Gotham Knights release date, trailer, plot, and more
The latest news ahead of Gotham Knights' release
When is the release date for Gotham Knights? Making a Batman game that doesn't star Batman is a bold move, but Gotham Knights is making just such a brave play, sidelining the Dark Knight in favour of some of the young superheroes whose careers in vigilante justice he's inspired with his nocturnal crime-fighting. And so far, the adventures of the extended Bat-family look pretty exciting.
This game should not be confused with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, another DC-verse adventure game from Warner Bros due out in the near future and starring four secondary characters from the comics whose stars are on the rise thanks in part to the DCEU. If it helps at all, just remember that Gotham Knights is a stand-alone, while Suicide Squad is officially in-universe with the Arkham games.
Read on for everything you need to know about Gotham Knights, from the latest release date info to details on characters, setting, plot, multiplayer, and more.
- Gotham Knights release date, platforms, and trailers
- Who can you play as in Gotham Knights?
- What other DC characters will feature in Gotham Knights?
- What will be the setting and plot of Gotham Knights?
- What will the gameplay be like in Gotham Knights?
- Is Gotham Knights canon to the Arkham games?
- Will Gotham Knights have multiplayer?
- How long will it take to beat Gotham Knights?
- Gotham Knights game engine and system requirements
Gotham Knights release date, platforms, and trailers
Gotham Knights is currently expected to release on 25 October, 2022, having already been delayed out of its original release window in 2021. The back-end of the year is looking pretty quiet so far release-wise, so if it manages to hit its target, Gotham Knights stands to be one of the major releases of Q3/Q4 2022.
In addition to Microsoft Windows for PC, Gotham Knights will release onto current- and last-gen PlayStation and Xbox consoles, with all versions of the game sharing the same release date.
See below for the latest teaser trailer from October of last year:
Who can you play as in Gotham Knights?
It's tempting to be flippant and claim you just play as Robin in this game, but there's a little more to it than that. Sure, 75% of Gotham Knights' playable roster have donned the Boy Wonder's acrobat tights at one time or another, but at least two of them have moved on and are now firmly in their goth phase.
In all seriousness, Gotham Knights very deliberately places you in the shoes of four of Batman's former protegees:
- Dick Grayson a.k.a. Nightwing, the original Robin who's now forged his own superhero identity.
- Jason Todd a.k.a. Red Hood, the second Robin who's gone a little bit antihero after nearly being offed by the Joker.
- Barbara Gordon, a.k.a. Batgirl, the daughter of Batman's ally Commissioner Jim Gordon and the only non-Robin in the group.
- Tim Drake, a.k.a. Robin, the third and current Robin when Gotham Knights takes place.
Even though these characters are variously portrayed elsewhere as being quite far apart in age, by the look of things they'll all be broadly contemporary young adults in Gotham Knights. I guess Batman's been running some sort of high-turnover apprenticeship scheme in this continuity.
What other DC characters will feature in Gotham Knights?
Gotham Knights begins sometime after the deaths of Batman and Commissioner Gordon, so don't expect to see too much of these couple of DC mainstays. However, a voice actor has been cast as Batman for this game, allegedly thanks to leaving a recorded message behind for his former protegees in the event of his death. (Or you know, maybe he's not really dead? Because no one in comic book franchises is ever really dead.)
NPC allies confirmed for inclusion in the game are Batman's loyal butler Alfred Pennyworth and Gotham Police Captain Renee Montoya. Supervillainous enemies of the Gotham Knights will include Mr Freeze and the Penguin, as well as the organised crime syndicate known as the Court of Owls. The mook-level enemies of the game seem to be the Talons, a legion of brainwashed assassins controlled by the Court.
What will be the setting and plot of Gotham Knights?
Gotham Knights takes place in (wait for it) Gotham, although it's a Gotham under slightly different circumstances than we're used to. In this version of the setting, both Batman and Commissioner Gordon have been killed, and the city is rapidly descending into lawlessness.
This, and a posthumous call to arms from the Dark Knight himself, is what prompts Batman's former protegees (one of whom is also Gordon's daughter) to band together as the Gotham Knights. A major theme of the game, appropriately enough, will be family, with Batman's young successors finding themselves figuratively (and, in Barbara's case, also literally) orphaned after the loss of their mentor and his strongest ally, and faced with developing a dynamic within their group without its founding member.
It seems as though, in addition to patrolling the streets of Gotham and foiling villains both large and small, the driving force behind the plot of Gotham Knights will be the heroes' attempt to uncover the identity of Batman's murderer. So if we're lucky, we might be about to enjoy some honest-to-goodness detective action in this Detective Comics game.
What will the gameplay be like in Gotham Knights?
While plot details beyond the initial set-up are pretty vague, we do know quite a bit about what you'll be doing moment-to-moment during your time with the Gotham Knights.
The Gotham City of the game will be an open world, with a base in the Belfry where players can switch between characters, manage their levelling, and perform other activities in preparation for missions. (The Batcave has regrettably been destroyed, potentially in whatever incident killed Batman, and therefore won't feature in this game in all its cool subterranean glory.) The Belfry will also be home to the Batcomputer, and will apparently be a location where members of the Batfam can schmooze with each other between missions.
Gotham itself will, with appropriate regard for aesthetics, be in a state of perpetual night, with your sessions in the Belfry accounting for the nominal passage of time during what we non-batpeople call "the day". However, from what I've been able to glean so far the game won't feature a timed day/night cycle.
The game will feature usable vehicles to aid in traversal around Gotham, with the Batcycle one confirmed inclusion. You will also have the option to fast travel, with the in-game explanation being teleportation via the Justice League's satellite.
Each of the four playable characters will have a unique set of skills and combat styles, which makes sense in a game where you're prompted to choose which hero to play as at the start of every mission. Character levelling will feature, although at this point it's unclear to me whether you'll level up your four heroes individually or via a universal player level. Either way, we do know that enemy levelling will scale with your characters.
Is Gotham Knights canon to the Arkham games?
Despite being developed by the in-house WB Montréal team responsible for Batman: Arkham Origins, Gotham Knights doesn't seem to be canon to the Batman: Arkham series of games. (If you're looking for the canon continuation of the Arkham series due out around the same time, you want Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which is being developed by the team behind the rest of the Arkham series, Rocksteady Games.)
There's also the little matter of this game killing off Batman, of course, which presumably isn't a move you want to apply to the canon of a long-running series literally called Batman without some serious thought.
However, the studio's history of working with the Arkham series and WB as the publisher holding the rights to both games means that a shared universe theoretically isn't off the table entirely. But still I expect that's a continuity crossover we won't be seeing unless Gotham Knights performs well enough to get a sequel.
Will Gotham Knights have multiplayer?
Gotham Knights will feature both a single-player campaign and a co-operative mode. Initial reports suggested that co-op would be limited to two players, but recently we've heard reliable buzz that a four-player co-op mode is on the cards, which honestly makes a lot of sense given the selection of protagonists available.
Reportedly, while in multiplayer, Player 2 et al. will be able to drop in and out of the host's game without affecting Player 1's experience; and apparently your choice of character for any given mission won't affect your co-op partners' options, so there's no need to squabble over who gets to be Batgirl. It's worth noting, though, that this information is based on the two-player mode initially announced, and we're still waiting to learn whether the four-player option has changed the plan at all in this regard.
Unsurprisingly, based on everything else we know about multiplayer in this game, Gotham Knights will not feature an option for split-screen couch co-op, with co-op mode firmly online-only. Furthermore, as of yet there's been no word either way about the possibility of crossplay. For those of who live with our usual co-op buddy, crossplay can be the saving grace of a game which doesn't allow for local co-op on a single system; so be sure that I'll be keeping an eye on the news for this one and updating this page accordingly.
How long will it take to beat Gotham Knights?
While we don't have an exact number of hours just yet, members of the development team (in an interview with GamesRadar) described the main campaign as "something you [can't] just grind through over a weekend", with heavy emphasis being placed on teasing out the mystery surrounding Batman's death. Compared to the similarly-themed Marvel's Avengers, which caught some flack for a short main campaign followed by an endless live service grind, it sounds like Gotham Knights is aiming to be a more complete narrative experience in its own right. Still, for an action RPG with a tight central plot, I'd expect something in the region of 20-30 hours at most for the main story, although time to 100% will depend a lot on how many side missions, collectables, and branching storylines there end up being.
Gotham Knights game engine and system requirements
Gotham Knights is built in Unreal Engine 4. Beyond that we don't know much about the system requirements, but given that this is a game launching on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles, it's probably going to be quite demanding. Expect to need Windows 10 to run it decently on PC, with at the very least 8GB of RAM and a decently modern CPU and GPU. We're eagerly awaiting more details, so be sure to check back here for more as we know it.
That's everything we know so far about Gotham Knights, but we're keeping an eager ear out for more news (and that ear is enhanced with batlike sonar). So be sure to check back in with us on this page as we collect together more details ahead of the planned release in October!