It’s a return to the drawing board for the folks at Warner Bros.
Batman: Return to Arkham has unfortunately been put on hold for the moment, according to a recent statement from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. For those who don’t know, Return to Arkham is a collection containing remastered versions of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, as well as all of their respective DLC. It was set to release on July 26. The exact reason as to why the game has been delayed is unknown. Warner Bros. gave us the typical, canned, PR response in a statement, which you can read here (via Polygon):
“After reviewing the progress of the project, the team at WB Games has decided to delay the release of Batman: Return to Arkham to give the team at Virtuous Games additional time to deliver a polished Batman Arkham game experience. We do not have a release date yet and will be sure to communicate that once we are sure the game will be ready. We know this is disappointing news, but we feel the extra time will allow the team to create the best gaming experience for our fans.”
The fact that they didn’t even offer a general window or time-frame for the game’s impending release is a bit troubling. They could, on one hand, be genuine in that they want to make sure that it meets all of their very high standards before making any promises, but to me it sounds like the game was a mess. Several screen shots and videos from the remasters look worse than the originals, so it could be that we’re in for a total overhaul.
While remasters are generally faster work, Return to Arkham was porting both games into a new version of the Unreal Engine, so who knows what kind of issues arose unexpectedly. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are two of the best super hero games ever made, so I hope Warner Bros. takes its time and does this right. As soon as we hear of a revised release date we’ll let you know straight away.
