The Gotham Knights narrative director has addressed its take on Harley Quinn. The Batman mythos is so big and expansive thanks to his massive list of villains, supporting cast of characters, and so on. Given Batman has been around for over 80 years and has seen many iterations across comics, television, podcasts, video games, and films, these characters have been reshaped, refined, and changed a lot over the years. One of the biggest examples is how campy and silly Batman was in the Adam West TV series versus how dark and brooding he was in the Tim Burton films that came roughly 20 years later. It’s important for the characters to be shaped by the story being told and the tone to match.ย
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For Gotham Knights, the team at Warner Bros. Montreal knew it had to put its own spin on things. One of the characters that Batman fans are very familiar with is Harley Quinn. Obviously she was in the recent Suicide Squad films but perhaps more notably to gamers, the Batman Arkham series. The team working on the game examined the character and tried to figure out how a psychiatrist could feasibly break bad and what happens in the aftermath of that.
“Honestly, with Harley, a lot of stuff has been done and a lot of it has been excellently done by so many writers and artists,” said narrative director Ann Lemay in an interview with ComicBook.com. “We’ve read all the comic books; we love the character. So really, it was just about finding an aspect of her character that we all loved and twisting that and taking it into a new direction. At the basis of it, Harley is a psychiatrist, and that’s what we narrowed down. We went, “She’s a psychiatrist, so what happens when she decides she’s becoming a villain and having fun her way while bringing all of her intellectual powers to play?” That was a starting point. It just went from there and then it was, ‘All right, we’ve done this. Now, can we push it a little bit more?’ And everyone took that mission on with a lot of grace and fun.”
We’ve already gotten some glimpses at Harley Quinn in Gotham Knights and she has a fairly unique look, though is certainly familiar in terms of how she behaves. It remains to be seen if fans will resonate with the various iterations of characters in the game, but the team is putting a great deal of effort into this.
Gotham Knights releases for Xbox Series X|S, PS5, and PC on October 21st, 2022. Which characters are you excited to see in the game? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.
