Footage and development documents from a canceled Batman game that was being worked on by Monolith Productions have emerged online.
Back in 2010, Monolith Productions was working on a Batman game dubbed project Apollo that was later canceled. Over a decade later, gameplay footage from the title began mysteriously appearing on the internet. This has led up to a recent leak from video game archivist mrtalida, who allegedly recovered a cache of documents and videos from the pre-production phase of the canceled game.
Speaking on Blue Sky, the leaker mentioned that the materials uncovered by them were created between April,2009, and January, 2010, and were located in deleted sectors of an HDD used at “a game company”, likely referring to Monolith Productions. The recovered content includes feature demo videos, production schedules, game design docs, concept art, and more. The leaked content offers insight into the kind of game Monolith Productions was trying to make, and the challenges and decisions it faced during development.
Most of these materials are from a series of internal pre-production milestone deliverables. Only a few files are videos from an actual game build. A variety of early development videos demonstrate dynamic audio systems that would react to the player’s situation and smoothly transition music. Some footage also demonstrates the sound design and systems featured in Project Apollo, showing how the audio changes with Batman’s position relative to the game world.
Furthermore, character art videos show cloth physics sims, character turnarounds of Gordon and Gotham police, and a facial animation test. A number of videos also reveal some game events and mechanics featured in Monolith Productions’ canceled Batman game, such as completing a quest, knocking an enemy out, throwing smoke bombs, basic combat, and AI navigation.
Lastly, the recovered footage also contains a series of videos showing the progress Monolith Productions had made on the tumbler batmobile sections from October, 2009, to January, 2010.
