This Gotham Knights Feature Will Take The Series In A New Direction

After its announcement in August during the DC FanDome event, Gotham Knights is shaping up to breathe some fresh air into the series. Creative director Patrick Redding is ensuring that Gotham Knights can stand on its own feet by including exciting new game mechanics.

In an interview with PlayStation Blog from September, Redding highlighted that this new Batman game will contain an investigation feature to help further flesh out the setting and plot. Previously in the Batman: Arkham games, a majority of the game's events took place in a single night. This new emphasis on detective work will make sure that players feel more immersed in the game's story by allowing them to play detective over multiple in-game nights.

"It's not one story set over one night, but really about the mid to long term growth of the hero," Redding said. "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."

This new feature will create a little more legwork for players as they unravel the game's story. Players will deal with a series of "Villain Crimes" where they'll have to piece together clues in order to defeat Gotham's criminal underbelly. These events will take place over multiple nights.

The Arkham series was a bit railroaded in the sense that the player was just following the game's story rather than fully participating in it, limiting their experience. The detective gameplay loop is sure to please fans who are looking for something fresh to draw them into Gotham Knights.

From the release of the game's first trailer, it became clear that Gotham Knights is a departure from the series. For one thing, Batman isn't going to be taking center stage. Instead, the player will get to play as members of the Bat Family, which includes Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin. The game will pit the Bat Family against the Court of Owls, Gotham's organized crime group and secret society. Each character will have their own unique skills that will help the player take on the crime group's grunts.

While Gotham Knights will retain a lot of the Arkham series' stealth, combat, and vehicle mechanics, the game is also adding a leveling system. This switch into an RPG-esque system where players will get stronger as they unlock more skills is meant to provide a constant challenge.

Gotham Knights is set to be released in 2021 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.