Coming from developer WB Games Montréal, Gotham Knights features a handful of playable members of the Bat Family. In the latest footage, courtesy of IGN, we get to see players taking the role of Batgirl in sixteen minutes of new gameplay.
NOTE: The gameplay does focus on a case involving a murder of a rather well-known character in the Batman mythos so before you watch it, be warned in case you want to experience it fresh for yourself when the game is released in a few months.
“Inspired by the Batman: Gotham Knights comic series based on the DC Comics character Batman and his supporting cast, the game is centered on Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, and Red Hood, who are tasked with restoring justice to Gotham City during a period of decline in the immediate aftermath of Batman’s death. While investigating Batman’s mysterious disappearance, the heroes come into conflict with the Court of Owls, a secret society that is as old as Gotham itself, and their legion of brainwashed assassins called Talons.”
Following the prologue, which is being kept under wraps until players pick up the game on consoles and on PC this October, players will get to choose their preferred character and head out into the city to learn the ropes of combat controls and movement mechanics.
After picking your character, whoever it is, the other remaining members of the Bat Family consisting of Red Hood, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Robin, will aid your selected character in trying to solve a case left by Batman following his death. However, despite the game’s similarities to entries in the Arkham series, Gotham Knights is said to be an original story unrelated to those games taking place in a different universe. Yeah, we are just as confused as you are on that front.
Gotham Knights is an action-RPG, but it won’t follow the genre convention of having your characters start as weak heroes.
They'll begin as Batman-alikes and find their own unique ways to become stronger over the course of the game. https://t.co/UMYDWEIytb pic.twitter.com/lTfyoE7sVL
— IGN (@IGN) August 1, 2022
Players who beat all the villains, including Riddler, to 100% in Batman: Arkham Knight were rewarded with a cutscene depicting a large explosion of Wayne Manor just as Bruce and Alfred walked inside after Batman was revealed to be none other than billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. It seems that in both this game’s universe and the Arkhamverse, Batman is thought to be dead. Whether that turns out to actually be the truth of the matter (when is it actually true?), remains to be revealed.
Gotham Knights is said to be built using Unreal Engine 4 and will is available only on current generation hardware, having left PS4 and XBO console platforms behind. Still, we could not help but notice that Gotham Knights looks the same visually as Arkham Knight which was released on last-gen hardware back in 2015.
While Gotham Knights looks like another entry in the Arkham series/universe, it is its own story and game set in a different universe with nothing to do with the Arkhamverse (despite being in development by the team who made Arkham Origins).
Fans who want to see the story continue after Batman’s death in Arkham Knight will have to wait even longer for a spring 2023 release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League which takes place in the Arkhamverse at some point in the future. Rather than playing as the hero, players will take the role of the Suicide Squad who have been tasked to stop Brainiac from taking over the world while dealing with Superman, Green Lantern, and The Flash who have all been put under mind control from Braniac.
Gotham Knights definitely looks decent enough and we will likely pick it up and give it a try on PC but it certainly looks lacking in a handful of ways. For a game that was designed for current consoles and PC in 2022, its visuals are sorely lacking. The hair and motion physics, for instance, do little to impress and the environments don’t stand out above past games from the Arkham franchise. Fans of that series will recall that WB Games Montréal were the ones behind Arkham Origins, the lowest-rated game in the Arkham series to date and unfortunately, everything we have seen so far tells us that Gotham Knights may just be a copy and paste of its predecessors with very little innovation and nothing visually groundbreaking. In any case, Gotham Knights may just be decent enough to hold us over until Kill the Justice League comes out later next year.
Gotham Knights is scheduled to be released on October 25, 2022, for Microsoft Windows (Steam and Epic Games), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
