WB Montréal is likely developing a new Batman: Arkham title, or so the Canadian developer behind 2013’s divisive Arkham Origins led fans to believe through a series of enigmatic tweets uploaded back in January showing symbols of the League of Shadows alongside the phrase “capture the knight.”
As we know, WB Montréal was also set to appear at E3 later this year, where it would announce its new DCEU projects alongside Arkham-founding developer Rocksteady, but the event was cancelled out of concern for the spread of the coronavirus. Initially, though, they were thought to have been working on a sequel to the 2015 Arkham Knight centered around Bruce Wayne’s son, Damian, but when supposedly official concept art for the game was leaked on 4Chan, they neither confirmed nor denied the project’s existence.
Prospects of a Damian-centered game soon grew slimmer when DC Comics writer Scott Snyder retweeted one of the aforementioned posts by WB Montréal along with the text “Wait for it…#bewarethecourtofowls,” referring to a popular secret organization which he once created for the Batman mythos, and one which the Dark Knight’s prodigy has never really faced on his own before.
As far as size goes, though, it’s pretty safe to say that the latest entry will also be the biggest as, throughout the Arkham franchise, each new installment upped the ante from the last. Where Arkham City opened up the claustrophobic interior of the asylum to an entire neighborhood, Origins gave players access to an entire city, and Knight expanded city another four or five times over.
In fact, according to James Sigfield of Geeks WorldWide, this next outing will at least be “a little bigger,” with the writer saying the following:
Gotham City was supposed to be MASSIVE in the Damian game, so it's a safe assumption this one will at least be a little bigger. https://t.co/1NewAhmTyV
— James Sigfield (@Jsig212James) February 20, 2020
Of course, bigger does not always equal better. Where the virtual world of Arkham Asylum was by far the smallest of all four games, it was also the most well received, while the map of Origins, though indeed much larger than that of City, was widely criticized for being lifeless and inorganic.
Moving forward, let’s hope that the Montréal team knows how to use their next-gen systems to create a world that isn’t just big, but actually feels lived in, too.
