RockSteady Studios, the British game developers who originally brought us the masterpiece, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and its highly coveted follow-up, Batman: Arkham City, have suddenly updated their Twitter and allegedly posted a new banner on their website leading to speculation of the long-rumored Arkham sequel.
There has been a lot of discussion regarding a possible follow-up to Arkham City. Rumors have been stretching back as far as January of 2013, when WB secretly registered a fair amount of Arkham-related domain names, among them was Arkham Origins. Just weeks later, WB made an announcement that an Arkham game was in fact coming in 2013, but most fans were later deflated to discover that RockSteady Studios was not developing the project. Not all hope was lost, however. Though RockSteady remained quiet throughout the last year, there were rumblings from the underground that they were in fact working on their follow-up to Arkham City based on various posts by employees and RockSteady’s random job postings throughout the year despite supposedly not working on a new game.
Then, it happened. Kevin Conroy spilled those sweet, sweet beans that planted the seeds of hope in any RockSteady loyalist. Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman, admitted, via Twitter, that he had been working on a new Arkham game that was NOT Arkham Origins. Adding more fuel to the fire than actually quelling any damages, Conroy promptly deleted that Tweet.
The rumors have not stopped circulating, all of which remain unverified. However, two days ago, there was some activity on RockSteady’s official Twitter that set the Internet the ablaze, unleashing some amateur sleuths to uncover anything new. What did RockSteady really do get people excited? They changed the background of their Twitter to feature a few Black and White Batman figures. (They also changed their profile picture, but nothing interesting there.) Clever tease or simple aesthetic change?
Nevertheless, ComicBookMovie was set on the trail to discover something. For some odd reason, they decided to go through the list of domain names that were registered 13 months ago. Apparently, none of them work except for BatmanArkhamUniverse.com. Currently, the URL directs you to a blank screen, but at one point in time housed a basic template for a potential page.
There was also an unnoticed update to RockSteady’s official website. It was a banner actually advertising Arkham Universe, with the URL AreyouBatman.com attached to it. Unfortunately, the banner has disappeared from the page and AreyouBatman.com currently does not direct anywhere.
That banner remains the most dubious piece of evidence in this mystery. The screenshot was submitted by a fan and could very well be said fan’s deceitful attempt at arousing excitement. In fact, the screenshot of BatmanArkhamUniverse.com is also a bit shaky as well, so I’d take both those images with a grain of salt.
Regardless, that doesn’t change the fact that BatmanArkhamUniverse.com does in fact work, thus leading us to speculate on that as well as the sudden change on Twitter despite months of inactivity. The Twitter update is difficult to interpret, but it’s the only official thing we have, so it’s hard not to speculate. At the very least, it seems they might be revving up to start some preliminary marketing on the next Arkham game that Kevin Conroy flat out told us about.
Most folks are entertaining the idea that this could possibly be the title for RockSteady’s next Arkham game. Although possible, I’m not quite convinced yet. Fellow news writer here at DKN, Eric Joseph, speculates that it could simply be an official community set up by either WB or RockSteady, thus explaining the AreyouBatman.com URL. A universe of Arkham fans who are, in a sense, all Batman after having played the games. For me, it’s far too little to go on, so I’ve no real theory in mind, but as I’ve said, I feel like this could at least be the start of some marketing and I’m pretty excited about that.
Remember that all these screenshots are unverified and should be taken with your daily dosage of salt.
What do you think? New Batman game coming soon? Or simply a change of scenery for their Twitter… for the time being? Let me know.
Source – Twitter, ComicBookMovie (via ArkhamVerse)