All I Want Is A Green Arrow Game And Only Ubisoft Got Close

Green Arrow key comic art

I love Green Arrow. It’s my favorite comic book franchise and my favorite comic book hero, and I would read, watch, or play anything that’s even remotely or tangentially connected to it. I watched eight seasons of okay-ish to terrible television just to get my fix, and played two Injustice games (and countless Lego games) to 100% completion for it. But all I really want is a dedicated Green Arrow video game, and nobody seems interested in making it happen.

DC Comics heroes are no stranger to video games. Batman’s been getting video games at a fairly regular pace since 1986, with the release of the ZX Spectrum title Batman. That game isn’t particularly great in hindsight, and there have certainly been some stinkers since, but for the most part, Batman games have been pretty good over the decades.

When you think about it, too, Batman isn’t all that far from Green Arrow. Both of the characters rely on preparation, stealth, and gadgets for their vigilante justice, and Batman is certainly no stranger to long-range weaponry, with a veritable arsenal of batarangs, often with explosives, sleeping gas, or any number of gadget-y trickery to them.

So the bones of a Green Arrow game are already there. You just need a bigger focus on long-range weapons, a few more trick arrows – maybe borrowing from some of Spider-Man’s arsenal of fun web techniques – and you’re 90% of the way there. So why hasn’t anybody done it yet?

There are some obvious answers. The biggest one is that there’s very little appetite for Green Arrow compared to Batman or Spider-Man, or even Superman. But I don’t think anyone was asking for a Punisher game in 2005, and that still happened — and it was made by Red Faction and Saints Row developer Volition. Why can’t Green Arrow have a similar chance?

You want to know the wildest part, though? There’s one game series in particular that I already play like Green Arrow. I put my character in a little green outfit, exclusively use a selection of bows, and stealth around the place shooting guys from a distance. That series is Assassin’s Creed.

I played both Assassin’s Creed Origins and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey exactly like I was playing a Green Arrow game. In Origins, I actually used the now defunct Animus Control Panel to give myself infinite arrows, something that’s kind of necessary to play the game like this. For Odyssey, I did something similar, just with less official means.

And it’s almost perfect, honestly. As Bayek, I donned a green hood and stealthily climbed from rooftop to rooftop, picking off baddies at a distance with my arsenal of bows. I had long-range and short-range bows, for stealth and active combat respectively. In Odyssey, I had trick arrows much like Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, would use — fire arrows, exploding arrows, non-lethal arrows, and more. I’ve been living the dream, playing these games like this.

But… it’s not Green Arrow. Not really. I had to modify my game to play it like this, and no matter how much I squint, Bayek and Kassandra are never going to look like Oliver or Emiko Queen. It’s not set in a modern city, like Green Arrow’s Star City, and I’m not facing off against Cupid, Deathstroke, or Count Vertigo. It’s just not the same.

But I know, from my time with Assassin’s Creed, this type of game is not only viable, but quite fun. I almost never used melee weapons in Origins, and only very rarely in Odyssey, and I had an absolute blast cosplaying as the emerald archer. Other Ubisoft games, like Far Cry, also let you take a stealthy approach using a bow and arrow, and those work just fine too.

Maybe Ubisoft is the only one really capable of making this type of game. I doubt it, but maybe. Ubisoft doesn’t really do superhero games, but maybe the company would be willing to make an exception for Green Arrow.

Or maybe, when Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League eventually flops, Rocksteady can take a rest from the Batman Arkham universe and start building up a Star City universe instead. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Related: Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League Prequels Give Away Free DLC