Last year, it was rumored that development team Rocksteady Studios, the guys who made all those rad Arkham games, would be stepping away from the Dark Knight and moving on to a new Superman game. Well, they refuted that and said they weren’t, and we aren’t calling them a liar, especially since other rumors are suggesting they are working on ‘Arkham: Legacy‘. Allegedly, of course.
We know that Superman is popular, and ever since Superman 64, fans have only gotten to play as Superman in much smaller spaces like fighting games such as Injustice or LEGO titles. Well, it seems that the open-world possibility was never abandoned by Warner Bros, as they are allegedly working on something that has been in development since as early as 2013.
WB has been actively trying to develop an open world Superman game since ~2013. A thread… pic.twitter.com/UMYHDGamiL
— James Sigfield (@Jsig212James) November 10, 2019
According to ScreenRant, James Sigfield is a “prominent superhero games leaker”, thus giving him the legitimacy to support his claims. Apparently Warner Bros have been working on trying to figure out just how they can take a character like Superman and drop him into an open-world of his own. His superpowers and abilities make that transition rather difficult when compared to a character like Batman and Spider-Man, who both managed to have a very successful string of open-world games. Of course, their powers and or abilities limited the impact they could have in the large environments around them, something that Superman’s powers just couldn’t abide by.
Sigfield added that WB desperately wanted Superman to use the engine and tools that made the Arkham Games, but adds that “Getting Superman’s flight to work in that frame would’ve been near impossible… at the time.”
Because of the above, Sigfield says that multiple Superman games were scrapped entirely, and even an unannounced Suicide Squad game suffered the same fate. However, it is possible that a Superman game is still happening, but the only thing we know for sure is that many were pitched, and many were thrown in the trash before even receiving a green light.
In his social posts, Sigfield highlights that one of the more prominent pitches contained villains like Brainiac and Doomsday, and would have taken place in a Kryptonian city, although we may never hear more about this title, let alone experience playing it.
To put it simply, Superman is a god with god-like powers and making a game where he feels fun to play, and actually feels like Superman would be really hard to accomplish. Spider-Man is still a young adult with limitations and Batman is just a man, but Superman is in a whole other class of hero that just sort of breaks all the formulas for what can be done to make a game on a home console. Maybe Warner Bros has found the magic formula, but until they announce it, it may be awhile before we see Superman in an open-world game of his own.
