A canceled Batman video game based on The Dark Knight has lost a studio millions

The first “Batman” video game ever played was published in 1986. Simply with the title “Batman”, this isometric action adventure was praised for its relative intric about this time and even had a rudimentary “Save Game” feature that was not the norm in this era. Since then, mythical iconography around Batman has developed as a comic figure, which leads to corresponding play titles with deeper traditions and larger settings.

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We take in 2009 from “Batman: Arkham Asylum”, which brings the Batman Joker rivality to a completely different level, while the caped crusader is built as a stealth-favors, which is characterized in the malignant struggle. Apart from the fact that Gotham as a tricky city is full of villains, “Arkham Asylum” Batman forces himself to face his fears, which arise from a traumatic past. The result is a moody experience with high inserts, with which every corner of Arkham can be imprinted on your brain forever.

Christopher Nolan's “Batman Begins” received a video game of the same name in 2005, which uses a funny mix of stealth and beat-em-up fight to precisely reflect the reproduction of Christian Bales reproduction of the caped crusader. Although the game brought mixed reviews and a moderate success, there were plans to continue shortly after the publication of “The Dark Knight”. As it turned out, “The Dark Knight” enjoyed an exorbitant success (a worldwide gross of almost $ 1 billion), with Heath Ledger's career as a Joker stipulating his heir as a unique superhero film. However, no game for “The Dark Knight” was published, although the film's follow-up, “The Dark Knight Rises”, received the treatment of game adjustments in 2012.

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When the games with Nolan's “Batman” trilogy were not as outstanding on the genre (like the ambitious “Batman: Arkham Knight”), the non -assignment of “The Dark Knight” video game was glossed over. This means that the YouTube series “Unseen64”-the death of overlooked video games and other lost media analyzed a breakfast with the early game, which proves that “Dark Knight” was eventually in development. What happened here and why was such a significant title canceled?

Video game developer Pandemic Studios (known for the extraordinary “Star Wars: Battlefront” and “The Saboteur”) was commissioned to make “The Dark Knight” for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but the project felt doomed from the start. A new, undestested game engine called Odin was used to create it, which collapsed again and again, introduced detailed character models and dynamic lighting as a developer to capture Gotham's appearance and feeling. It was clearly not an option to switch to a different engine and to create everything from scratch. This asked the team to fix these fundamental problems, the defined schedules and deadlines.

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After Pandemic was unable to meet the film's release date in 2008, Electronic Arts (EA, which acquired the studio and the way things worked internally), set a date that combined with the DVD and Blu-Ray publication of the film. Unfortunately, the technical problems in connection with the base motor function and the gameplay increased again and again, and this second period was also missed.

A long production process also meant snowball costs, and when EA decided to Mermaid the project, he had already cost it 100 million US dollars (above Eurogamers). In combination with the 2008 financial crisis, this led to an unfortunate medley of bad luck and missed opportunities, although the developers had consistently put their expertise into a game that was ambitious even during their time before production. With regard to the botched use of Odin, this engine was never suitable for an open world game that required a quick and seamless gameplay, and the undestreded status tightened the technical problems that appeared again and again.

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This is a shame, since the leaked concept art and the early appearance of the game indicate a dirty, terrible urban landscape, in which Gotham, with a mixture of old and new architecture, which is rude about its inhabitants. This could easily have been a coveted entry, since the game already had a solid, opera history that was ready to dramatize into a medium that enables improved immersion and artistic freedom. Well, I think some things should never be.