“Cancelled Superman game”

When life gives you lemons… prepare to be massively depressed. It can only mean everything you’ve ever hoped for has inexplicably been dashed into tiny pieces, microwaved till burnt, blown up and then vaporized by the surface of the sun. Today is the day the Man of Steel cried.

It has recently come to my attention, like in the past 48 hours, that the Superman game I wrote about no more than a month ago was envisioned and in development before it was suddenly and ruthlessly cancelled. Washington, Lincoln and Franklin said “No way, Monet”. If you haven’t read that post, “Rocksteady’s Superman game“, then first of all: what’s your problem? And secondly: please, sir or ma’am, would you kindly read it?

Our world almost lived in color again.

We were this close, this kuhlohs, to having what possibly could have been the world’s first great Superman game. What’s startling to me is how close they were to meeting the vision I laid out in that post, and in my opinion that would have put Factor 5 right on track to producing something that could have been on par with Rocksteady’s Arkham series, something that would have made the Man of Tomorrow “cool” again and not merely a byword of a naive America. The cancelled game, code named “Blue Steel”, could have brought Superman back to the forefront of awesomeness where he belongs.

Not only is it ironic that I just wrote a post on this conceptual project before I found out it was cancelled, but the news comes less than a fortnight from the opening of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in theaters across the world. Could there be a more awkward time?

Now in my post I laid out five things that this Man of Steel video game would absolutely need to accomplish in order to succeed. It would need to 1. be an open-world game, 2. strip Superman of his powers and allow him to regain them, 3. craft a story that pushes him to his limits, 4. reference his vast publication history, and 5. give him some real challenges to face with tons of villains and cool boss fights. What’s remarkable is that this cancelled game met three out of five of the criteria I suggested. It would have been open-world, full of in-universe references like the Arkham series, and it would have had some awesome boss fights with a huge variety of villains by the sound of it. Perhaps because of a lack of a vision or leadership or funds, it’s all been shot to aych-ee double hockey sticks.

This is why we can’t have nice things. I hope that someday, somebody makes this game. I hope that those poor souls who worked to develop this game and didn’t get paid for two months when their company lied to them about going under get the restitution they deserve. But for now, let’s us have a moment of silence for the Death of Truth, Justice and the American way, and join Big Blue himself in the following collage of sad Supes pics.

You can check out IGN’s article or the video below that covers the details of the cancelled game, and don’t forget to comment below to let me know what you think about this dead and buried project!

Special thanks to the Black Humor Mage for bringing this to my attention and putting his heel on all my sweet, sweet dreams.

-The Well-Red Mage

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