Clearly frustrated and heart-broken over WB Games’ latest failure, veteran comic book writer Gail Simone has gone to bat for Monolith Productions and offered a heap of praise to their cancelled Wonder Woman game, dubbing it “a showpiece epic” by a team who actually cared about the Amazing Amazon’s character.
Taking to X on February 26th, Simone opened her ultimately lengthy insight into the game’s production by confirming the various whispers that she had, in fact, served as a consultant on the now-cancelled action adventure outing – an unsurprising revelation given that she currently holds the title of the heroine’s longest-serving female writer, having written over 30 issues of Wonder Woman Vol. 3, her works including the fan-favorite The Circle, Ends of the Earth, Rise of the Olympian, Warkiller, and Contagion story arcs.
“Okay, regarding the Wonder Woman video game,” she prefaced her post. “Others have already revealed elsewhere that I was a consultant on this game, so that Cheetah is out of the bag. I want to say a couple important things about the game and the team who made it.”
From there, Simone beamed, “I was asked to do long-term consulting on the game, and I was thrilled to do it, it was a perfect storm of stuff I adore. Wonder Woman, video games, and one of my favorite games studios: Monolith, who produced the Game Of The Year [Middle-earth: Shadows of] games, that I was completely addicted to.”
“The game was gorgeous and expansive,” she then gushed of Wonder Woman itself. “It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great WONDER WOMAN game. A showpiece epic.”
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Seeking to give credit where credit was due, Simone then emphasized, “And all of that was because of the team. Everyone who worked on it brought their A-game. Programmers, artists, designers, everyone. I don’t know that I have ever worked with a team that cared more about making sure the end product was perfect.”
“It was a dream come true,” Simone continued in her praise. “Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it. They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game. It was a thrill and honor to work with them.”
“I know there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on, but everyone I worked with from Monolith and WB both was enthusiastic and supportive,” she reiterated. “Everyone wanted to make the best game ever.”
Drawing her thread to a close, the current Uncanny X-Men Vol. 6 scribe concluded, “Sometimes, you give your all and it doesn’t work out. But that was an amazing team and I can only hope they continue to make brilliant games. Someone is going to snap them all up and set a new industry standard, I know it.”
At current, exactly how far Wonder Woman got in terms production remains unknown.
According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the game was hard rebooted sometime last year, with its creative direction undergoing major changes, with Monolith Productions ditching its original identity as a ‘heroic’ reworking of Monolith Productions’ proprietary Nemesis gameplay system for one more akin to that of a “traditional action adventure title”.
While its unknown whether any part of the original Wonder Woman game, such as its art direction, story, or or in-game models, survived the reboot process, speculation suggests that given how much work they had already put in, at least some of it did.
Unfortunately, it seems like fans will have to wait a fairly long time, if ever, to learn any specifics regarding Wonder Woman‘s production, as it was cancelled when Monolith Productions was shut down at the end of February, this result due allegedly in large part to the utter mishandling of WB Games’ various operations by exiting President David Haddad.
With Wonder Woman no longer in the running to help WB Games climb out of its current hole, it looks like their hopes for survival will likely rest on the heroine’s most brooding Justice League teammate, as Rocksteady Studios are reportedly working on another Batman game – possibly one based Batman Beyond.