Gotham Knights Creative Director Explains Why Batman Isn't the Focus

By Logan Moore

The creative director of Gotham Knights has explained why developer WB Games Montreal opted to kick Batman to the curb in its upcoming video game. Since it was first revealed back in 2020, one of the main selling points of Gotham Knights is that it would tell a story set within Gotham City that would focus on Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Red Hood rather than that of Batman. And while that choice has been a bit divisive with some fans, we've now learned about why this direction was chosen. 

In an interview with ComicBook.com at a recent studio visit to WB Games Montreal, creative director Patrick Redding spoke more about why Gotham Knights opted to tell a story that didn't revolve around Batman. While acknowledging that this storytelling decision was a daunting one, Redding explained that the studio always had the full support of DC when it came to its vision for Gotham Knights. 

 "I think what was good is that the very earliest conversations about the game in talking internally, but also with Warner Brothers and with DC, we really established early on some of the goals for this," Redding said. "We wanted to focus on growth for the player character. And in the superhero space, where a lot of these iconic heroes are all fully formed, fully powerful, they bring the full set of tools to that fight. What we started to notice was that in Gotham City, you have these heroes that are Batman adjacent that really offer a lot of potential for that." 

"The more we looked at it, and looked at it honestly, the more we realized Batman becomes an obstacle to that because his presence robs you of your desire to be invested in those heroes," Redding went on to say. "It's like, 'Okay, it's cool that I can grow this hero, but Batman's going to come and save the day and solve the problem.' So, we knew pretty quickly he needed to be taken out of the picture, and we couldn't just bench him temporarily. In our version of Gotham, he needed to be gone. And as soon as we started having that conversation, both even with our publisher and with DC, they were really supportive of it."

While this choice for Gotham Knights was definitely a bold one, the game's producer Fleur Marty went on to also add that it made the project more "exciting and full of opportunities" as time went onward. Even though it may have been a hard decision to make at first, it seems that the end result is one that many developers working on the game were quite pleased with. 

It remains to be seen if the decision to focus on other characters of the Batman family will pay off for Gotham Knights, but we won't have to wait much longer to find out. The game is poised to launch next week on October 21st and will come to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and PC. 

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