Ever since Rocksteady and Warner Bros. brought us the excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum and its many sequels, there have been rumours and speculation about a Superman game as well, and a new rumour from leaker James Sigfield indicates that Warner Bros. has been working on an idea around the hero since 2013.
Sigfield took to Twitter to provide an alleged timeline of events. He claims that they've been trying to develop an open-world Superman title since 2013, which is when they started taking pitches from producers, directors, and others around the idea.
One of these concepts was allegedly something similar to last year's Spider-Man game from Insomniac, including a huge Metropolis and plenty of DC villains, although early in the prototype phase it was canceled by Warner Bros.
The second idea came from a 2014 pitch, again getting a prototype and a placeholder name of Superman: Unbound. This was set to follow the comic series/animated film storyline, and was set in a city called Kandor, which was on Krypton before Brainiac shrunk it and bottled it up. This was less focused on the open-world element, and would feature Brainiac, Doomsday, and other mind-controlled foes.
Apparently this was canceled because Warner Bros. was expanding their DC efforts elsewhere, requiring every game to use the Arkham engine. Getting Superman's flying to work in this way would have been "near impossible" at the time, Sigfield adds, and as a side note, the canceled open-world Suicide Squad game from Warner Bros. Montreal also had the same requirement, which would have seen you move from gargoyle to gargoyle as various members of the team.
Sigfield concludes that Warner Bros. has continued to pursue its ideas for an open-world Superman game, listening to various pitches, and that something may have been given the green light that he doesn't know about. As always though, these reports are far from confirmed, so take them with a healthy pinch of salt.
In other DC news, a new report last month pointed to a game called Arkham Legacy being in the works as well, so we may well see more Batman again before Superman shows his face.
Would you like a Superman game though?
Thanks, GamingBolt.