Though the latter half of the 2010s has seen Ben Affleck donning the cowl of the Caped Crusader, there is still something iconic about the gritty Christian Bale version of Batman who took on Heath Ledger's Oscar-worthy Joker in The Dark Knight. Russian character artist Ruslan Gadzhiev has recently shown the world what it would look like if players could take on the mantle of that gravelly-voiced Christian Bale Batman in a video game.
Gadzhiev posted a video to his YouTube channel Sunday depicting a character model of Bale from Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight trilogy (released between 2005 and 2012) rendered in real-time 4K and 60 frames-per-second through Unreal Engine 4. It has since received nearly 10,000 views.
The video focuses on his model entirely from the chest up and consists of nothing more than a two-minute rotation of the character, showing off some finer details of Batman's face, armored chest piece and cape. However Gadzhiev links to his artstation account in the description of the video, where five months ago he posted screenshots of the render in various poses — including some recreations of movie poster designs from throughout Nolan's trilogy.
The fourth version of the Unreal Engine, released in 2014, has been responsible for games ranging from Square Enix's blockbuster RPG Dragon Quest XI (2017) to the Kickstarter-backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019). In fact, Unreal Engine 4 already has some professional experience working on games starring the World's Greatest Detective. It was used to make 2016's Batman: Return to Arkham, which remastered Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009) and Batman: Arkham City (2011) for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
While those remastered games look pretty incredible in their own rights, they present a unique take on Batman. The use of Christian Bale's likeness in Gadzhiev's character model is arguably more impressive because of how uncannily true it is to the actual person it's based off of.
With rumors about the development of Batman Arkham Legacy popping up now and again, it's hard not to imagine a next generation Batman game using models as clean as Gadzhiev was able to pull off through Unreal Engine 4.
That game probably won't use character designs from Batman's filmography. But with a star like Robert Pattinson taking the titular role in Matt Reeves' upcoming movie, maybe there's room to take some inspiration from Gadzhiev's project.