DC Announces Gotham Knights as the Next Batman Game

The Batman is dead. We don't know how, but it's happened, with the Gotham City Police Department finding the body of Bruce Wayne. And with his death, he sent a message to his trusted comrades: Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin. The quartet gets control of the Belfry, a base taken from Detective Comics, and from there they will protect Gotham City.

That's the set-up for Gotham Knights, the Batfamily-focused new game from WB Games Montreal. Each character gets their own weapon, with Robin wielding a staff; Batgirl handling a weapon that seems to morph between tonfa and nunchaku; Nightwing with his familiar escrima sticks; and Red Hood using good old guns. Detective, the fighter, the urban legend. Gotham Knights will have solo and two-player online cooperative play.

The end of the trailer showed off the Court of Owls, the secret society of aristocrats that control Gotham. It's likely that Bruce Wayne isn't actually dead and the Court of Owls have him, perhaps as their enforcer, Talon.

Gameplay footage showed Batgirl on a bat-themed motorcycle heading to the scene of a Mr. Freeze takeover. Batgirl is joined by Robin, as the pair sneak past Mr. Freeze goons for a sneak attack. One thing that's clear is that Gotham Knights has levels, experience, and resources; similar to Assassin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, there's what look to be enemy levels. Gotham Knights creative director Patrick Redding talked about the characters "being able to grow and reinvent themselves," so you can likely expect something like skill trees. It also showed off alternate costumes for Batgirl and Robin outside of the ones in the trailer.

Gotham Knights is coming in 2021 for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.