Why no Dark Knight game?
 

We got Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, Prince Caspian, Wall E, Kung Fu Panda, Hellboy, and countless others I can't even remember. Granted they're not the highlights of the console, but where is The Dark Knight?

Did D.C. just screw the pooch on this one? Failing to capitalize on the biggest movie of the year?

Hopefully they realized that most video games based on movies suck badly, and didn't want to desecrate what I hear is one of the best comic book movies ever.

That does seem strange, like Lego Batman was delayed two months or something.

I liked Batman Begins wasn't great but I thought it was a lot of fun, but to short

Maybe you can say that now, but a game would have been greenlit about the same time as the movie. They would have had no idea how critically acclaimed the movie may have turned out to be a couple years down the road. I would think, as with typical tie-ins, it is just another avenue to bring in more money to offset the cost of the movie if it does tank. So it is kinda odd that there isn't one coming out.

maybe it would be bad taste to have someone take heath ledger's role in a video game

exactly what i was gunna say:)

I totally enjoyed the Batman Begins game. :up: I always hated Stealth and Driving in games but the BB games did both well. In fact, the BB games helped find a new appreciation for stealth tactics in video games.

Huh? Why?

I heard rumors that EA is doing the Batman game. Probably come out with the DVD release kinda like the Simpsons game.

Just to add, I found on the IGN site that Pandemic is actually working on the Dark Knight game:

http://wii.ign.com/articles/789/789642p1.html

Quantum of Solace looks pretty great, so since Batman is such a popular franchise, I would hope that we eventually get a game of that caliber (assuming it lives up to the hype) eventually. But there is Lego Batman and DC vs MK to wet my DC appetite for the time being. If only I can get another Ultimate Alliance type game starring DC people (I really dig Justice League), would I be set.

Why would Heath Ledger be in the game? Last I checked the movie was about Batman and the Joker, as I assume the game would. :) There were Jokers before Ledger and there will be Jokers after Ledger. People need to get over it, especially considering no one has seen it yet.

Also, the Dark Knight game would have been in production prior to Ledger's death, and we would have heard about it being worked on. So his death can't be the reason that the game isn't coming out to tie in with the theatrical release.

Also, I enjoyed the Batman Begins game. The mechanics felt solid. If they had a little more time to work on it, I think it could have been a pretty good little gem. As it is, the combat is too simplistic, but I did like the way you could instill fear in your enemies, and gliding with the cape was a nice touch, as well.

boredsilly, meet:

http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/~e...e%20Heroes.jpg

I own a PS2, and I like this game much more than Ultimate Alliance. But most people don't think it is up to UA's caliber ... I simply don't agree.

Back on the topic with Batman/Dark Knight, I loved the GBA version of Batman Begins. I'm also a little surprised they didn't have a movie tie-in ready for Dark Knight.

JL:Heroes was an awesome game!! Too bad they didn't make a 360 version. The Backwards compatibility for this game was truly really halfassed and it was really sad to see the problems while playing JLH. But even with that, I still enjoyed it. I think I played it all the way through like 2 or 3 times. :up:

Like I always say, people put very little effort into DC games and that sucks. It's like DC games are just done for shits and giggles. Why can't we get an DC game on the level of a Marvel UA??? Shit, MUA has a sequel coming and no one is even bothering with a JLH sequel.

are there any really good Batman games on any system, past or current?

i think the only one i've ever played is "Batman" for NES. it's not bad, but a little repetitive.

Even though video games based on movies havn't been the greatest, i still think a dark knight game would be successful just because so many people are interested in anything that has to do with this movie right now

Me think that there is no Dark Night game because of Midway's upcoming Mortal Kombat vs DC game. Maybe Midway has acquired some kind of exclusivity to these characters from the DC universe.

I would also like to see a DC game with the style of Ultimate Alliance. JL Heroes was good but it doesn't rank up to UA.

Hopefully if there is a Dark Knight game in production, they're taking their time with it...like the Bourne Conspiracy, and not rushing it out like the other pile of crap videogame/movie tie ins.

= J

Here's an article about the upcoming The Dark Knight game.

Actually it reads that it is about the fact that a game is not coming... at least not anytime soon. :shrug:

Re: Why no Dark Knight game?
 

Here's a long detailed article about the demise of The Dark Knight video game:

Pandemic's Brisbane studio is no more, the result of ongoing cost and headcount reductions throughout Electronic Arts. To put it kindly, EA restored the studio's independence; in effect, they washed their hands of several years of aborted projects and management decisions. In the aftermath, we have heard from several inside sources who have each shared their thoughts on how it all went wrong.

NOTE: While our sources generally agree on the series of events that led to the studio's closure, they have each placed varying emphasis on the significance of certain factors. This is understandable, as their different roles at the company afforded them unique perspectives on the situation, and shouldn't detract from the core reasons why the studio eventually closed. We have noted these differences where they arise.

When Pandemic Brisbane wrapped up Destroy All Humans 2 in late 2006, they didn't want to work on another iteration of the series. THQ wanted them to do another sequel, this time on Xbox 360 and PS3, but Pandemic eventually declined the offer. Instead, their focus shifted to a couple of new IPs.

At this point, the studio was split into two small teams - Alpha and Bravo. Alpha began pre-production on a concept that would eventually become a project known internally as "The Next Big Thing". It was to be an open world game for the Wii. (Our sources did not reveal any more details than this about the actual game design, except to say it still looks impressive today.)

The Bravo team were pitching a few ideas to Pandemic's LA office, but they were all rejected in favour of an LA concept billed as Destroy All Humans except with Crypto replaced with the son of Satan and tormented souls as collectibles. Enthusiasm for this project was low and within a few months it was canned, to Brisbane's relief. (Despite some thematic similarities to Dante's Inferno, in development at EA Redwood Shores, one source assures us there is no connection between these two games.)

Bravo's new project came as a result of Pandemic's negotiations with Time Warner and DC Comics, which in turn lead to a contract with EA to make a Batman game. The only hitch was that EA's rights to the Batman IP were set to expire in 18 months. EA needed the Batman game released within that timeframe. Pandemic felt this meant EA would do anything they could to ensure that timeframe would be met and they could recoup their investment.

Pre-production commenced with the Brisbane team excited by the idea of turning such a revered franchise into the as-yet-untitled game. It seems that it took several months before the team was informed that the Batman game they were making had to be based on the upcoming Dark Knight film. This not only meant they were tied to a very specific vision of Batman - and that several months worth of planning had to be scrapped - but they were now tied to an even tighter deadline: the theatrical release of the movie.

With the Batman game now officially a Dark Knight game, Pandemic decided to make an open world Gotham City despite none of the senior members of the team having experience in making open world games. (Mercenaries was made in LA, not Brisbane.)

Compounding this problem was the choice of technology: the internal engine being used at the LA office for Saboteur. It soon proved unsuitable for the type of huge open world it needed to handle. One source notes that they never got the streaming to work properly and that instead of scrapping the engine, they kept modding it in directions it was originally never intended to go. Another mistake.

(None of this should not be taken as a criticism of Saboteur, still very much in development at Pandemic LA. Our sources believe that title is well on track to deliver a quality game. What's important is that the Saboteur tech was built for that type of game, not the streaming open world environments of the Dark Knight game.)

The tech issues were exacerbated by introducing an HDR lighting "solution" which not only took seven months to implement, but needed more valuable time whenever environmental changes were made. Our sources do disagree on this point: one claims that it would take an entire weekend to re-bake the lighting information into the building meshes; another claims this is an exaggeration.

While our sources agree the results were visually impressive, the game would bring the studio's dev kits to their knees, typically crashing within minutes of being loaded and rarely capable of running at more than 5 frames per second. One source claims this is what happens when management prioritises art beyond the capabilities of the game's technology.

On the design side, the design team didn't receive level design tools until six months into the project. Meanwhile, management was making design decisions above the Lead Designer, many of which had to be reversed once the tools were in place.

As for the quality of the design, our sources disagree. One says many of the game's mechanics were brilliant and potentially revolutionary, while the batmobile and batbike were loads of fun once you looked past the streaming problems. Another says the missions were mostly borrowed from other open world games and the core gameplay was dull and boring. The work on the sound design, however, was reportedly magnificent and beautifully responsive to the in-game action.

Either way, for the Dark Knight to become a title worthy of the Batman name, it needed more resources to sort out its host of design and technical problems. More and more people were brought onto the team, mostly as external contractors. At one point, our source says, there were 130 people working on the game. The human resources were there, but a more important resource was missing.

Time.

The real killer was having to hit the same release date as the movie. Eventually it became clear this would be impossible and the decision was made to focus on launching to coincide with the Dark Knight DVD release in December 2008. This would be the absolute deadline, as EA's rights to the Batman IP expired in December.

By September, the Dark Knight game was supposed to be in alpha. However, there were still massive problems with the game: huge glitches with the missions, the graphics, the technology. These were all issues that potentially could have been fixed, but essentially the quality just wasn't at a level it should have been at that time in the production schedule. The game had to ship just a few months later, but everyone knew it was in no state to do so.

The Dark Knight was canned.

Pandemic Brisbane lost about 20 people at this point, not an unusual move when a major project like that goes under. The remainder of the Bravo team stayed on, unsure of what would happen next. Then when in December EA made moves to reduce its workforce, Pandemic's Brisbane studio was always a prime candidate to feel those cuts.

One source claims that EA's new label structure is setup to make this type of cut easy to administer. On the one hand, EA promotes the likes of Bioware, DICE, Maxis and Pandemic and forges high profile deals with the likes of Valve and Grasshopper because, to gamers, those names are more valuable than EA.

On the other hand, our source claims, EA affords these teams a degree of autonomy that makes it easier to pull the plug when things don't go according to plan. Pandemic's inability to produce a hit title in recent years meant that something had to give. One source suggests that Brisbane was amputated in order to save the rest of the patient in LA.

The end result is that Pandemic Brisbane was let go by EA. The Alpha team is apparently still together in some form and retains the rights to "The Next Big Thing". They may be in a position to pitch this Wii title to other publishers. The Bravo team is gone. And so is the Dark Knight game.

Re: Why no Dark Knight game?
 

Batman's entire video gaming history has been nothing short of abysmal. There were four Batman games on the original Xbox, and while Batman Begins was okay, the other three were TERRIBLE.

The fact that there wasn't a game to go with the movie, or that no one took Batman Begins and brought it to current gen systems is simply absurd. Lego Batman wasn't even positioned properly to capitalize on the film.

Re: Why no Dark Knight game?
 

I have some hope for Batman: Arkham Asylum as I love what I've seen from screenshots but most of the Batman games are pretty shitty.