I'd be happy to conclude the franchise with Arkham 3. I don't want it to go the Assassins creed route and drive itself into the ground.
Oh, but that's what games do nowadays. If it makes money, they're gonna squeeze every potential penny from the franchise.
That said, even if the writing/storylines begin to completely suck, while that would draw away from the game the gameplay itself is still rock solid. Rocksteady created a fantastic combat engine, and improved it in AC. Granted new things should be tried, and they will be. But WB realizes they've got a hit series on their hands and its not going away anytime soon.
I'd be ok with that. I've never watched the show and don't understand the love of it some people have, but that's only because I've never watched it, not that I think it isn't deserving. I really don't know.
Agreed. I've loved the games so far, but honest, I feel like the story hasn't been that great in either of the games so far. Two year plans with two studios devoted to the franchise isn't a bad thing ,but I feel like keeping one studio on a franchise for a decade is just testing exhaustion. I'd rather see Origins, then a sequel from Rocksteady that wraps up all the loose ends possible and takes advantage of the capabilities of the new console, and then both teams moving on to something new.
Again, the strength of the Arkham games isn't the storyline, but the gameplay. Of course, stronger writing could only make the games better, so I'm all for that. And again, I do think Rocksteady will make Arkham 3 and then move on, but I think WB Montreal will be doing Arkham games for the forseeable future.
Speaking to one of your earlier points, DiB, an animated series by Timm seems like a waste. I've liked the Arkham games. They've done a great job of interpreting the characters in a way that works for video games, but are these interpretations of the characters really interesting enough to warrant a whole series of animated spin-offs? Are the specific Arkham versions of these characters fascinating enough to justify spin-off into other mediums? To me, they seem specifically catered to video games, but not interesting enough for expansion. I could see a series of shorts in the style of the Animatrix or that Dark Knight anime-produced DVD release, but nothing beyond that.
Bruce Timm makes just about everything he touches awesome, so yes, a series, mini-series, or even just a DVD with a series of short films set in the Arkham verse would be a worthwhile effort from both a marketing angle (especially a marketing angle), but also from a storytelling angle. For one, the Arkhamverse is largely still a blank slate in terms of the characters (depending on what point in the series timeline you explore), and with quality writing could provide some fantastic stories like the original Batman Animated Series did with Mr. Freeze's origin, for example. Secondly, given the exciting combat the games are known for, a CGI series (it'd work better and look better than traditional 2D animation) which looked essentially like the trailer above would get phenomenal ratings. Now, there may be limits on the number of episodes you'd be able to produce with that level of detail, but even an extremely short 4-6 episode season would do gangbusters in ratings and DVD sales, and hopefully justify itself from a storytelling angle as well. Lastly, I do think the Arkham versions are interesting enough (or have the potential to be) to justify exploring stories about them in a CGI show, and certainly in a visual sense. Ideally it'd be aimed at a PG-13 crowd, nothing too childish but nothing overtly mature either. It's something I'd pay to see, and think many other fans of the games would as well.
Not everything needs to have pretentious over the top justifications for existing.
