The inmates are running the asylum
Remasters are big business nowadays, so it's no surprise that plans were afoot at Warner Bros. to repackage two of the publisher's most critically and commercially acclaimed games and re-release them for current-gen platforms.
Dubbed Batman: Return to Arkham the upcoming collection is set to include Arkham Asylum as well as its follow-up Arkham City. Many fans were excited at the prospect of playing these classic games on their shiny new hardware, but that excitement quickly curdled when footage of the games running on current-gen consoles was unveiled.
Despite porting the games to a new engine and, presumably, taking advantage of newer rendering techniques and graphical effects, it quickly became apparent that the remastered Arkham games looked a good bit worse than their last-gen counterparts. Lighting effects were missing, character models looked off and it appeared that the quality of some textures had taken a noticeable hit.
Fans of the series were quick to point out the differences, providing detailed comparisons that showed the remaster in a much less than flattering light. We can assume that Warner Bros. got wind of this negative feedback, as the game was quickly pulled off of schedules and slapped with a delay just weeks shy of its July 31st release date.
According to Eurogamer, the collection hasn't been scrapped entirely but delayed until this coming November. Sources close to the site informed them that the quality of the port has come under fire, with the frame rate in particular being a major concern.
The Batman brand took a major hit when the last game in the saga, Arkham Knight, arrived on PC in a near-unplayable state. Unlike the near-flawless console versions, the PC port of the game was plagued with crippling issues, causing a red-faced Warner Bros. to pull the game from sale and offer apoplectic PC gamers copies of its previous Arkham games by way of apology.
Given everything that happened with Arkham Knight on PC, the last thing Warner's wants to do is release a buggy, poorly performing collection and destroy all the goodwill the series has left. Hopefully they'll do right by these classic titles and give the team at Virtuous Games all the time and resources they need to do Batman and the games' original developers, Rocksteady, justice.
Source: Eurogamer
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