10 games Warner Bros. should make now –

This may be a bit of a pointless article to write, since Warner Bros. has actively admitted it is for sale. But I guess whoever ends up buying the rights to its IPs or the studio itself could also use this as a brainstorming activity for what games the studio could and should make. Without further ado, let’s get down to business.

A Teen Titans game

I know Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League didn’t work out, but the idea of a co-op Arkham-like game wasn’t necessarily bad in my opinion. The problem was that Rocksteady inexplicably linked the game to the Arkham universe and made it live-service. Live-service means you can’t really have a satisfying story, and the simple looter shooter system proved too bland to give characters meaning.

I say try again with another team, namely the Teen Titans. They have had great success with their animated series, and yet there is still a lot of room to explore when customizing these characters. Moreover, they would all make for incredibly different gameplay styles if done right. Saving a city from crime with your friends can still work, if we just remove it from the now heavily muddled Arkham timeline and don’t try to make money off the bygone Suicide Squad hype.

Another Mortal Kombat: Shaolin monks

This is probably going to test how much the nostalgia bug has already taken over our brains, but after Mortal Kombat 1 left a bit of a bittersweet taste in the community’s mouth, it would be nice to see the series take a risk that isn’t just timeline multiverse nonsense. Shaolin Monks was an action-adventure game in which you played as Liu Kang and Kung Lao.

For this game, I think you could ditch these two and instead make the game about the ninjas that always end up on the boxart: Sub-Zero and Scorpion, call it something like Path of the Lin Kuei and let it be about Cyrax and Sub-Zero as far as I’m concerned, but if we want to market this thing, we might need some more recognizable faces. On the positive side, with all the timeline stuff, we could make this game about any version of Sub-Zero and Scorpion working together for any number of reasons.

A Game of Thrones action game with the Nemesis system

Okay, so Wonder Woman didn’t work. We used up most of the story ideas for the Nemesis system in Lord of the Rings, so how about jumping to another fantasy setting instead? Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice & Fire needs a good video game. The Telltale story was good, the RPG mediocre, so how about having an action game with weighty, well-run battles and the ability to grow to really hate enemies that appear out of nowhere.

I have two ideas about how this game works. Either it takes place beyond the Wall during The Long Night, where the archenemies could be White Walkers or others who keep coming back to hunt you down, or evolve from regular undead. Or, we play it during Robert’s Rebellion, with certain houses and their best warriors who are going to hate you as you make your way with the good guys to King’s Landing.

Injustice 3

Okay, this one is pretty easy. Injustice hasn’t had a new entry for nearly a decade, and while the edgy evil Superman story may be overdone now thanks to The Boys and Invincible, I find it hard to imagine that DC fans would say no to more ridiculous, cinematic battles featuring their favorite characters.

With the DCU on the rise, this seems like the perfect time to introduce fans to more characters through a game like Injustice. NetherRealm’s assist mechanism in Mortal Kombat 1 also seemed much more suited to a superhero experience, making fans crave a new Injustice even more. You could say the fact that we don’t have one yet is a bit of an injustice.

An adventure game in Adventure Time

Adventure Time may not be the most lucrative IP out there, but Warner Bros. owns it and is clearly willing to keep it going with the Fiona and Cake show. So I think a video game in the setting could really be a treat, especially if it embraces the unique world of Adventure Time and its aging fan base.

By aging I mean that people have now largely grown out of watching Cartoon Network, but will still watch Fiona and Cake on HBO Max. Therefore, Warner could make a 2D, cinematic adventure in the style of the show, with a little more nuance and a complex story revolving around the cartoon world we love. Something similar to the old Telltale adventures, perhaps, with a mystery to explore.

The ultimate Lego game

Bear with me here guys…. what if Lego Kingdom Hearts? Not really Lego Kingdom Hearts, but what if we could see a combination of Lego universes with one simultaneous story, complete with Lego’s own style of humor and craziness. Warner probably can’t assemble all the characters we’ve seen in previous Lego games, but we could see a huge selection cross over into this game, which would feel like a departure from everything we’ve seen before.

Yes, this could go the way of that awful Funko game, but that’s why I pitched it as a Kingdom Hearts-like experience. Have a random Lego male be our protagonist and pick up allies from other universes along the way. Kind of like the Lego movie, except we don’t need the real piece and can go wild with madness.

A Lord of the Rings CRPG

One genre that I have personally become quite attached to in recent years is CRPGs. Those turn-based battles, strategic view and hours of storytelling really help you become immersed in a world, and I think something like that would work wonders in the Lord of the Rings world.

I wouldn’t set this at the same time as the movies or main books. Maybe in the Second Age, somewhere removed from our main events. Let’s have a party, take down a villain and explore some of the most beautiful places in Middle-earth. Of course, people also want an action RPG, but rumor has it that one is in the works.

An Arkham Nightwing game

Making some sort of Batman: Arkham game will now be difficult for Rocksteady. In the main timeline, Joker is dead, and so is Batman by the looks of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. With Kevin Conroy also gone, I think it’s time for someone else to step up to defend Gotham.

Nightwing may still be tough, still have similar mechanics to our Arkham hero, but he will be a fresh start. A chance for a new story, even if we stick to the events of previous games as canon. With the right writing team, this could really work and take us back to the glory days of Arkham.

A Ben 10,000 game

I know what you’re thinking. Ben 10 may no longer have the influence he once had on the cartoon world, but in writing this list I was thinking about Digimon Story: Time Stranger, a game that stems from a cartoon that no one has really been interested in for about 15 years. Still, the game has its fans who have grown older along with the product.

Therefore, I think a game set in the future of the Ben 10 world, where Ben Tennyson has a beard, biceps and access to numerous alien forms, could work as a new take on a creature collector. Ben loses his alien forms and collects them back over the course of the game, able to make a party to take down the villain of his old alien friends. Try telling me you wouldn’t at least be interested in checking it out if you loved Ben 10 as a kid.

An actually good Game of Thrones RPG

As I said before, Game of Thrones has had an RPG in the past, but it really wasn’t as good as it could have been. Westeros is a world with so much potential, and yet, from TV to games to even the books, it seems no one wants to see it through to the end.

We should have an RPG similar to Kingdom Come: Deliverance for this world, but with many more adaptations to our origins. We should be able to have a decent, medieval melee combat system, an immersive world to explore and rich characters to interact with, but I don’t want it set in the Game of Thrones period of world history. Give me a different Westeros, one where I feel I can really change history, and let me have free rein.

We haven’t talked about things like Warner’s Japanese IPs here because this list is long enough, but let us know if there are any big ideas we’ve missed.