previous games, that nugget alone should make it interesting to see what the timeline of this game will be. If set in the present day, seeing how WB Montreal deals with the ramifications of Arkham Knight’s conclusion should be interesting.
What do you think? Are you excited to be getting another Arkham game? Would you like to see Rocksteady or WB Montreal handling it? Let us know your thoughts down below!
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