Kotaku’s gossip column features a breakdown of what Avalanche Studios is hard at work on. One game is Just Cause 3. One game is a tie-in with the new Mad Max movie being made as we speak (more about that movie tomorrow). And the third is an open-world AAA comic book-based game with “asynchronous” multiplayer (i.e. you can do things in other people’s games without them there). Yep: Justice League.
Superannuation, the gossip columnist, notes that Avalanche says it’s working with three different publishers, and that Disney doesn’t do much AAA game development. But outside of DC and Marvel, there’s… well, honestly, there’s nobody.
It’s not The Walking Dead, since Telltale and Activision have that license sewn up tight. Image’s other properties tend to be less than game-friendly: it’s not like The Bulletproof Coffin or Grim Leaper exactly lend themselves to a video game.
Dark Horse would definitely approve a BPRD game but that iron seems to have cooled a while ago. Boom!, IDW and Dynamite have books that could be great games but they just don’t have the marketing heft or name recognition for a huge console game yet. Really, if it’s not Marvel, and frankly of late Marvel doesn’t seem to care much about games, it’s DC or it’s nobody.
At the same time, we’ve learned that DC want to get its characters out there in mediums outside of comic books. Lego Batman 2 features the whole Justice League. The next Batman game from Rocksteady will feature several not-Bats characters. Warners is making a fighting game starring some of DC’s big guns that, if previews are any indication, is going to have a gigantic roster.
All of this is building up to a Justice League movie. We all know this. So what’s the next logical step? Seeing how the faithful turn out for a JLA game. And who better than a company noted for making an open world game where you’re highly mobile?
This is pure speculation, but provided most of the information is correct, the parts line up.
What do you think? Would you play an open-world JLA game?
image courtesy DC