WB's Next Batman Game ISN'T Arkham, Releases 2020

By Ewan Paterson / February 5, 2020

WB Games Montreal's heavily teased Batman project has been one of the most anticipated releases every year, for the last five years. The studio's last major release was 2013's criminally underrated Batman: Arkham Origins, and the story since has been anything but smooth sailing. A planned sequel to Origins revolving around the Suicide Squad was canned after Warner Bros. were left unconvinced by the co-op gameplay, while a sequel to Arkham Knight where players would take control of Damian Wayne was supposedly cancelled late in 2016.

The prevailing rumour since has been that Montreal are working on a sequel to Arkham Origins called Arkham Legacy, which would build upon the Court of Owls teases from the aforementioned prequel. This seemed a given once the studio started actively teasing the title late last year, but rumours over the last month have cast doubt on whether the game will actually tie into the Arkhamverse at all, which was kickstarted by Rocksteady all the way back in 2009 with Arkham Asylum.

Now, according to Geeks WorldWide, it seems as though those rumours may have been accurate after all.

In an article posted late yesterday evening, the outlet claims that not only will Montreal's next Batman game release autumn this year, but that it will also be a "soft reboot" of the Arkham franchise. This new game will then kick-off a "DC Game Universe", and while GWW are quick to mention that the roadmap is "foggy", they also state that the title will be followed by a next-gen DC offering from Rocksteady, and that a next-gen Superman game is also in the works at a different WB studio.

News that the next Batman game supposedly won't connect to the Arkhamverse is sure to come as a shock to Bat-fans, who have all grown accustomed to Rocksteady's interpretation of the character's mythos over the last ten years. Still, it's unlikely that WB will divest from all of the Arkhamverse's tenets; if GWW are right then Rocksteady's involvement with the first next-gen DC game is a testament to that. Here's hoping the series is just as strong without the Arkham tagline as it was with it.