Ever since 2015’s excellent Batman: Arkham Knight rounded off the caped crusader’s video game adventures, fans have been wondering what developer Rocksteady have lined up next.
Rumours have swirled that the studio are working on everything from a Superman game, to a new Harry Potter RPG – but most agree the likely scenario is that the team are sticking with the DC universe for their next project.
While Superman seemed like the surest best for a while, the latest reports suggest that Rocksteady are taking it even further, creating a game with the entire Justice League – a team of superheroes whose lineup usually consists of Batman, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, and a revolving cast of other do-gooders.
Obviously it would be fascinating to play a superhero adventure game with so many different heroes, each with their own unique powers. While it might sound too good to be true, a recent leak posted on Reddit, coupled with recent job listings on Rocksteady’s own site do point towards a Justice League game being a reality.
The Reddit leak -which claims to be from a source close to Rocksteady – suggests that the game will be called Justice League: Crisis, and will be set in Arkham universe. They also say that the game will launch on PS5 and Xbox Scarlett in 2020, which also tallies with reports that this is when we’ll be seeing the next-gen consoles land.
The report goes on to claim that Justice League: Crisis is a game that can be played in single-player or co-op, and has players switching between a roster of heroes, including Green Lantern, Cyborg, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Oh, and Batman, obviously.
Players will apparently be able to explore a series of Arkham style sandbox cities, just as Batman did in his own games. So expect to see the likes of Metropolis and Keystone City make an appearance.
Rumours also abound that the game’s main villain will be Starro – a space parasite with mind control powers who actually brought the Justice League of America together for the first time in the comics.
Honestly, I think all of this sounds just a little too good be true. Multiple heroes and multiple open world maps sound hugely ambitious, and if Rocksteady only started work on such a game in 2015 I’m not sure we’ll see it by 2020.
With that said, job listings on Rocksteady’s own site are calling for folk with “intimate knowledge of comic book history”, and Warner Bros has registered a domain name for Justice League: Crisis.
Don’t get your hopes up, but certainly don’t rule anything out. Hopefully the truth of Rocksteady’s mystery game will reveal itself soon.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.