Gotham Knights is an upcoming action-adventure game in development at WB Games Montreal. Players will be able to take on the roles of Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, and Red Hood to help bring down the mysterious Court of Owls in the wake of Bruce Wayne’s death.
One gameplay trailer shows off a visually impressive boss fight with Mr. Freeze, but the footage may reveal a bad precedent being set for the roles of Gotham Knights’ secondary villains. Here’s what the footage reveals and how Mr. Freeze’s role in the game differs from the original Court of Owls storyline in the comics.
Gotham Knights' Mr. Freeze
The Mr. Freeze boss fight shown in the Gotham Knights gameplay trailer takes place about “halfway through the Mr. Freeze storyline” according to Patrick Redding, creative director on Gotham Knights. The boss fight is described as part of a “villain crime” event taking place in the city.
Villain crimes have been described as "a series of encounters where the player has to do a certain amount of legwork and detective work to hunt down the villain at the next major confrontation." The fact that villain crimes are distinguished from the game’s main plot suggests that, outside of the Court of Owls, there will be separate non-central plotlines for some of Gotham’s returning villains.
If villain crimes are their own separate questlines, Mr. Freeze’s role in the Court of Owls story risks being significantly downgraded from his role in the comics. In the comics, Mr. Freeze is manipulated by the Court of Owls into helping them develop the resurrection process used to bring the Court of Owls' assassins, the Talons, back from the dead.
In the gameplay trailer, however, Batgirl and Robin are seen trying to prevent Mr. Freeze from using what he calls a “storm engine” to freeze Gotham. Though this is only halfway through the game’s Mr. Freeze storyline according to the developers, it makes it seem more likely that each of the non-Court of Owls Batman villains to make an appearance in the game will have a villain crime questline which involves their own grand scheme to take over the city rather than working with the court.
Villain Crimes And Gotham Knights' Main Plot
Previous Batman games like Arkham City did a good job at integrating multiple Batman villains into a single continuous story. Gotham Knights does not exist in the same continuity as the Arkham games, though it appears close to their design in combat and art style, with WB Games Montreal having developed Arkham Origins. The big question is whether the way Gotham Knights handles its villain crimes in its open-world version of the city will end up undermining the role villains like Mr. Freeze play in the main plot.
If so, Gotham Knights’ open world could risk feeling spread thin – though the visuals in the gameplay footage are impressive, it remains to be seen how well-integrated villain crimes will be into the overarching story. It’s possible, however, that villain crimes are not distinct world events, but a way of referring to the different chapters of the story as they unfold in the world.
So far, WB Games Montreal hasn’t revealed whether or not world events like villain crimes can happen in any order, which may reveal how much other Batman villains may be tied into the Court of Owls plotline. Many fans of the Court of Owls plot from the comics, however, will be hoping that the remaining half of Mr. Freeze’s Gotham Knights storyline is used to realize part of his role in the original story.
Gotham Knights will be available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X in 2021.