Gotham Knights wants players to spend time building a better world without Batman

Say what you want about the Batman games of the last decade and a bit, but as far as single-player adventures go? They were wham bam, thank you ma’am experiences that had solid beginnings, middles and ends. It was a Batman experience for the ages, as the world’s greatest detective stuck to his moral code of refusing to kill Gotham’s problems with his formidable skills. Besides, the American healthcare system would finish that job with a one-two punch of crippling debt and shoddy insurance options. Ha!

The latest Batman game may be short one caped crusader, but it’s making up for the lack of deranged dark knight content by giving players a quartet of bat-family vigilantes to control in its non-Arkham world. It’s also looking at a bigger picture, one where the story inside isn’t contained within one single crappy night like it was for Batman every time an Arkham adventure rolled around. Developer Warner Bros. Montreal wants to keep players entertained for many an hour, with Gotham changing as you prowl the streets for any crime that deserves some bat-knuckles in the face.

“It’s not one story set over one night, but really about the mid to long term growth of the hero,” creative director Patrick Redding explained on the PlayStation Blog.

The game affords players a huge amount of growth and a huge amount of goal setting in an open world environment that they need to protect, that they need to go back to again and again. It’s that idea of how this new guard of younger heroes – that are not Bruce Wayne, are not Batman – approach the problem of equipping and training themselves up, preparing and adapting for that next major threat, that next major menace that they’re going to need to combat?

While Gotham’s protectors will have their work cut out for them, they’ll be able to spend time learning what threats are on the horizon before going back to them, and continuing to protect the city as Batman would have. (Who’s totally dead by the way, for realsies definitely. Not even Superboy Prime punching the dimensional barrier can retcon Bruce Wayne back from the grave.) “We want to make you feel all that work you’re investing into protecting Gotham City,” Redding added.

Regardless of whether you’re dealing with a small street gang on a corner somewhere or dealing with a major supervillain like Mister Freeze.

Just a quick glimpse at the gameplay for Gotham Knights tells you that Warner Bros. Montreal’s new game is taking a lot of inspiration from Ubisoft’s recent Assassin’s Creed games, and that’s a good thing! If the studio is looking to keep players coming back for more bat-fisticuffs, then taking a page from Ubisoft’s sandbox and unloading more themed DLC over the course of many months, may just be the angle to go for when Batgirl, Nightwing, Best Robin because Damien Wayne is awful, and Red Hood hit the streets with law in one fist and some order loaded in the other.

Looking for a list of all Batman animated movies in order? Here is a list.

Last Updated: February 25, 2022