Things sure have been quiet out of the arm of Warner Brothers Games that handle the games based on DC Comics. We’ve seen a few smaller licensed games, like the Telltale Batman adventure series, and several different Lego games featuring characters from DC comics. We’ve had the well-received DC fighting game Injustice 2 achieve commercial and critical success. We’ve also had a host of different mobile games using DC properties. But all has been quiet regarding another big Batman game in the vein of the Arkham series. Arkham Knight released in 2015, and we’ve barely heard a peep from studios Rocksteady and WB Montreal, that worked on previous mainline entries in the Batman Arkham series.
Arkham Knight ended with something that felt like it might have been a tease of the next entry in the series, but all these years later we’re still none the wiser what might have happened after the somewhat dramatic final moments of the game.
Rumors have circled for years about various different projects involving these studios. There has been talk that at some point there were plans for a Superman game. Other hints we heard was that there was to be a Damian Wayne followup to the Arkham games. There were also many different reports that there was going to be a Suicide Squad game, perhaps even one hoping to tie in directly to the 2016 Oscar-winning movie.
We all love a good Batman game, and the four Arkham games raised the bar for what we can reasonably expect from a superhero game adaptation, where you get to really feel like you’re donning the cape and cowl, and get to play out a good range of scenarios that all felt like they were straight from the pages of a comic.
In September last year, WB Montreal began teasing a new game, hinting at a Gotham setting, and alluding to The Court of Owls, an Illuminati-like underground organization pulling the strings behind the curtains of Gotham. We never got more than a tease or any kind of confirmation for what might be coming next.
Well, Eurogamer seems to have got ahead of the news and can confirm that the next DC games we should be expecting are a Suicide Squad game from Rocksteady Studios and a Gotham Knights game from WB Montreal. Despite these studios not having put out any games for several years now, these games are still some time off, and they’ll be targeting next-generation Xbox and Playstation consoles, although it’s a safe bet that there will be PC versions too. WB is preparing to give a first look at both of these titles during the online DC Fandome event scheduled for August. Suicide Squad is the band of misfits and villains, forced against their will to take on high stakes missions to do the dirty work for a shadowy government agency. Gotham Knights is a comic series that focused on Bruce Wayne and his expanded Bat-Family, the various different Robins, Batgirl, Oracle, Catwoman, and others. Could this focus on DC comics with an ensemble cast hint towards a multiplayer focus for these games? We’ll have to wait and see.
These reports are pretty light on details, for now, it’s not yet clear how these games will play, or if they will tie directly into the established Arkham universe, but we are still very interested in finding out more. We’ll keep an eye out for any more news on these exciting titles, and raise the bat-signals in the sky if we see anything new. What do you hope to see from these games? Let us know in the comments.