A video game adaptation of Christopher Nolan’s critically-acclaimed film The Dark Knight was in the works at eventual Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor developer Monolith. Dubbed Project Apollo, the project would eventually be cancelled. While the game might never see the light of day, documents and videos from the pre-production phase of Project Apollo have been discovered on deleted sectors of an old hard drive from the studio. These files have been uploaded to the Internet Archive for the sake of preservation, and amount to almost a gigabyte worth of data.
The materials have been noted as being dated between April 2009 and January 2010. Since they were found in the deleted sectors, the uploader, MrTalida, has also noted that there are also plenty of incomplete files that had been overwritten by other, more recent files. As such, the uploader warns viewers about potential corruption in the video files, with some having loud audio that is essentially made up of garbage data.
The uploader has also noted that the files are largely consistent of things made for internal use, including demonstration videos, development schedules, and design documents for gameplay, art, and technical aspects. Ultimately, while far from being a complete look at how Project Apollo would have shaped up, they offer insights into its early development.
Among the noteworthy features showcased in the demonstration videos included dynamic audio systems that could change the background score depending on the gameplay. Notably, the music in this demonstration is right out of the Hans Zimmer-composed original soundtrack for The Dark Knight. Other examples of the project’s complex audio systems show off how sounds would change depending on Batman’s position in the game’s vertical axis, seamlessly transitioning from road-level audio to the sound of wind as Batman scales up a skyscraper.
There are plenty of video files also showcasing the studio’s work on the visuals of Project Apollo, including the physics for Batman’s cape, and how the game’s facial expressions for its various characters would look. On the gameplay side of things, we get to see stealth takedowns, and even some melee combat. The title was also slated to feature vehicle segments where players would take control of the Tumbler. A video shows off the driving physics for the vehicle as it rides through an early prototype of a level filled with blocky, untextured assets.
Movies getting released alongside video game adaptations were quite commonplace in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. While many of these tended to be little more than low-quality cash-grabs that were made as part of a movie’s marketing budget, some would end up being quite interesting to check out. Among these was 2005 action adventure title Batman Begins. As you might guess, it was based on the first movie of what would eventually be known as Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy. While the title was largely seen at the time as being better than the average adaptation, it was also the first time we would see a Batman game that makes use of both stealth and action elements. These aspects would define Rocksteady’s own Batman: Arkham series.
There's feature demo videos, production schedules, game design docs, concept art, & more. These materials help us better understand what product the team at Monolith was attempting to make with Apollo, and what challenges and decisions they faced early in development.archive.org/details/proj… 2/9
A variety of early development videos demonstrate dynamic audio systems that would react to the player's situation and smoothly transition music. It's the sort of thing that makes a world of difference but we rarely consciously notice! 4/9
More early Project Apollo audio systems videos. This one shows how audio changes with Batman's vertical position.6/9
Here's a series of videos showing various game mechanics at play, like completing a quest, knocking an enemy out, throwing smoke bombs, basic combat, and AI navigation. Again, this is very, very early stuff.8/9
Lastly, here's a series of videos showing the progress Monolith had made on the tumbler batmobile sections. AFAIK, the previous leak didn't show any tumbler footage, so this may be our first peek.You can see how the feature progressed from Oct 2009, to Nov 2009, to Jan 2010.Enjoy the files!9/9
