By Graham Osborne
So, they’ve announced the third instalment of the Arkham Games, not much of a shock really. But the announcement means that we can start speculating on what might turn up in the game and make a few predictions of our own. Let the fun begin.
So, they’ve announced the third instalment of the Arkham Games, not much of a shock really. But the announcement means that we can start speculating on what might turn up in the game and make a few predictions of our own. Let the fun begin.
We’ll start with the most pressing rumour. Rocksteady Studios, the team behind Arkham Asylum and City, will not be returning to make the next game. Right off the bat (sorry), this one worries me. Rocksteady made two fantastic games revolving around the Dark Knight, and I don’t want them to stop. I’m sure that whatever the development team will move on to do will be just as excellent, but I don’t want a new Arkham game that stagnates because the driving force behind it is gone (I know that the driving force behind a game such as this would be the story, but Paul Dini has already said he won’t be back for it either, so it seems like we’ve more or less lost the original group before this horse is out the gate). Maybe the new development team and writer can pull out an even better story than the previous two games, who knows? I’m going to hold judgement until we know a bit more about it, but it’s not the strongest start.
The second rumour being thrown around is a slightly more positive one. The game is going to be set during the silver age of comics, focussing around Batman’s first meetings with The Joker. This will give us an interesting dynamic, especially as we’ve seen how it will all end up, now we get to see how Batman begins one of the greatest dances in comic book history. Of course with using the silver age of comics, we’ll possibly lose the dark and grittier tones we’ve seen with the previous two games. This possibility, combined with the lack of Rocksteady Studios, could even suggest that it’s not an Arkham game. It’s just being hyped as one because of the praise the previous two received. I doubt that though, the characters are likely to remain the same as Asylum and City, though maybe we’ll have Joker having even more of an upper hand over Bats because he doesn’t know how insane Joker really is. Regardless, here’s hoping that Kevin Conroy (the voice of Batman) returns to give another sterling performance. I mean who doesn’t hope that he’ll keep voicing Batman forever?
Taking the setting back to the silver age would also mean taking it back to a time when Batman would help out his super friends and vice versa. Who wouldn’t want Superman to show up and melt some ice around Mr. Freeze’s lab with his heat vision, or Wonder Woman to help you get some information out of a group of henchmen with her lasso of truth? Maybe Flash could zoom around the city disarming bombs while Green Lantern and Batman fight Two Face. The possibilities are endless. However with the addition of the Justice League you also face the problem of the other heroes are kinda’ powerful in their own rights, having Superman show up could easily break the game since he could finish it all off quickly without the need for worrying about the guns and explosives that the bad guys are sure to have, being invincible is a really boring power when it comes to this sort of scenario…*cough* Superman 64 *cough*
While it may be a little tricky to add in the whole of the Justice League, a Batman and Robin team up doesn’t seem too out of the question. I mean, Catwoman turned up to help Batman and we even got Robin and Nightwing challenge rooms in Arkham City, with both characters getting redesigned costumes and their own move sets. It always seemed pointless to me that they’d go so far as to create these new characters without giving them a larger role in some way. Okay, we got to play as Robin in Harley Quinn’s Revenge, but it wasn’t really tied to the main story.
So that’s it for now. I’m sure as we draw nearer to the games release date (most likely to be announced at E3 this summer) we’ll find out more, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the Dark Knight rises to the occasion or if he’ll fall short of expectations.
RSS Feed
