Gotham Knights is a new game currently in development at WB Games Montreal. Taking place after the death of Bruce Wayne, the new title leaves players to choose between four of the Caped Crusader’s successors: Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing, and Red Hood.
However, Gotham Knights’ main feature – its heroes – may also come with a design flaw which could undermine a key feature of the game, particularly in single player. Here’s a breakdown of that flaw and why it could be a problem for the developers when Gotham Knights is released.
WB Games Montreal has already announced that it will let players play through the entirety of Gotham Knights as just one of its four playable characters. Each of the playable characters comes with their own unique abilities and playstyle. Robin uses stealth and can teleport using the Justice League satellite. Nightwing uses acrobatics while Red Hood favors guns. Batgirl is a competent fighter who can also hack into her surroundings to find information or to weaponize her environment against Gotham’s villains.
This could incentivize players to switch between characters instead of just picking one, getting used to them, and playing through the entirety of the game as one character. However, the player characters which aren’t being used in Gotham Knights still level up. On the one hand this could help prevent players from feeling like they’ve become stuck playing as the character they originally spent the most time with. On the other hand, it could also mean there’s even less of a reason to switch between Gotham Knights’ heroes, as players might have been more likely to switch if they knew there was a penalty to leaving some characters behind.
As a result it’s hard to see how Gotham Knights will realize the full potential of its four playable characters. Not only does the game risk incentivizing players to pick just one of the characters, but unless the player is in co-op mode they likely won’t even see the other Gotham Knights while on missions. Even if they are playing Gotham Knights‘ co-op, the game is limited at just two players, which still leaves half of the main characters out of key story moments.
There are a few risks to WB Games Montreal’s strategy. First, if the story of Gotham Knights is a one-size-fits all narrative that can be played through with Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing or Red Hood with little variance, then that story risks feeling non-specific and indifferent to character. What little is known about the game’s story so far sets up some great potential character-driven moments. For example, the Court of Owls get their assassins – known as Talons – from Haly’s Circus, where Nightwing was raised and saw his parents die. The fact that players could leave Nightwing behind on any mission involving the circus likely means that none of the game’s plotlines will focus specifically on a single player character.
Second, the fact that Gotham Knights will only allow a maximum of two characters to experience any given story moment puts Gotham Knights in contrast with its direct competition in the genre, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Rocksteady’s game will allow four player co-op where players take on the roles of Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and King Shark.
How well Gotham Knights’ player characters work in-game has yet to be seen. It’s possible that passive levelling will encourage players to swap between the character options more often, giving each player a broad but unique experience of the game as they experience different story beats with different characters. Whether it works or not, however, WB Games Montreal is certainly taking a big risk.
Gotham Knights will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2021.
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