Gotham Knights officially set to feature 4 different character arcs with classic Batman villains at launch

Gotham Knights is one of the most anticipated titles of 2022. The action RPG will follow four iconic characters from DC Comics' Bat family as they try to deal with the ramifications of a Gotham without the Caped Crusader.

WB Games has done an amazing job at providing glimpses of each playable character, their backstories and the game world.

One developer has assured that the availability of four playable characters —Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing and Red Hood — means players will experience four unique arcs depending on their choice of characters.

This is an interesting development and something that fans will hope has been fleshed out properly and is not merely tokenistic.

Furthermore, despite the primary antagonist of Gotham Knights having already been revealed to be the Court of Owls, the RPG will reportedly feature many personalities from the Batman rogues gallery.

This is excellent news for fans as the Caped Crusader has a plethora of interesting villains with intriguing gimmicks to come across.

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Villains "to reassess what their function is" without Batman around: Gotham Knights director

In a recent interview with CBR, Patrick Redding, the director of Gotham Knights, revealed that a number of classic Batman villains will be appearing in the game. He talked about how the villains themselves will be reacting to the vacuum created by Batman's death to try and "redefine themselves."

Redding stated:

"What I can tell you broadly is all of the villains that we chose to include have a very specific history and relationship with Batman above and beyond just the adversarial aspect of it. And like our heroes, these are villains that are now having to reassess what their function is, where they sit in the ecosystem when their main adversary isn't around anymore."

Redding mentioned that Gotham Knights' team has "only really spoken about one particular member of the Batman rogues gallery -- Mr. Freeze." Fans already saw a short fight scene between Batgirl and Mr. Freeze in 2020 during a gameplay walkthrough.

In Gotham Knights, players will be following the four Bat family members in their quest to deal with those who threaten Gotham after the demise of Batman.

Although playing in a Gotham without the Caped Crusader is quite unthinkable, it does provide a slew of interesting opportunities for story-telling.

In an interview with Inverse, Ann Lemay, the narrative director, stated that it was "liberating" to kill the Dark Knight. The decision allowed the developers to focus on characters who aren't usually headliners in the games themselves.

Lemay added that one of the biggest challenges while making Gotham Knights was writing for each of the unique playable characters they had decided on. She stated that every character has custom lines per level per cinematic and a character arc with multiple cinematics in it.

Lemay continued:

"It was a lot of writing. But because we wanted that to be part of the experience — and because gameplay and animation were doing the same thing on their side with unique animation sets and unique gameplay per character — you had to rise to the occasion. It's four games in one."

Wilson Mui, the cinematics director, chimed in on the topic, stating:

"We've managed to deliver essentially four cinematics in one. So when you're playing as Red Hood, you're gonna get your version of that cinematic, but let's say you decide to switch to Nightwing or Batgirl, you're gonna get their version. I can honestly tell you, those are four very different cinematics, different dialogue, and different interactions with characters."

This is excellent news for Gotham Knights fans who have been patiently waiting for the game for years now. Not only will they get to experience these iconic characters in detail, but they will also get to do that for all four of them.

Although the move to have "four games in one" is quite a risk, it drastically increases the replayability value of the title.

Gotham Knights is set to be released on October 25 this year. The action RPG will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC.

There are plenty of trailers and gameplay walkthroughs made available by WB Games to get players excited about the title.