Revealed during a Warner Bros financial meeting (the transcript of which you can read here), the third game in the Warner/DC’s Batman videogame franchise has been confirmed. CFO John K. Martin is quoted as saying:
We expect [digital home video revenue] to grow close to 20% in 2013. And we also have a strong games release this year, which will include the next release in the Batman Arkham franchise.
So there you have that. Cue excitement from fans worldwide.
Batman: Arkham Asylum was, all things considered, a fairly average game, if you’ll accept our critique of it. But Arkham City, which did not receive a review on the site (specifically because I only played it in November of last year) was rather outstanding, giving Batman an open-world environment to explore and filling the game to the brim with Batman mythology for a truly great videogame experience, like Assassin’s Creed by way of Grand Theft Auto (minus all the cars). Such fun. Any sequel that comes from that, assuming that the excitement of the game can be matched, will be highly anticipated from us.
However, the thread that held these two games together – Paul Dini – has already confirmed he will not be returning, stating that he had other work elsewhere tying him up until 2013. Not only that, but Mark Hamill also confirmed that he was no longer planning to voice the Joker any longer, which wouldn’t have been that big of a deal all things considered; Arkham 3 could just not have the Joker as a villain. Assumedly a big tease for what was to come lay dormant in the side quests of Arkham City, from the appearance of Azrael who warns that “from the ashes of Arkham, Gotham will burn, and you will burn too,” to a run in with Hush who promises to return and wreak havoc on Batman’s life. So who knows?
Yet, Warner/DC had stated that the next Batman game would be a prequel, featuring most of the Justice League heroes and focusing once again on the relationship between Joker and Batman, but this time through their first meeting. So we’ll see how that plays out.
For more clues, though: in January of this year is when the first tease came, when Mark Monitor’s – a company that purchases domains for third parties – purchased a whole bunch of Batman domains, all giving ideas to what the next game could entail:
- arkhamuniverse.com (Arkham Universe)
- batmanarkahmuniverse.com (Batman Arkham Universe)
- batmanarkhamarises.com (Batman Arkham Arises)
- batmanarkhambegins.com (Batman Arkham Begins)
- batmanarkhamdarkknight.com (Batman Arkham Dark Knight)
- batmanarkhamknight.com (Batman Arkham Knight)
- batmanarkhamlegend.com (Batman Arkham Legend)
- batmanarkhamlegends.com (Batman Arkham Legends)
- batmanarkhamnight.com (Batman Arkham Night)
- batmanarkhamorigins.com (Batman Arkham Origins)
- batmanarkhamstories.com (Batman Arkham Stories)
- darkknightarkham.com (Dark Knight Arkham)
- dcarkhamuniverse.com (DC Arkham Universe)
- dcarkhamverse.com (DC Arkhamverse)
- thearkhamuniverse.com (The Arkham Universe)
Some of those certainly give credence to the prequel idea. It’s either a prequel or some massive DCU spanning epic.
We’ll certainly be following this story as it develops, so keep your eyes here for any and all updates we find. And if you haven’t played Arkham City yet, pick up the Game of the Year edition. It’s quite fun, and relatively cheap.
