15 Years Later, Rocksteady Should Move Beyond Batman

Rocksteady Studios, the makers behind the genre-defining Arkham trilogy, has been one of the industry’s leading developers for over a decade and a half. Its seminal Batman games created the template that dozens of superheroes and fictional characters would follow, from Captain America and Spider-Man to Mad Max and Celebrimbor.

But after moving on from the Dark Knight to work on the disastrous live service Suicide Squad game, one industry insider suggests that Rocksteady, for better and worse, is gearing up for a return to Gotham.

Nick Baker, known as @Shpeshal_Nick on X (formerly Twitter), tweeted Monday that Rocksteady is working on a new Batman game. Baker, who is a co-founder of the publication XboxEra, added that Sony is looking to fund the project. In response to one X user, Baker added that this wouldn’t be a remaster of a past game, but an entirely new Batman game.

Baker didn’t elaborate on the reason for his guess and didn’t credit a source. So for now, this rumor should be treated as speculation. However, it wouldn’t be the most surprising development. After Suicide Squad lost Warner Bros millions of dollars earlier this year, it would make sense for the company to greenlight something of a guaranteed hit. In the world of media, few things are as fail-proof as Batman.

If a new Batman game from Rocksteady is happening, however, I can’t think of a bigger missed opportunity for a talented studio to subvert expectations by doing something different.

In the 15 years since Batman: Arkham Asylum, Rocksteady has repeatedly shown out. It pioneered free-flow combat, which remains a standard in the character action genre. The studio has shown a knack for fun puzzle design with Riddler trophies. With Arkham Asylum and 2011’s Arkham City, in particular, Rocksteady’s ability to craft dense, interesting open worlds with a sense of history has been second to few others in the AAA space.

And yet we haven’t seen what Rocksteady can do independent of DC Comics’ top hero. Not having to design game mechanics that further the fantasy of being Batman can open new possibilities for the studio.

Making something wholly original would also open the door to more creative storytelling. The Batman Arkham games tell decent stories and have a fair share of shocking twists and turns. But Rocksteady was still at the mercy of approvals from its parent company. If it worked on another licensed game, at least something with a lower profile than DC and Warner Bros. flagship character would grant it more freedom to get weird.

Suicide Squad was a step in this direction on both of these fronts. While the game is currently working towards undoing its titular conceit, its premise was a big swing that offered players something they’d never seen before. And while the core loop of the game was still beholden to what works in live service, the traversal mechanics were mostly inventive and fun to use.

While history dictates a new Batman game from Rocksteady would be great, I can’t imagine what’s left for it to do. Players have already had the chance to fight all of Batman’s coolest villains. Players have explored an open Gotham City by air and by Batmobile. There have been spinoffs exploring this version of Batman’s earliest days as the Caped Crusader. Not to mention, Rocksteady’s closed the book on the trilogy pretty definitively not once, but twice.

Batman should continue to exist in games. He’s an iconic character with tons of potential in the medium. But those games should come from newer creators with a fresh spin on the character. Rocksteady, on the other hand, should move on to something that encourages it to flex its biggest strengths as a studio in bold new ways. Create original characters, fiction, and lore. Make a game that centers on its ability to make fun traversal systems and atmospheric environments. If it must stay in the superhero genre, maybe it can finally crack the code and deliver Superman’s first great video game.

It's been 15 years since Rocksteady kicked off gaming’s greatest superhero trilogy. And while I don’t doubt the talent working on projects behind the scenes, few things would be more disappointing than knowing such a talented developer is still shackled to a franchise it mastered so long ago.