Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin Becoming A Game, Inspired By God of War

A new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is in development, but don't expect this return of the half-shell heroes to be a light-hearted adventure. Speaking to Polygon, Paramount Global games and emerging media senior-VP Doug Rosen revealed that the IDW TMNT comic book series The Last Ronin is being adapted, and is partly inspired by Sony's recent God of War games.

The Last Ronin is a grim TMNT story, one that takes place in a future where Michelangelo is the last remaining turtle brother, and now fights the Foot Clan while wielding the weapons of his fallen siblings. Master Splinter has also died, New York is ruled by a Foot Clan led by Shredder's grandson, and the planet is in a bad state thanks to years of global pollution. It's not exactly the kind of storyline you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon.

Rosen added that The Last Ronin will be primarily a single-character game, although other characters could be playable in flashback sequences. The Last Ronin was published back in 2020 and ran for five issues, and was followed up by another limited series in 2022 titled The Lost Years.

The studio developing this game hasn't yet been announced, but Rosen said that the right partner has been found to realize the project as a AAA video game. The last few years have seen several TMNT games released to positive reception, including Tribute Games and DotEmu's work on Shredder's Revenge and Digital Eclipse's Cowabunga Collection that brought several Konami-era TMNT games together in one remastered collection. In case you'd prefer to take a walk on the dark side, you can now jump into Call of Duty: Warzone 2 and dress up as the Shredder.

Over on the movie side, a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film arrives in theaters on August 4. Produced by Seth Rogen and directed by The Mitchells vs. the Machines co-writer Jeff Rowe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a more traditional TMNT story with a very unique design and a stacked cast of actors involved.