This week,Kinda Funny’s Greg Miller served up a heaping scoop of industry infoon the company’s regular gaming podcast, stating that he had heard from inside sources that Monolith’sWonder Womangame is in the midst of a “troubled” development.
Where Is Wonder Woman?
Given it’s been two-and-a-half years since the game was revealed witha brief CG trailer, and since we’ve heard nothing but radio silence from developer Monolith, that doesn’t seem too surprising. A studio keeping its head down and working hard without updating fans isn’t always a bad sign but, you know, sometimes it is.
The problem is that Wonder Woman really needs to be good. ThoughDCis one of the crown jewels inWB’s suite of IP, it’s been years since a game starring one of its heroes (or antiheroes, as the case may be) has really hit.Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leagueflopped, andGotham Knightsdoesn’t seem to have sold well either. Given that both developers went nearly a decade between releases, that’s a lot of money down the drain with only trend-chasing disappointments to show for it.
The last major DC game to really hit with critics and fans wasInjustice 2all the way back in 2017. Telltale’s Batman: The Enemy Within was also well liked. Even if it had been a huge hit, it came out seven years ago. WB needs Wonder Woman because it needsanyDC game that can reclaim the brand’s former gaming greatness after two big misfires.
I’m not counting Multiversus as a DC game because that would be like saying Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is an Ice Climbers game.
WB seemed to take all the wrong lessons from the Arkham trilogy, pivoting from a successful single-player Batman franchise to two multiplayer games that a) didn’t star Batman, and b) added insult to injury by taking forever to make. Wonder Woman seems like a step back in the right direction, since it’s a single-player open-world game from a studio known for making pretty good games exactly like this.
Whereas Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad required WB Montreal and Rocksteady to take on unfamiliar genres in an attempt to chases trends, the studio behind Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow War is simply making a Wonder Woman game in the same genre, and reportedly building on the patented Nemesis System those games used so well.
WB seems committed to making this game a successor to both the Batman: Arkham games and the Middle-Earth games, both of which were expansive single-player outings. WB even took the unusual step of squashing rumors that Wonder Woman had pivoted to become a game as a service.
“Wonder Woman is a single-player action-adventure game set in a dynamic open-world,” ittold IGN in 2023. “This third person experience will allow players to become Diana of Themyscira and introduce an original story set in the DC Universe, while also featuring the Nemesis System. Wonder Woman is not being designed as a live service.”
It seems like WB wants to gain back its reputation for making good, single-player DC games and Wonder Woman is its chance to do just that. So, the development trouble the game seems to be going through isn’t just about the game. It’s about what it represents for DC as a reliable gaming property going forward as the superhero boom wanes.
