After an extended hiatus, the legendary San Diego Comic-Con finally returns to Harbor Drive. At the convention, we were able to sit down at a roundtable interview session with some of the cast and developers of Warner Bros. Montreal’s upcoming game, Gotham Knights.
Included in these interviews are voice actors America Young (Batgirl/ Barbara Gordon) and Christopher Sean (Nightwing/ Dick Grayson), narrative director Ann Lemay, cinematic director Wilson Mui, and creative director Patrick Redding.
NOTE: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.
Christopher Sean and Wilson Mui interviews
The Gotham Knights reveal trailer shows the game’s main antagonists will be the Court of Owls, created by heavyweight comics duo Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, the former of which consulted on the game’s depiction of the legendary villains. According to creative director Wilson Mui, the game will contain fan-favorite members of the Bat-family’s rogue’s gallery, both returning from older games and some new appearances.
America Young and Ann Lemay interviews
Gotham Knights features four playable heroes: Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Robin (Tim Drake). When asked how they settled on Jason [Todd] and Tim [Drake] rather than Stephanie [Brown] and Damien [Wayne] (different iterations of the Batgirl and Robin characters, respectively), narrative director Ann Lemay said:
“. . . [i]t was a matter of gameplay. . . [b]ut our intent with all four characters was really just to give you very four distinct personalities and distinct playstyles. We’re making a game with four main characters and we did everything custom for all of them so we really wanted to be able to exploit those differences to offer a really unique experience per character.”
Gotham Knights’ creative director: Patrick Redding interview
I asked Gotham Knights‘ creative director Patrick Redding how the team narrows down which villains get to be in the game and which ones get cut, to which he said:
“Our approach in going into villains was to say, if we’re already looking at how Batman’s death affects the heroes that are closest to him and the city, it should also be: let’s look at the villains whose relationship with Batman would cause them to be forced to redefine themselves by his absence. . . [i]t’s always been the case that Batman has a special relationship with his adversaries, and if you take Batman out of the picture, it does create a vacuum, it creates an internal vacuum, how are they motivated?. . Who are they comparing themselves to? Who are they opposing themselves against? And so we wanted to look at a few different archetypes of Batman villains that are definitely part of the kind of core group of recognizable blue-chip villains, and then throw them into disarray and show how they evolve as a result of that.”
We also learned that there will be unique gear per character, that players can play through the whole game solo, and that there is high re-playability value after finishing the main story.
Gotham Knights will release worldwide on October 25, 2022, on PS5, Xbox Series S/ X, and PC.
Check out the Batgirl gameplay trailer, which made its debut at San Diego Comic-Con 2022, and be sure to check back with Temple of Geek for more convention coverage!
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