The success of Batman: Arkham Asylum has shown comic book fans that it's no longer a pipe dream to one day play a great video game based around their favorite comic characters. And right now, there is no more popular a character in the realm of comics than Hal Jordan, a.k.a. Green Lantern. With DC Comics' current event series, Blackest Night, tearing up the sales charts and being absolutely loved by critics (Blackest Night #5 Review) and fans alike, it's a great time to be a GL fan. There's even a movie in the works, starring Ryan Reynolds. And it should be known that when there's a high profile, big budget movie in development, there's also a video game adaptation of said film to accompany it. Which, most of the time, reek of wasted potential. However, just like everyone else, we want a Green Lantern game that can be held in the same light as Batman: Arkham Asylum, not shunned away and forgotten about like Iron Man: The Game. That's why we've drafted up this manifesto for constructing the perfect Green Lantern video game. Follow these guidelines or else no one will escape the manhunters. And by "manhunters" we mean angry, sweaty nerds who will boycott the game, defacing it on the internet with their hurtful, misspelled words.
The Mythos
When it comes to comic book character back-stories, Hollywood has a tendency to always dumb it down and deliver the lowest common denominator for mass viewership consumption. Epic, universe spanning origins take a backseat for a grounded story set solely on Earth because it's all us bipedal, human types can handle, or so the Hollywood suits would have us think. Well, taking this route with the Green Lantern game would be a huge disservice to the character and his mythology.
At the very heart of the Green Lantern mythology is the planet Oa, space sector 0, and home to 7,200 Green Lanterns, as well as the universes oldest, and wisest (or so they think) beings, the Guardians of the Universe. That's right, there isn't just one Green Lantern, there are literally thousands that patrol the universe as an intergalactic police force. The Green Lantern comics are the premiere showcase for all the fantastic planets and wild creatures that make up the DC Universe, and the Green Lantern game should embrace this, not ignore it.
It's obvious the feature film will place its focus on a grounded story with Hal Jordan's inner demons at it's core. Therefore, let the game be a companion piece and have it focus on the rest of the GL mythos. Let space, Oa, the little blue smurfs, Kilowog, and the rest of the corps take center stage. And don't forget to throw Ch'p in there for good measure! And if the video game's developers want to get really ambitious, they could take a page from Geoff Johns' playbook and introduce the seven other corps floating around the galaxy that have recently been introduced in the pages of the Green Lantern comic.
The Green Lantern universe is just so vast that it literally creates limitless potential for a video game project. Just thinking about what an A-grade art direction team could accomplish on a GL game has my head spinning and my mouth watering. The sky is literally the limit. Sticking to merely the film license, or even the comic license at that, would be a huge waste of potential.
