Warner Bros Montreal, best known by Batman fans for their game Batman Arkham Origins, have been teasing a new Batman game for some time now. While most people thought it would make an appearances at The Game Awards 2019, the studio have actually held back any sort of reveal. Today they posted a new image on social media with the caption ‘Capture the Knight’, a tease that I’m sure is meant to mean something. If we delve into this a little though, there’s some sense to be made of everything. Check out the two images, from across various platforms, below, and read on for more details.
Court ofOwls
You can definitely see a symbol forming here, and I think that’s intentional. Combined with that line, ‘Capture the Knight’, I think it’s safe to say that this Batman game will almost certainly be based on Court of Owls, the Batman comic, or at least be a Batman Arkham game that centres around them. First, cast your mind back to Batman Arkham Origins, in which a group of villains all team up to try to take Batman down. The same sort of thing is true of Court of Owls, it’s just far darker and more organised.
The Court of Owls is an organised crime group that has existed in secret in Gotham City since colonial times. In the comics the group kidnap children from travelling circuses, leading to the Robin Wars storyline, which sees all the Robins battle it out because the Course of Owls forces them to. Of course all of this is centred on Robin, which could be the main focus of this new Batman game, except the teaser text indicates something else will be going on.
The tease, ‘Capture the Knight’, suggests that the Court of Owls is after Batman, or Bruce Wayne. If Batman is captured at the start of the game, Gotham City would be open for the group to do whatever they wanted as long as they can control him. Imagine if the court of Owls teamed up with a bunch of villains for one single nefarious purpose, who would stop them if Batman had been captured? If this is the route that Warner Bros Montreal is heading down, I can see a group of Robins, Nightwings, and Batwomen going nuts around Gotham City trying to protect it and end this plan that the Court of Owls has.
If this is the way the game is going, we should all be very excited. Imagine all the villains from various storylines who could be included, some of the most obscure, and the most famous as well. The story could also take place before or after the core Arkham series, Origins excluded. Since Origins is set before the other games, I’d wager that this new game will be set after all of them, when Batman is a little more knackered from all that crime fighting.
I could go on, but I’ll end with this. Gotham City has seen a lot throughout the Arkham games. The only thing that could top Arkham Knight is a game in which Batman is very rarely seen.