Why Rocksteady’s Upcoming Batman Game May Be a Grim Omen

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home February 10, 2025 8 Views 5 Min Read
Why Rocksteady’s Upcoming Batman Game May Be a Grim Omen



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Batman: Arkham Shadow arrived right in the nick of time as a balm for the Arkhamverse when it needed one most. It’s hard to predict how damning Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has or will be for DC games going forward, but Bloomberg’s recent report claiming that Warner Bros. is putting all of its eggs in Batman’s basket suggests that studios like Rocksteady will be singularly focused on the Dark Knight for the foreseeable future.

Of course, with the Arkhamverse being so rich and beloved, it isn’t necessarily disappointing that a future Rocksteady Batman game is apparently in development—so long as it can be the return to form that Camouflaj’s Batman: Arkham Shadow was, at least. That said, it is unfortunate that DC games will presumably have a detrimentally narrow focus when the mythology and characters they could draw from are so dense. Bloomberg’s report declares that Monolith’s Wonder Woman game has a chance of never making it to market, for instance, and if such development issues were to plague DC games with other lead characters it could condemn the larger mythology with future projects leaning wholly on Batman as a safety net.

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After Batman: Arkham Shadow, the Arkhamverse Should Shine a Bat Signal on Bruce Wayne

Little time has been afforded to Bruce Wayne in the Arkhamverse before Batman: Arkham Shadow and future entries should follow its lead.

The Flash’s Deathbed is Sown and Given an Unmarked Grave

One particularly saddening revelation made in Bloomberg’s report is that a Flash game was scrapped because of The Flash’s poor reception. The reason why this is devastating is because the game could’ve had nothing to do with the movie and yet it was already at a disadvantage due to the character being treated as an IP.

Therefore, if The Flash’s reception was the nail in a Flash game’s coffin, the possibility of a Superman game will surely live or die on the success or failure of James Gunn’s titular movie.

DC and Warner Bros. approaching characters’ potential this way could be incredibly harmful, especially if it never gives projects a chance based solely on how profitable it believes them to be. Games have a rare opportunity to belong in an Elseworld-esque continuity that never needs to intersect with the DCU’s continuity, for example, and relying on Batman’s Arkhamverse due to its established history and success or how general audiences respond to an unrelated DC movie may only take it so far.

Monolith’s Wonder Woman Reboot Illustrates DC’s Poor Handling of Characters and Games

According to Bloomberg’s report, Monolith’s Wonder Woman game was rebooted last year. This could more or less be a result of Warner Bros.’ push for live-service titles, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all now if Hogwarts Legacy’s sequel makes a priority out of multiplayer or post-launch elements as such content in the wizarding world wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility.

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, simply makes sense as a single-player experience, and awkwardly attempting to nudge live-service elements into it could make for a disastrous and tone-deaf game. The Wonder Woman game will have hopefully been rebooted in an effort to remove any live-service elements rather than add them, but it will allegedly be at least a few years before it is released, anyway.

Plus, Bloomberg making it seem as if the game may never be released suggests that development is troubled beyond repair. Monolith’s Wonder Woman game hanging on by a golden lariat is nonetheless a sliver of hope that DC games will find a way to spread their attention to characters other than Batman; in the meantime, though, whether DC games pluck themselves out of the mud or stumble miserably will weigh heavily on the back of the Caped Crusader.

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