Time to Return to Gotham
The first details around WB Montreal’s newest DC game is finally here to be examined! And frankly, it’s looking pretty freaking awesome so far, as if there was any doubt! WB Montreal has officially announced Gotham Knights, a game focused on the Bat Family instead of Batman.
While we aren’t one hundred percent sure about the timeline of Gotham Knights, it looks like it might be a soft reboot of the Arkham Verse. From the trailer, it does appear that Gotham Knights is a sequel to Arkham Knight. Meaning that Batman is technically dead in this universe. However, apparently so is Jim Gordon, so it isn’t a day after sequel at all. Hey, maybe it has nothing to do with them at all, I guess we’ll see!
First and foremost, let’s talk about that trailer, because there’s definitely quite a bit to dissect from it. We’ll talk about the gameplay and the differences from the core Arkham Games, but that one trailer, betrays a lot to expect from the story.
Bat Family steps up to protect Gotham City
So after Batman’s demise, assuming that he is really dead, the rest of the Bat Family steps up to protect Gotham City and investigate Batman’s death. We’ll be taking on the role of Red Hood, Batgirl, Nightwing and Robin as they strive to live up to Batman’s legacy.
From the trailer we see promises for a few different major villains from Arkham games past. It looks like some of the thugs are members of Anarky’s group, who featured in Arkham Origins back in the day. We also get a soft confirmation of Two-Face making an appearance in the game as well as Mr. Freeze. However, the big reveal is definitely that of the Court of Owls.
[the_ad id=”14040″]
At the tail end of the trailer, we see the infamous Court of Owls finally being introduced to gamers around the world. Watching as a lone member of the Court awakens one of the dread Talons. We can only assume that means that the Court is responsible for Batman’s death, and that the Talons will be primary antagonists.
Gameplay Changes and Upgrades
You can definitely tell that WB Montreal is wanting to step out of Rocksteady’s shadow with Gotham Knights. Taking control of four different confirmed characters all with vastly different play styles, animations and backgrounds.
Robin is the stealthy brawler who’s good at keeping people at a distance with his staff and gadgets. Nightwing is the all around brawler, Batgirl is the tech head and one-on-one fighter while Red Hood is all about direct confrontation. Plus, Red Hood apparently has a teleporter ability, or maybe that was Robin. Either way, the gameplay definitely is looking pretty varied and pretty different.
Enemies now have levels displayed above their heads, and appear to drop materials that look to be crafting components or gear sets. Upon striking an enemy you now get damage numbers, so it seems that WB Montreal wants to go harder on the RPG side of things.
Personally we wouldn’t mind if they did. While we do not want Gotham Knights to turn into a full on looter shooter kind of experience, we did get the impression that they’d be trying something like this. There was always a soft RPG element to the Arkham games, and now it’s being fleshed out more by WB Montreal.
In Summary
Overall we were pretty impressed by the short gameplay session that WB Montreal showed off. Keeping the core experience of Arkham alive, but much like the title, this is no longer about Batman and his rogues gallery. This is about evolving past the Batman and trying new things, meeting new villains and establishing new heroes.
Gotham Knights will be releasing sometime in 2021, and whenever we have official updates on it, you can be sure we’ll tell you about it here!
For more news, updates and videos on Gotham Knights, stay tuned right here at Geekhash!