For years, Arkham Origins developer WB Games Montréal were rumored to be working on a new Batman title, but exact details of what they were up to remained thin on the ground. Then, during the DC FanDome event, we got our first look at Gotham Knights. Set after Bruce Wayne’s death, players will take control of Robin, Batgirl, Nightwing and Red Hood, team up online and try to bring down various supervillains and save the city.
Right now, though, fans seem unenthused. The recent Marvel’s Avengers tried to implement a similar concept and has been a catastrophic flop for Square Enix, losing the company millions of dollars. The gameplay we saw in the trailer also raised justifiable suspicions that this will be a cosmetics-heavy looter-shooter laden with microtransactions, and gamers are largely sick of those right now.
To mark the holiday season, WB Games Montréal released a poster full of Easter eggs and some believe that the image is a coded way of announcing the release date. Meanwhile, other fans are convinced that a key Gotham location being featured is a hint that a certain plant-based supervillain will be entering the fray.
On the poster for the Flying Graysons, we see they’ve taken the trouble to mention Robinson Park. This place is notable as where Poison Ivy had her base of operations during the No Man’s Land storyline and is canonically home to the Gotham Botanical Gardens. Sounds to me like the perfect location for an Ivy-themed raid. Adding fuel to the fire was the release of some concept art for Pamela’s Cafe a few months back in her distinctive green and red color scheme.
Of course, one wrinkle here is that Ivy has gradually become more of an antihero than a villain. She won viewers’ hearts in the excellent Harley Quinn animated show, her ecological philosophies are more relevant each day, and she even sacrificed herself to save Gotham in Arkham Knight.
With the game set to release next year (potentially in the summer), let’s hope we get further details soon. I’d love to know more about how it’ll function in single player and how much focus there is on online multiplayer. If they get it right, Gotham Knights can still be a worthy successor to the Arkham titles, though it’s got a steep hill to climb to get there.
