You don’t have to look very far to find references to the Man of Steel in Gotham — Arkham Knight is bursting with Superman easter eggs.
Helpfully, Arekkz Gaming has rounded a few of them up in this video:
Some of the more easily-spotted ones are the Lex Luthor corp ads populating some of the skyscrapers in Gotham:
Here’s another Lex Luthor building spotted by CabooseXBL:
The second reference outlined in the video is a message you have waiting for you at your penthouse. Apparently, Lex Luthor is really interested in conducting business with Bruce Wayne — but Bruce isn’t answering his calls! Luthor takes offence to that, of course. You’ll have to watch the video to listen to it — it’s great. Start the vid at the 1:06 mark to see it in action.
And the third reference found in this video is another poster, which happens to advertise Superman’s stomping grounds:
Other players are finding Superman easter eggs, too. Redditor Thisty for example has spotted some ambient dialogue that points in that direction:
Robot Rock911 finds that Gotham thugs are pretty fond of Metropolis, actually:
The enemies actually seem more scared of Superman than Batman!
Picture: MathChief – Gameplay & Trailers!
There very well may be other Superman references hidden inside of Arkham Knight, but these are the ones people have found so far. The speculation right now is that all these winks and nods are actually ‘proof’ that Rocksteady’s next game will involve Superman somehow — be that in a Justice League title, or something focusing entirely on Superman. It doesn’t help that Arkham Knight has a handful of Justice League easter eggs, and that Rocksteady has stated that this is the final Batman game for them. The thought on everyone’s mind seems to be, “what’s next?”
On the other hand, a recent Rocksteady interview has them saying that Superman is “almost the impossible game to make.” Maybe that’s misdirection. Or maybe people just have a lot of wishful thinking, and these are just fun easter eggs. Who knows!
Comments
12 responses to “Batman: Arkham Knight Is Full Of Superman Easter Eggs”
If anyone can pull a Superman game off, it’d probably be these guys. But he is pretty much an all-powerful, immortal god, so seeing it actually happen would be a feat. Maybe give all of the thugs kryptonite brass knuckles and bullets? Who knows?
Too right – Superman is so overpowered that creating interesting opposition for him is extremely difficult. And how do you simulate superhuman reaction speeds when it’s the player doing the reacting? Some sort of slow motion/bullet time?
Looking at Superman’s main weaknesses (Kryptonite, the light of a red sun and magic) the best bet is probably magic, since it could be used to impose almost any limitations you wanted… but then that risks removing the point of having a Superman game in the first place.
The Superman Returns game, while terrible in almost all respects, had an interesting take – Superman is completely indestructible and unkillable, but Metropolis has a health bar – destroy too many buildings, crash too many cars, let too many civilians die, and you’re done.
I think it’s a clever take – there’s no real point making a Superman game where Superman is vulnerable to every thug with a gun, you might as well make a game about any other superhero at that point. But the way to beat Superman is to hurt his friends, to go after the things he cares about that are vulnerable.
That’s really clever, I had no idea. That’s actually more clever than the movie itself, where when given the ‘impossible choice’ of saving Metropolis or saving Lois- he does both!
I’m not sure why making your hero invulnerable should be that insurmountable- lots of games have heroes that are *effectively* invulnerable because they can come back to life an infinite number of times. You just need to establish a ‘fail state’ that does not involve Superman’s death. If your mission is to save a hostage, you fail if the hostage dies. If you have to save a plane from crashing AND stop the bomb going off, you fail if either of these things happens- even with super speed and invulnerability it might be very difficult, as a gamer, to do both. (Smallville, for all it’s faults, actually addressed this fairly regularly- Clark was powerful, but not ALL powerful- he found it a hard lesson to learn that he couldn’t be everywhere and save everyone).
That could be a gentle introduction to the game where you begin as all-powerful and easily thwart lesser-crimes, but as Lex figures out Kryptonite bullets and other Kryptonians and Martians and demons and Batmen and whoever else begins to show up the difficulty curb would begin to escalate.
I like the idea of superman basically getting weaker as the game progresses as a way to increase the difficulty curve. I hear supes is pretty weak in the current comics, perhaps involve parts of that?
I hear the big easter egg for the PC version is a bug free session…
The pc version is the rotten egg
You know, while it sounds crazy, but Lego Batman 2 had a pretty awesome story revolving around Superman. A Rocksteady take on a similar storyline could totally work.
for superman game you could have like a reverse katimari game, save the city while NOT destroying it
There’s also ads for Central City, which is the Flash’s stomping ground.
In fact, I’d love to see a Rocksteady game based on the Flash
Or you know, Green Arrow which is kind of perfect given how well they handled batman…
Stephen Amell could voice him too!
Saw a poster for Keystone city as well. Don’t ask me which Dc hero belongs there. But I know it’s in the DC universe.
I’d like a Green Arrow game.
Did they say it is the last Batman game for them, or the last Arkham game? I have seen many references to this as the “final Arkham game” but that doesn’t mean Batman can’t continue on, also WB could continue the Batman games on seeing as they did Origins.
I would like to see a Superman game in the same vein as the Arkham series but as mentioned, it will be difficult. You either have an indestructible hero, or you need to come up with some lame story as to why his powers aren’t at full strength