New Arkham game rumors start solidifying 2019

Started by JasonPratt, October 20, 2019, 09:49:21 PM

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JasonPratt

Pursuant to my (usual) screed about the four (actually five or six) Batman Arkham games and their relative merits (which I talked about in the Friday thread, since every year Gus likes to ask which Arkham game he should try playing  O:-) ):

I just learned that a little less than a month ago, Rocksteady Montreal (the side studio behind the Origins and Blackgate games, plus the Cold, Cold Heart Origins DLC) tweeted for the first time in four years on Batman day (80th anniversary of Detective Comics introduction of Batman).

As with some other WarnerBrothers connected companies, they tweeted footage of someone shining a Batman spotlight on a building. In their case however they dropped in four quick icon images; and then the next day they released the full images with the caption "Capture the Knight".

No one knows for sure what the images mean yet, although the fourth one is very obviously a demon's head -- thus representing Ra's al Ghul (and Talia no doubt, Batman's wife ;) ). The other three morph into each other so seem like "degrees" of initiation into a secret society, possibly connected to the League of Assassins run by Ra's.

None of that is likely to mean anything except to Batfans. Ra's al Ghul is an ecoterrorist trying to wipe out most of the Earth's population in DC Comics, and a very major ranking Batman villain, being the first one to figure out Batman = Bruce Wayne. He wanted Wayne to marry his daughter Talia, which eventually happened, and take over running the League of Assassins, which did not. This storyline borrowed heavily from the Fu Manchu stories, which Marvel owned the rights to for a while in the 70s around the same time. Ra's aside from being a Batman-level skilled fighter with tons of experience, and a strategic genius in his own right, occasionally rejuvenates himself from near-death with natural earth chemical emanations which he alone knows how to locate, which he calls Lazarus Pits; so he has lived for centuries. But the immersions are less effective every time he uses them, so he knows time is running out, which is why he wants the best man possible to marry his daughter. Wayne's son with Talia, Damien Wayne, is the current Robin in comics continuity.

Fans of the CW network's Arrowverse shows, will know that a lot of Batman villains get repurposed into Green Arrow villains for the show (because they originally wanted to do a Batman series), and that includes Ra's for one season, with several characters such as Malcolm Merlyn (main villain of the first season and a recurring ongoing character) being League of Shadow operatives. Talia has been referenced but her sister is a major secondary character -- who married the Green Arrow (in very much an arranged marriage since she's totally lesbian. ;) )

Ra's was the major villain of the Nolan Batman trilogy, especially Batman Begins; with the Bat-villain Bane being written as connected to the the League as a rogue enforcer in the third film (and Talia playing an important role as well).


Rumors have been circulating for more than a year that RockMont have been hard at work on a new Arkham game (since the main studio has chosen never to do another one, passing the reins back to the side studio). Two of those rumors turned out to be true: a Suicide Squad game (probably set after Origins) and a Damien Wayne inheritance game (set after ArkKnight); but both have been revealed as canceled. Eight, or now nine months ago, RockMont produced a short video where some of their employees were hard at work on a game while wearing an icon, somewhat similar to the ones they recently showed up, clearly showing an owl, which strongly hinted at a Court of Owls game. They're sort of like the League of Assassins but prefer to run metropolitan cities in the background instead of trying to genocide them, and featured in a strong Batman comics story created and written by Scott Snyder; so would make a good choice for Bat-villains not yet used (or even referenced) in the Arkham series.

Not coincidentally! -- Scott Snyder also tweeted shortly after RockMont's icon reveal tweet about a month ago, directly referencing their tweet and declaring the time is coming along with #BewareTheCourtofOwls. This tweet was quickly removed, but fans still have screencaps of it.

This all means RockMont is probably around a year out from releasing the next Arkham game, which Warner Brothers will no doubt time for synergy with the start of their new Batman film trilogy (itself based on the highly regarded "Long Halloween" storyline apparently, which has nothing to do with the plot bits being teased so far) starring Robert Patterson.


My best guess from the bits thrown out so far, will be that this takes place around the time the first Robin (Dick Grayson) is joining up, and will involve a power struggle between the Court of Owls who want to manage cities from the shadows and the League of Assassins (perhaps from which they came as a splinter group) wanting to destroy cities; and particularly over control of the Lazarus Pit which the Arkham City game established was a key part of the industrialization of Gotham in the late 1800s (in a very steampunkish way). Ra's will do his usual thing of wanting to convince Wayne to join his crew and marry Talia; they'll fall in love but tragically she'll be unable to reconcile her love for her father with her love for Bruce; a typical Batman / Ra's storyline (already presumed from events during the Arkham City game). The Court should be kind-of split between Batman helping protect against the increasing super-villain threat, and Batman screwing over their connections to traditional organized crime; but won't want him operating as a rogue agent (from their perspective) in any case.

Aside from those basic story beats, we could easily see some other things going on. Poison Ivy is a major Batvillain we haven't seen an origin for in the Arkham games yet, although she plays main roles in two of the (chronologically) later games; and her botany though not her character directly was teased already in Origins, specifically connected to the origin of tragic Bat-villain Victor Fries (as Mr. Freeze) -- which would be a somewhat new connection between their stories (despite Schumaker's Batman and Robin film just kind of plonking them together). She and Freeze would not likely be cooperating and her origin could pit them against each other, either as a side story or in some connections to the main story. Rocksteady likes to keep using assets, naturally, so expecting more asset usage is easy to guess. ;)

Along that line (of naturally liking to use already-developed assets), it's also possible that they could confirm a running fan theory that the second Robin, Jason Todd, is a more-or-less reformed and cured Lonny Machin, i.e. the terrorist social activist Anarky. (Introduced to the Arkhamverse by the Origins team, and connected visually with Todd in the ArkKnight game via the opening prologue: the writers later confirmed Todd appears in that scene, and not only is he wearing an outfit very similar to Anarky's in Origins, but he has scratched Anarky's sign into a table. Unseen gfx show Todd's face behind the mask in that scene, too! The writers love to work deep on their stories for this series....  :smitten: Anarky in the Arkhamverse wanted to be Batman's first sidekick; and while he has blonde hair, so did Todd in the comics originally before dying it black to help throw off identification that he wasn't the original Robin.) So I wouldn't be surprised if the story is set sometime around when Grayson stops being Robin and goes off to be Nightwing, to be replaced by Todd at the end of the game. (Thus allowing some pre-developed asset usage there, too!)

We haven't had a Two-Face origin yet either in this series, so that might factor in, too; especially in connection to the Court's political activities (since Two-Face is former District Attorney Harvey Dent, like in the second Nolan film.)

Penguin and Black Mask are likely to be running their gangs, trying to recover from being taken down in the Origins games.

Catwoman was introduced in the Blackgate game, and is a popular character with assets ready to use, so could be included.

RockMont was who introduced the Suicide Squad and its origination as a major plot in Blackgate (with connections back to the main Origins game, too), and they were definitely working on a Suicide Squad game, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some of that work put to use here.

Harley Quinn is still a popular character somehow (for aesthetic reasons at least ;) ), and she has strong connections to the Squad in the comics nowadays, plus the DCEU live action film, a sequel to which is on the way this year (or early next), so I expect her to be in if the Squad is in; ditto Deadshot and Killer Croc (as in the film) both of whom have long-running appearances in the series so far.

I don't really expect the Joker to play a major part, if the main story is about the Owls vs the League vs Batman; but I do expect cameos, especially if Harley gets involved.

The Riddler won't have started operating as "the Riddler" yet, but he was originated in Origins, and the RockMont writers demonstrated they know how to keep his contributions to the main story reasonable while sidelining the sidequests to be purely secondary. (Something the main Rocksteady writers have had trouble with.)

Some other villains could show up, but those make the most sense under the circumstances. The Arkham writers like to write densely and cram the stories with fanservice, so I do expect a character roster on par with past games. (With less plot-relevant sidequests being relegated to DLC release for extra cash, I don't doubt. ;) )
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