Batman - Arkham origins exclusive - Where will the Batman series go next? - Game on

The night is always darkest before the dawn but I promise you the dawn is coming. Oh sorry I was just having a Batman moment because I'm on the actual set of Commissioner Gordon's office from the Dark Knight trilogy to check out the new Batman game - Batman: Arkham Origins and using my second world's best detective skills, after Batman, third if you count Sherlock Holmes I'm going to find out some details about the future of the Arkham-verse. But first, let's look at Arkham Origins the latest in Warner Bros. the series of flying mammals dress up simulators. The game is set on Christmas Eve in Bats's second year of crime fighting and as a little Crimbo gift the villainous Black Mask puts a big old bounty on Batman's pointy eared head which attracts a group of highly trained assassins intent on taking him down. Seriously the only guy who has worse Christmas's than this is John McClain. The aim of setting the game in the Dark Knight's second year is to show a rawer Batman. One that is still angry over the death of his parents and from a gameplay perspective just that little bit more brutal when taking out Gotham City's over-abundance of thugs. But could the Arkham series go earlier in Batman's career? Could we be playing a game based on Frank Miller's famous comic book run, Year One, sometime in the future? Arkham Origins Senior Producer, Ben Mattes explains why we probably wont. Year One, you would theoretically be playing a Batman who's not yet good at being Batman right? If you've read the book, it's almost embarrassing some of the stuff that happens to him right and so it would've been a real stretch to say that he's got all these great gadgets and he's just flowing free-flow style flowing from one enemy to another and doing 50 hit combos and yet he gets stabbed in the leg while he tries to stop a couple of kids from stealing a television set. So we also have to assume that the old age Batman from the Dark Knight Returns at the other end of the timeline is off the cards for similar reasons. Because the last thing you want when you're facing off against killer croc is a slipped disc and it might be hard to get that patented Bat growl when you've got a Werther's Original in your mouth. So to find out where the series is headed we probably need to pin down just what it is that defines the Arkham game universe. I think the absolute first thing, the pillar, is that WWBD - What would Batman do? You have to keep players in the fantasy of being the character. What would Batman do? Well Batman does have a habit of disappearing right in the middle of a conversation. But that's not going to get anything done so lets find out what stories a new Arkham game could feature. It's hard to speculate about where the franchise might go. One of the brilliant things about the universe of Batman is as you know there are hundreds of stories that could be told and we now have a kind of career timeline that's been established between Arkham Origins which is year two, Arkham Asylum which is roughly speaking year seven and then Arkham City which is roughly speaking year nine and so I think another potential opportunity should this franchise continue is to continue to explore opportunities inbetween those elements as well because there's lots of wonderful things that happen in that space. So the future of Arkham remains a mystery. At the least we can make up for our lack of detective prowess by playing as the world's greatest detective in Batman: Arkham Origins.