In early 2009, shortly earlier than the launch of Batman: Arkham Asylum and a yr after Christopher Nolan’s The Darkish Knight, builders at Monolith had been engaged on a Batman sport that might be related to Nolan’s movies. Gameplay footage of the sport, titled Mission Apollo, leaked in 2024. However now, much more footage has been uncovered displaying off what might have been.
On January 12, retro sport archivist MrTalida uploaded once-deleted-but-now-recovered Mission Apollo recordsdata that had been discovered on an outdated exhausting drive. Included within the recordsdata, which had been created between April 2009 and January 2010, are video clips of early gameplay and in-engine exams of Mission Apollo, with many centered on how sound and music would work within the third-person Batman motion sport. It’s fascinating to see how a lot progress the group at Monolith made on the sport over these 10 months. Yow will discover all of them on the Web Archive.
Maybe the largest and coolest new data gleaned from these leaked recordsdata is gameplay footage of the Tumbler, aka Batman’s tank-like Batmobile from the Darkish Knight trilogy. Within the leaked footage, you may see the Tumbler driving by means of what seems to be a big prepare yard whereas escaping police and destroying numerous objects and explosive barrels. In different phrases, a fairly standard-looking 2010-era automobile part, the sort that might usually seem in single-player AAA video games round that point.
Why the Nolan Batman sport was canned
As talked about, we noticed footage from a later construct of this canned Batman sport in 2024, displaying off fight, traversal, and extra. However even earlier than that, in 2019, Liam Robertson extensively lined this canceled challenge, reporting numerous particulars in regards to the title, together with the truth that the sport had been in improvement for about 18 months earlier than it was killed.
The open world of Gotham may very well be traversed by both gliding and using the grappling hook (as established within the Arkham video games) or by working the Tumbler/Batmobile. pic.twitter.com/VZKXJBFsgP
— SpideyRanger 🇬🇭 (@Dageekydude) April 3, 2024
It was additionally deliberate to be an open-world sport and would have featured a system by which randomly generated Gotham Metropolis thugs would seem to combat Batman and return, stronger and angrier, later. If this sounds acquainted, it’s as a result of Monolith would take this concept and construct it into the well-known Nemesis System present in 2014’s Shadow of Mordor and its 2017 sequel, Shadow of Warfare.
As for why it was canceled, Robertson reported that writer WB Video games made it clear to Monolith that the one approach the challenge might transfer ahead was if the studio might get Nolan to approve it. The sport was to be set in his model of the Batman universe, in any case, and the studio needed to verify he was concerned. Sadly, Nolan appeared uninterested within the sport, and Monolith ultimately gave up and pivoted to creating Lord of the Rings video games. Extra just lately, the studio was engaged on a Surprise Girl challenge that might have utilized the Nemesis System, however sadly Monolith was shuttered by WB in February 2025.
