As part of a fan Q&A at San Diego Comic-Con, WB Games Montréal creative director Patrick Redding said that Batman is “really dead” in Gotham Knights, according to IGN (opens in new tab). Really and truly and for real this time, no take-backsies in the final cutscene or anything. Also, the Joker won’t be in it, though Redding followed that statement by saying, “I will not confirm or deny whether Harley is”. Given that Harley Quinn is practically the face of the DC Universe these days, her appearance wouldn’t be too surprising.
Redding gave away one more detail about Gotham Knights: how many of the Riddler’s question marks would be scattered across its version of Gotham City. Apparently, there’s “exactly one” of them. Sorry, puzzle fans.
Players have reason to be skeptical about pre-release statements made regarding Batman games. Rocksteady claimed the Arkham Knight was “a completely original character” (opens in new tab), which turned out to not be true, and one game previous said that it wasn’t interested in having a playable Bruce Wayne in Arkham City (opens in new tab).
Of course that was a different developer making games in a different continuity (Gotham Knights doesn’t take place in the same version of the DC Universe as the Arkham games, despite the obvious similarities), but WB Games Montréal has some prior form in this vein too. During the hype cycle for Arkham Origins, it talked up Black Mask as a major villain, only to have the Joker steal his thunder and muscle his way into the limelight once again.
A new Gotham Knights character trailer also debuted at SDCC, this one showing off Batgirl. She fights with an electrified tonfa that can be used for a ground-pound, zipline-pulls herself into close attacks, and disables a group of thugs with stun-batarangs. She’s got an alternate costume that seems to be more heavily armored than her basic one too, with a cowl that’s more like a helmet.
It looks a lot better than the pointless flips and Red Hood double-jumping with “soul energy” we saw in a gameplay demo back in May, that’s for sure.
Gotham Knights is scheduled for release on October 25. Meanwhile, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been delayed to 2023.