After 4 Batman: Arkham games, Rocksteady is ready to move away from the hyper-successful franchise and instead develop their “dream game”.
According to producer Dax Ginn, they submitted Batman: Arkham VR “last week, which was an awesome experience”. A VR Experience and the idea of playing with detective mode in VR collectively was “an itch we had to scratch,” says Ginn.
They’ve certainly had their run with the Batman: Arkham universe; they made the Asylum, City, Knight, and VR games (Origins was developed by WB Games Montreal). Now, the Return to Arkham HD remaster for modern-gen systems (consisting of Asylum and City) is releasing October 18th, but it’s being ported by Virtuous. So what’s next for Rocksteady?
According to Ginn, “To be honest I don’t really know. We’re in a very enviable position where we have some time and space to decide what we’re doing next. We can sit back and think what our dream game would be, and we have Warner Bros.’ support to do that.” It’s unlikely that this is entirely true; they probably have some solid ideas by now, if not actual development beginnings. But it’s a good sign of a fresh start.
“I think there’s a little bit of sadness on the team. It feels like… breaking up?” Ginn suggests. “[people are] really split – there’s a feeling in the office like, it’s definitely time to do something else – we all accept that. But we all know Batman so well – we all feel comfortable in the Arkhamverse. We’re definitely letting go of that comfort blanket and putting ourselves in the position where whatever we do next is going to feel very different. There’s always an anxiety associated with change and that’s where we want to be. We want to feel uncomfortable because we want to make awesome stuff.”