Gotham Knights is the upcoming game from WB Games Montreal. Revealed at DC FanDome 2020, the new title will feature Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin, and Red Hood as the 4 main playable characters as they go up against the Court of Owls after the death of Bruce Wayne.
However, Gotham Knights’ best feature, its multiple player protagonists, may undercut itself. The game’s greatest marketing point could also cause some of the greatest hurdles in its development, which WB Games Montreal will need to overcome to make the title a hit on the next-gen consoles.
Gotham Knights will contain single-player and 2 player co-op, where the second player can hop in and out of the game without affecting player one. This suggests that despite the co-op, Gotham Knights will be designed as a primarily single-player experience, which presents a few different options for the ways the multiple protagonists could be handled.
The four main player characters in Gotham Knights already pose one problem. Presumably the game had the main voice actors record lines for all of the missions, but at least 2 of the characters will always be absent, meaning multiple playthroughs will be necessary to experience all that Gotham Knights has to offer as the crew goes up against the Court of Owls.
Second, players will likely quickly settle into a routine with their favorite character. It could be the case that most players don’t take advantage of all four playable Gotham Knights characters at all, unless there are specific areas which can only be traversed by certain PCs. In this sense Gotham Knight’s greatest asset, its four main heroes, could be undermined by its focus on the single-player experience.
There was another possible approach which also had problems that WB Games Montreal would have had to tread carefully around. It was possible that players would not have total control over which of the four superheroes they played as, and that instead the current character would be dependent upon which missions they’re on or where in the story they’re at. The studio has confirmed, however, that it will be possible to play through all of Gotham Knights as just one character.
The problem is that introducing that element of choice without clear different reasons to play as the different characters at different times could also lead to players not experiencing all the game has to offer. It has been confirmed that the different characters will have different abilities, such as Robin being able to teleport using the Justice League satellite, but it remains unclear if these differences with be enough to encourage switching or multiple playthroughs.
Strangely, this isn’t the only DC game coming out with four main player characters. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League could just as easily face any of the problems above, though players are more likely to trust the developer of the most acclaimed Arkham games. The nature of the Suicide Squad – where the team tackles all adversaries together and can’t split up without their explosive collars detonating – also makes 4-player co-op or at least present AI companions more likely as well than in Gotham Knights.
WB Games Montreal has a lot to live up to. Despite the game not being in the same universe as the Arkham games, any open-world Batman game set in Gotham is bound to draw comparisons to some of the most acclaimed entries in the video game superhero genre. DC fans will likely be curious to see how the game will manage it’s four main characters, and whether it will be able to give them all their time in the spotlight without railroading players into multiple playthroughs to get all of the game’s content.
Gotham Knights will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2021.
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