Gotham Knights Explains How the Court of Owls Influenced the Game's City

When it comes to Gotham Knights, plenty is still shrouded in secrecy about how Batman died and what exactly is going on now, but it's been known pretty much from the start that the nefarious organization the Court of Owls will serve as one of the primary antagonists. As part of a new lengthy deep dive about the creation of Gotham Knights' Gotham, the developer has explained exactly how the organization has influenced how the team built the city itself.

"One of the things that we love about the Court of Owls, aside from the fact that it's a new, fresh addition to the Batman canon, is that they represent a threat that is so embedded and so intrinsic to Gotham City because of the historical origin that they have, that even Batman doesn't know about it," Gotham Knights creative director Patrick Redding told IGN as part of a lengthy feature on the upcoming title. "And the notion of a threat that is so intimately tied to a city that he considers to be his city, that he knows like the back of his hand, that he's been patrolling for literally decades at this point; that's a very intimidating and scary idea. That they've been operating behind the scenes in the shadows, pulling strings, manipulating things, using their power and wealth in this fashion, and that they're quite content to just not have Batman notice them. That's a terrifying idea."

The team kept that thought in mind while designing the infrastructure of Gotham in the video game. Because of how embedded the villainous organization is in the city, it makes Gotham itself something of an opponent to be overcome with the Court of Owls being an embodiment of that.

"We started to imagine how the form of the city could be affected by that," Redding continued. "And it helped suggest an urban geography to the city going all the way back to like the late 1600s, and then we started to think, 'Okay, well, what were the major events in history that they would've reacted to? Is it the revolutionary war? Is it the kind of exploitation of the west? The building of the railroads?' All of these ideas became part of that conversation and allowed us to build layers of created history. And we built it up and we built it down. Like we said, 'Okay, what's buried under the city? What are the hidden secrets that you can find in the course of investigating the Court of Owls?'"

Broadly speaking, Gotham Knights is set to release for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PC on October 25th. In case you missed it, the title is no longer set to release for Xbox One or PlayStation 4. There are several different versions available to pre-order from $69.99 to $299.99 wherever such things are sold. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the upcoming DC video game right here.

What do you think about what we have seen of Gotham Knights so far? Are you excited to check it out when it releases later this year? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop in order to talk about all things DC and gaming!