We’d known for a little while now that we’d be seeing two new DC video games at its FanDome event this weekend. One, which will be revealed later, is Batman: Arkham series developer’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game, the other is Warner Bros Montreal’s long-rumored Batman game, which we now know officially is titled Gotham Knights.
Only it’s not exactly a Batman game because Batman is apparently dead, and from beyond the grave, he’s called on his friends to take on Gotham’s criminal underworld in his place. Players will take up the mantle of Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Red Hood as they clean the streets of Gotham together in a co-operative adventure.
The trailer suggests that in this world, recent events have caused a divide between the heroes and the GCPD, and crime is bubbling over in the wake of Batman’s death. If that wasn’t enough to deal with, the emergence of the Court of Owls looks to further escalate the chaos in the city.
The gameplay footage shown after that sees Batgirl teaming with Robin to infiltrate Mr. Freeze’s base. While the open-world Gotham City looks fairly similar to the one found in Rocksteady’s Arkham series, this footage clearly shows how different this latest Bat-game will play out, as RPG elements and online co-op are front and center.
There’s no firm release date or formats mentioned for Gotham Knights, but a loose 2021 window was shown, which would suggest we’ll see it on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.