You’ve just started playing the action role-playing game Gotham Knights and may wonder why you don’t play the famous hero Batman. There is a good and at the same time quite sad reason for that: in this video game Batman is dead from the very beginning. We’ll explain how this happened and what effects his death has on the course of the game.
Gotham Knights: Batman is dead and it has a „good“ reason
In most Batman video games you’ll take on the role of Batman and finish off the criminals in the bat suit. In the role-playing game Gotham Knights, however, it’s a completely different matter, because here you can choose between four protagonists. You can choose from the sitekicks of Batman: Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl and Red Hood. Each of them has been apprenticed to the hero himself and has always been there to support him over the years.
In an interview shortly before the video game’s release, creative director Patrick Redding commented on the idea behind this decision. According to him, Batman is one of the most powerful heroes, which in recent years has already morphed into a total image of heroes through many Batman stories. However, the developers of Gotham Knights wanted to take a completely different approach: They wanted to give his sitekicks a chance to show their best side. You offer a lot of narrative material concerning your past and abilities. They had made it their mission to get all four of them out of Batman’s shadow.
Another reason was the possibility to follow the character progress of your hero from the very beginning. After all, character development plays a big role in Gotham Knights. This ranges from optimizing equipment or weapons to improving skills and individual character optimization. In order to stage the story of Gotham’s new heroes in the best possible way, it wasn’t enough to just send Batman on vacation. They wanted to make a hard cut and use it to draw out the site kicks.
This gameplay decision was supported from the beginning by the publishers Warner Bros and DC. In addition to these, the comic veterans of the Batman universe also gave their commitment and provided support. The result was a really interesting video game, in which a story is told in an alternative Batman story without the titular superhero. The reviews of Gotham Knights differ among the press and gamers, but in our opinion developer Warner Bros. Games Montreal has released a solid game with an interesting story.
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