Before Monolith Productions came up with the excellent game Shadow of Mordor, the studio had first imagined a Batman game inspired by Nolan’s films.
Even though we will never see the color of this promising Batman game, images of a prototype have leaked on the Web. Rocksteady’s Arkham series could have had a serious competitor on its hands! Here is what remains of what was codenamed “Apollo” at Monolith Productions.
Batman: Shadow of Gotham, it could have had some character
In the 2010s, Batman fans could have been treated to a myriad of very promising games. Rocksteady had in any case set the bar very high with Arkham Asylum in 2009 and Arkham City in 2011. Another game centered on the Dark Knight could have been released, this time from Monolith Productions. There was then talk of a title inspired by Christopher Nolan’s excellent trilogy of films. We found Christian Bale’s Batman in a vast open world, where discretion was the most formidable weapon in his arsenal.
We could also have seen a first draft of the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor. As a reminder, this system allows us to create bosses specific to our game if we do not defeat them in the first encounter. Such a concept would have been fantastic in the Dark Knight universe. Unfortunately, the video game world was too small to accommodate two major open-world Batman games. The canceled title from Monolith Productions would probably have suffered too much from comparison with the excellent Arkham City.
This is why Warner Bros. tasked Monolith Productions with changing tack. The studio ultimately rather spoiled Lord of the Rings fans with the equally excellent Shadow of Mordor in 2014. Its sequel released in 2017, Shadow of War, was also a great success. Even today, the two titles represent one of the best video game adaptations in the Lord of the Rings universe. As Commissioner Gordon would say in The Dark Knight regarding the sadly canceled Batman game: “ This is the game we deserved, not the one we needed “. Monolith Productions, however, has not completely said goodbye to the DC Comics universe. A Wonder Woman game is indeed in production at their house, although we know very little about it at present.