By Alec Meer on February 12th, 2013 at 4:00 pm.
We may be in for a third Batscapade from the Arkhamverse, according to Warner suits in the company’s latest earnings call, and it’ll probably be this year too.
There’s almost nothing to go on, other than Warner’s Chief Financial Officer John K. Martin letting slip that “and we also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise.” This means it’s up to us to let slip the dogs of speculation.
Batman: Arkham Nation
Like Batman: Arkham City, but there’s countryside and gas stations and things, and if you try to go to the sea you get tasered by dolphins in Joker costumes.
Batman: Arkham World
Choose to play as British Batman, Belgian Batman, Bangladeshi Batman, Bahrain Batman, Bahamas Batman or the GameStop-exclusive Bermudan Batman, with limited edition DLC shorts.
Batman: Arkham Village
What is the terrible secret behind the greengrocer’s overpriced lemons? Why does the postman always look a bit sweaty after visiting Mrs Dobbins’ house? Can Batman possibly climb all 48 steps to the top of the church spire?
Batman: Arkham Homeopathy Clinic
Collecting all 30,000 hidden vials of plain water with made-up names unlocks the exclusive Alternative Bat-Therapy Costume and the ‘Credulous Idiot’ achievement.
Batman: Alan Arkin
Enduring rumour actually has it that the next Batman title will be a Silver Age-set game, which is a lovely idea, though I can’t help but feel that might be at odds with the Arkham universe/branding – not sure they’d want to drop the grim’n'gritty modern-day stuff, given the Nolan movies are Joe Public’s major concept of Batman these days.
Also VG247 says Rocksteady may not be developing this one. I’m OK with that actually – I’d really like to see what they do with something else now.
12/02/2013 at 16:03 MuscleHorse says:
The so called Silver-Age concept sounds too wonderful to be true. Which is probably the case.
Still, thoroughly enjoyed the previous two games and, contrary to popular belief, more is more.
12/02/2013 at 16:05 Moni says:
A move to the Silver-age would be good, if just to move away from all the sexual epithets, bitch.
12/02/2013 at 16:12 Teovald says:
To be honest I am not sure what kind of non sexist insult a hardened sociopath fighting catwoman could use.
12/02/2013 at 16:13 MuscleHorse says:
Oh, you bloody woman!
12/02/2013 at 16:25 gritz says:
These same hardened sociopaths don’t bother using sexually degrading epithets for Batman or any of the other male characters, how nice of them!
12/02/2013 at 16:51 TheTedinator says:
What could they say?
12/02/2013 at 17:06 Alevice says:
Hit me like a lady, FAGMAN!
12/02/2013 at 17:13 gritz says:
These violent prisoners are crude enough to call all female characters various gendered epithets, but at least they have the decency and tact not to disparage Batman’s relationship with his young ward.
12/02/2013 at 17:40 HothMonster says:
First time I’ve seen someone complain that the word faggot isn’t being used in a video game.
12/02/2013 at 17:44 darkChozo says:
Well, that’s easy to solve. Just give Batman: Arkham Larger Locale multiplayer and VOIP support.
12/02/2013 at 17:55 gritz says:
@HothMonster: It’s not so much calling for its inclusion as it is questioning its absence, given the common justification for the female gendered insults.
12/02/2013 at 20:42 Bhazor says:
At 3:02 “You’re gonna be my bitch Wayne”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQGGQbrummg&list=UL
So. Yeah.
/thread
Catwoman was frickin’ ridiculous though.
12/02/2013 at 20:55 woodsey says:
Well, yeah… because they’re men as well. That’s kind of how that crap works in real life.
12/02/2013 at 22:36 exogen says:
shut the fuck up faggot
12/02/2013 at 23:09 Ruffian says:
Alright, I’m not trying to be a misogynistic here, (and I do agree that the sexist insults in the game were a bit over the top) but it makes sense to a degree for a bunch of beefy lunkhead prison henchmen types to be less scared on sight, of a hot chick in a catsuit with a dinky whip than a big burly dude in a spiky bat suit with a gruff stern ass creepo voice. That said, they certainly could’ve hurled more derogatory insults towards batman for sure. Also robin was dlc and not in the actual standalone game at all so….There’s not really that relationship between batman and robin to poke fun of – if it was I’m sure at the very least joker would’ve made a crack about it.
14/02/2013 at 14:45 gritz says:
@Ruffian: Did you actually play Arkham City? Robin shows up about halfway through the game.
12/02/2013 at 19:22 Arathain says:
This is a trick question right? The same epithets as they would use for a male character, of course.
12/02/2013 at 17:50 RaveTurned says:
Set in the Silver Age, yet gritty in the lineage of the previous games…
Batman Noir, anyone?
12/02/2013 at 23:12 Ruffian says:
sounds just perfect to me.
12/02/2013 at 20:45 Urthman says:
Wasn’t LEGO Batman 2 the Silver-Age Batman game?
12/02/2013 at 16:05 Gnoupi says:
I’m only playing Batman: Arkham World if you can play as Le Batman.
12/02/2013 at 16:09 Llewyn says:
Well, Alec did include Belgian Batman in his list.
Presumably there will be an achievement for popping the requisite number of Joker Walloons.
13/02/2013 at 01:05 Dances to Podcasts says:
You can tell the difference by the little Poirot moustache underneath the mask.
12/02/2013 at 17:14 SF Legend says:
Batman: Arkham Subreddit
12/02/2013 at 18:26 DarkeSword says:
The Batman of France is Nightrunner.
12/02/2013 at 16:06 Cooper says:
Bahamas Batman
(with shorts)
Surfing.
With the Joker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlusgU-MUZ4
12/02/2013 at 16:08 deadly.by.design says:
The Arkham games seem like great titles, but I just can’t bring myself to get into them. I tried starting Asylum on literally three separate occasions, and it never stuck. It’s kind of baffling, but I’ll admit that my gaming habits have grown increasingly sporadic in recent years. Something about being busy, married and 30, possibly…
12/02/2013 at 18:29 ResonanceCascade says:
I had trouble getting into Asylum as well, but after about the third try, something clicked. Then I blew through both it and Arkham City. I definitely rank both among the best of the last several years.
12/02/2013 at 19:15 Ninja Foodstuff says:
Well I’m all of those things as well, but absolutely made time for both games. I think you have to enjoy the combat parts though, if you don’t (I did, very much) then you’ll find there’s too much of it to get to the meat of the game.
12/02/2013 at 16:09 feffrey says:
Hopefully it won’t use GFWL.
12/02/2013 at 16:50 povu says:
I’d be really surprised if it did. I was surprised with Arkham City having it too, but now that AC has had issues with savegames disappearing due to GFWL and once again now there being GFWL problems in numerous games, surely they must realize that using GFWL isn’t acceptable anymore.
13/02/2013 at 01:21 HothMonster says:
Don’t all WB games use GFWL? I thought they had some agreement/contract with Microsoft.
12/02/2013 at 18:12 Godwhacker says:
Unlikely, now that Windows 8 has XBox Live…
12/02/2013 at 16:09 Kaira- says:
Arkham World? So, Batman Inc. basically?
12/02/2013 at 16:53 Cooper says:
I would love a management game based on Batman Inc.
12/02/2013 at 16:10 MuscleHorse says:
Ooh, and just realised I’m yet to play City”s DLC. Off to the (digital) shops I go.
12/02/2013 at 16:11 Alexander says:
BatmanVille. you heard it here first. I think.
12/02/2013 at 16:13 db1331 says:
Hey, can you do me a favor and BatUp my BatWall on my BatPage? I just need a few more BatTokens and I can purchase the next addition for my BatCave.
12/02/2013 at 16:25 Alexander says:
add me, daily player and gifter.
12/02/2013 at 16:11 db1331 says:
I wish they would let the guys at Rocksteady do a Spiderman game. I mean, you could practically just dump Noir Spidey into Arkham City, do a few tweeks (swap grapnel for web swinging), and you’d have easily the best Spiderman game in years (though that’s not saying much).
12/02/2013 at 16:48 ulix says:
You do know that Rocksteady is owned by Warner, which also owns DC – the comic book publisher behind Batman.
Spiderman on the other hand is part Marvel, which is owned by Disney.
In other words: will never happen (unless Disney buys Warner or vice versa).
12/02/2013 at 16:55 db1331 says:
That’s the same reason everyone said we would never get a LEGO Marvel game.
12/02/2013 at 21:07 thelongshot says:
What reason? As far as I know, Travelers Tales has no direct relation to Warner Bros to keep them from doing anything with Marvel.
12/02/2013 at 21:10 Jim Rossignol says:
TT are owned by Warner.
12/02/2013 at 16:14 Lambchops says:
Batman: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Arkham?
12/02/2013 at 16:15 Gap Gen says:
B-man stands for Bitch-man, right? Or is this not a can of worms that needs re-opening?
12/02/2013 at 16:16 Engonge says:
This game is the one where you mash buttons to teleport from one enemy to the other right?I’ll pass..
12/02/2013 at 16:18 Chris D says:
While the games may take some liberties with what is physically possible if you try to get through by mashing buttons you are going to die a whole lot.
12/02/2013 at 17:35 Vandelay says:
Having watched my brother play this game, I can tell you that is not true; mashing works pretty well.
Having said that, if you want to fight in style (or play the challenge mode,) then timing attacks and mixing in your gadgets is mandatory. Just because some people play the game in a dull way it doesn’t mean the combat is bad.
12/02/2013 at 19:05 Asurmen says:
What difficulty did he have it on? Because I’ve always gone hardest and yeah, just mashing doesn’t work, especially when there’s guys with stun sticks and knives involved.
12/02/2013 at 16:39 gritz says:
Wishlist:
-Less chatter. I like the richness of plot and setting detail, but it’s hard to feel like the broodiest lonley dark knight when every 5 meters your microphone picks up another conversation between Thug 1 and Thug 2.
-Dump GFWL, like everyone else has by now.
-No more extended gliding sessions. It’s just tedious.
-Better gender politics.
-More interaction with the DC universe outside of Batman. Maybe have Supes show up for a cameo? Or a mission where you lure badguys into the open for Green Arrow to pick off?
-Combat is already pretty great, but it would be better with more varied kicking and punching. Right now, there’s one button for attack and one button for counter and several buttons for special moves. Give attack two buttons and open up a lot more depth.
-More detectiving. There’s plenty of puzzle solving and riddles, but relatively little looking at crimscenes and analyzing clues. And when you do “scan” clues, the canned dialogue takes over and tells you exactly what you need to know. Give the player some real mysteries to puzzle over and actually feel like the World’s Greatest Detective.
12/02/2013 at 17:00 Chris D says:
Hmmm…Would a second attack button actually add a lot more depth? I guess you could make fast/weak and slow/hard attacks but in that case your effectively trading time for increased damage and the existing abilites provide ways to do that already. Alternatively you provide situations in which it’s more advantageous to use the second attack but we also pretty much have that already with counters and some of the other moves. How would you see the second attack working?
12/02/2013 at 17:17 gritz says:
I’m no fighting game expert, but a fast/slow or high/low option could vary things a bit.
Having a one-size-fits all punch button and nearly a dozen ignorable special attacks makes the combat feel more button-mashy than it should. But maybe second attack would add complexity but not necessarily depth, so I dunno.
12/02/2013 at 20:29 jon_hill987 says:
Unfortunately Superman cannot cameo because:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SupermanStaysOutOfGotham
12/02/2013 at 16:16 portchd says:
I would seriously play the hell out of bahamas batman….
12/02/2013 at 16:43 Martel says:
I find myself very interested in Bangladeshi Batman. Maybe they can add a dance mode during fights so I can get my wife to play too
13/02/2013 at 07:26 portchd says:
Oh no, thats one step away from the kinect version of the new batman game…
12/02/2013 at 16:28 LennyLeonardo says:
My money is still on Batman: Miskatonic University.
12/02/2013 at 16:30 Chris D says:
If it’s not this we should Kickstart it immediately.
12/02/2013 at 16:50 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
Batman vs Cthulhu?
Fhtagn yes.
12/02/2013 at 17:25 Shuck says:
Have you seen Mike “Hellboy” Mignola’s “Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham” comic? Great fun – a 1920s romp in which all the Batman characters are given Lovecraftian twists. It would make for a pretty good game setting.
12/02/2013 at 17:30 LennyLeonardo says:
Aaaa! Bought. Thank you very much, I had no idea this existed.
12/02/2013 at 16:30 Sparkasaurusmex says:
FYI: Steam has Arkham Asylum for 5 bucks right now
12/02/2013 at 16:32 Synesthesia says:
haha, bangladeshi batman. Reminded me of this, for any spanish speakers here!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnu2XMplBWU
12/02/2013 at 16:39 Hoaxfish says:
Batman: Ar kham on, you know you want to.
12/02/2013 at 16:40 DrAmateurScience says:
Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.
12/02/2013 at 16:40 mckertis says:
While Arkham games are great, Rocksteady seems really intent on overstaying their welcome, and getting into goodwill debts.
12/02/2013 at 16:42 DickSocrates says:
If it is a different developer, I would welcome a return to the more compact, Metroid-like design of Arkham Asylum. It is easily the better game of the two, much more focused and just better designed. I want a good game more than I want a large game. Not that City was even that large, it was spread too thin.
I won’t go into it now, but City is a deeply flawed game with some terrible pacing problems and side missions/collectables being very poorly integrated into the main experience. Whose smart ideawas it to award audio reels for completing totally unconnected tasks? And put that against the carefully thought out drip feed of them in AA which revealed pertinent background info at the correct point in the story.
12/02/2013 at 16:58 RodHope says:
Thanks for not going into it.
12/02/2013 at 17:23 JohnS says:
The plot in Arkham City was a big letdown.
[Spoilery discussion!] Early on it’s established that Protocol 10 is the big secret we have to reveal (“Great! Let’s get detectiving!”), but then the vast majority of the game is spent finding the cure/the guy who can make the cure/the ingredient we need for the cure/the guy who stole the cure, before Protocol 10 is revealed to us, not through detectiving but because *it started happening*, and we spend 30 minutes foiling it and 30 minutes working towards the damn cure again. It didn’t help that Protocol 10 turned out to be really really lame.
The game would’ve been so so much better, if it had been mainly about Batman working out the mystery behind the shadowy conspiracy who let Arkham City happen (or something a little more fleshed out). Now it was just about Batman trying to take back his cure from the schoolyard bullies who kept holding it over his head and throwing it between each other.
12/02/2013 at 18:19 Godwhacker says:
=SPOILER WARNING=
But who will Batman fight, now that The Joker is dead?
…and the answer is The Joker again, because of those highly convenient Lazarus Pits
13/02/2013 at 03:20 Hulk Handsome says:
I did go into it, in a rather moody blog post:
http://hulkhandsome.com/?p=576
I did not enjoy Arkham City very much.
12/02/2013 at 16:55 Thirith says:
Where’s Batman from Batman? Seriously, you’re supposed to be professionals!
Also: Arkham Village sounds like a fascinating Batman/The Prisoner mashup. I’d be up for that!
12/02/2013 at 17:01 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
“Be seeing you!”
“No you won’t… I’m Batman.”
12/02/2013 at 17:59 InternetBatman says:
I would only be up for Arkham Village if it included the Arkham Village People.
12/02/2013 at 17:05 Deano2099 says:
Batman: Arkham Horror – as Bruce Wayne takes on Cthulu in turn-based boardgame format.
12/02/2013 at 17:15 darkChozo says:
Now I want an Arkham Horror variant where you play as thugs instead of investigators and Batman is the Great Old One.
Batman punches out 1d6 thugs each round. (yay moderately mixed references)
12/02/2013 at 17:14 brulleks says:
Batman: Arkham arkham arkham arkham arkham chameleon
12/02/2013 at 17:27 devronius says:
Personally hoping for something with more puzzles, detective stuff, and stealth, rather than punching dudes in the face.
12/02/2013 at 17:33 oyog says:
I’ve recently been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my girlfriend and I keep imagining a Buffy game based on the Batman: Arkham Asylum mechanics. I dunno, it just seems like it would work.
12/02/2013 at 17:40 Vandelay says:
I believe there was a Buffy game in console land many years ago. Think it was called Chaos Bleeds, or something along those lines. I have no idea whether it was any good.
If you are watching it for the first time, you are in for a real treat.
12/02/2013 at 17:50 Vandelay says:
Was there not talk of a Victorian era Batman game that was canned? That could be a potential fit to the Arkham formula, even if it was set in a different universe.
Not sure what else they could do set in the same universe. Perhaps drop the Arkham and call it Batman: Gotham City, but the story was pretty much wrapped up in the last game.
12/02/2013 at 18:11 dare says:
BATFACE
err, no?
12/02/2013 at 18:13 JKjoker says:
im against going for “nation/world”, imho the open world part of arkham city was the worst part, too many different things at the same time spread way too thin, arkham assylum handled things a lot better by putting focus on only a handful of characters
also city’s ending of batman coming out of the closet holding his “lover” while his supposed “only pair of boobies he ever loved” got forgotten rotting on the floor left a weird taste in my mouth, if they keep going in continuity that scene is going to keep flashing in my mind at every npc interaction
12/02/2013 at 18:54 gritz says:
But prowling the city and swinging from skyscraper rooftops is something that is quintessentially Batman. Nothing in Arkham Asylum really captured that.
12/02/2013 at 19:42 JKjoker says:
i dont know about that, i feel fleshed out crazy criminals, gadgets and badass ass kicking are far more important than trying to outspiderman spiderman, too many games have done that better already, prototype, just cause 2, a lot of spiderman games, etc
In any case open world comes with the problem of having to fill so much empty space, they end up putting mundane things like repeating “save the damsel in distress for the 92685th time” miniquests, collectibles or stupid riddler puzzles that go against being “badass Batman”
do you want a Batman that pauses his quest to stop the Joker from killing hundreds of thousands to try a jumping puzzle for the 50th time ?
do you want down times between being awesome while you cruise though the city for 15 minutes after every mayor event ?
12/02/2013 at 20:02 gritz says:
Luckily, Arkham City had all of those elements in addition to capturing the feel of a hopelessly broken Gotham City, one of the most critical elements of what makes Batman Batman.
12/02/2013 at 20:15 JKjoker says:
we obviously disagree on this, city didnt do it for me
the game kept throwing things at me, “here is mr freeze” and i got into it “that awesome, i want more”, but no , freeze is over, go over to the penguin… ok let see… oh the penguin is interesting too, gimme more, NO, its Joker time now…. wha … ok, Joker it is, NO! its all a Ra’s al Ghul’s ploy… and so on
its all over the place, it does a lot of things right but it never lets me enjoy it before yanking it away and throwing me somewhere else, they tried to pack in too much, they ended up diluting everything
i feel the open world aspect is in part responsible, different parts of the city need to have different things right ? so Freeze over there, Penguin over here, Joker on the right, Bane on the left, etc
Asylum was all the time a Joker plot, with a handful of rests from the hands of lizardman, Scarecrow and plantwoman, i felt it worked better
13/02/2013 at 01:41 HothMonster says:
I’ll agree the story and city don’t mesh well. Though I think both were done marvelously, they just detract from each other. The open world interrupts the flow of the story and the one-night-ever-advancing-story restricts the open world.
I know AA was an open world but there was no reason to go walking around areas when you didn’t need to be. AC wants you to explore but nothing can really happen because the whole game takes place in a night so none of the side quests can really lead to anything worthwhile.
AC is cool and it’s a decent justification for giving you access to just a small civilian free area of Gotham but they should have kept you focused or tossed in tons of extra villains into side quests, not both.
12/02/2013 at 20:51 Urthman says:
Yes, but…Batmobiles! And Batplanes and Batsubmarines and Batcycles. Imagine a GTA game with good combat and with civilians you actually had to protect.
12/02/2013 at 22:10 JKjoker says:
yeah… i cant see any way they would be more interesting than fighting a super villain, its like asking Indiana Jones to go grade papers or Robocop to go catch some purse-snatcher
i dont know about you but any person standing in my way from a Joker (or whoever) event is getting run over or a missile up their ass and ill be screaming “just get there already” while i run red lights, hit the turbo button cause hundreds of collateral deaths and destroy half the city (hell, i’d go though buildings if could, a straight line is shorter!)
12/02/2013 at 23:10 Llewyn says:
You really don’t get Batman, do you?
12/02/2013 at 23:52 JKjoker says:
that is a difficult question, there are a lot of Batmans, which one am i supposed to be getting ?
are we talking about what would make a game fun here or are we talking about forcing the player to behave like one of the many versions of him ?
im sure (some) of the Batmans would stop to help anyone, i wont i want to avoid filler, thats something that comes with making the game too open, players will start behaving unbatmanlike
12/02/2013 at 18:37 Jason Moyer says:
How about just dropping all the goth crap and making a game based on Adam West batman or The Brave And The Bold?
12/02/2013 at 19:09 Asurmen says:
You mean all the stuff that’s made Batman Batman for past 20-30 years, and is so out of touch with what people know of Batman that no one would touch it? You mean that Batman?
12/02/2013 at 19:42 gritz says:
I mean, Batman has been dark since 1970, when O’Neill and Adams returned the character to his grim roots. It’s the campy Batman of the 50′s and 60′s that is the outlier.
12/02/2013 at 20:11 Jason Moyer says:
Brave And The Bold is a fairly new thing, and also awesome.
12/02/2013 at 19:39 Krayy says:
I’ve got a copy of “Gotham by Gaslight” that I read quite regularly, and a Victorian themed Batman skulking around Ye Olde London Towne bringing down Springheel Jack, The Wolfman, Mr Hyde et al would be frickin’ awesome. A simple cross of Dishonoured and the Arkhams.
12/02/2013 at 19:52 Dthen says:
Some of the ideas in the article are just plain batty…
12/02/2013 at 21:32 PC-GAMER-4LIFE says:
They won’t use GFWL again thats retired now by MS but Rocksteady made the Arkham games so no Rocksteady is not a good sign is it!
12/02/2013 at 21:35 Suits says:
Played both Arkhams to 100% completion, but i do feel there needs to be a different setting, the Asylum interior was basically the same as City’s and the exterior was just enlarged
12/02/2013 at 21:39 Rath says:
I’d like to see it use the Batman Beyond future setting as a framing device, where the various trophy cases and costumes on display in the Batcave each represent something about Bruces’ past that Terry has to coax out of him for information about a resurgent threat that’s popped up in the future.
Failing that, they could take on the No Mans’ Land story in order to have the whole of Gotham turn into a huge post-apocalyptic ruin.
13/02/2013 at 00:21 Faren22 says:
Batman: Arkham Ark
With his dying spasms, the Joker triggered a doomsday device that floods the entire world. Batman must pilot the BatShip around to different islands, picking up every survivor he finds – including criminals. Think Wind Waker with the Dark Knight.
13/02/2013 at 14:18 Lars Westergren says:
Or Waterworld. Batman wistfully climbs up the mast once a day and cape-glides for a few seconds, fantasizing about the buildings of Gotham City. But it is not the same anymore.