Marking the end of their month of Gotham Knights Firsts, IGN have published a preview.

Kind of. Normally IGN are able to have an extended hands-on actually playing the game but haven't here.

When the game starts, neither Gotham's citizens nor police like you.

Over the course of the game their confidence in you grows.

From the outset though there are some residents on your side.

A group called The Watch act as informants and offer missions to help improve their part of the city.

The Knights only come out at night.

Rather than the typical day / night cycle of most open world games, you play on successive nights.

New crimes emerge every evening and villain stories progress alongside your own.

Daylight is only seen from inside the Belfry, your base.

There are procedurally generated crimes and also story ones.

Story missions can be repeated if failed but other crimes cannot.

Some crimes you'll know are coming because of intel you've gathered.

Others will just happen.

Villain story arcs are separate from both generic crimes and the main story, though some villain story content takes place in the open world.

Each villain arc can be progressed - which is tracked on the Belfry's evidence board - until you reach the point of being able to trigger a "villain night".

On a villain night players might see a substantially different Gotham, eg. a whole building encased in ice.

Gotham's gangs can never be beaten, only beaten back for a night.

Crime is eternal.

One upside for the player is that those gangs are a source of crafting materials.

All equipment in Gotham Knights is crafted.

Multiplayer is untethered.

In many games with a co-operative mode only the host player has free reign and guest players must stay relatively close to them.

Guest players in Gotham Knights can take off on their own and go anywhere.

Co-op progression is split.

Story progression only occurs for the host but character progression for both players.

To account for level differences the game will scale both players and enemies.

When a guest returns to their own Gotham it's to the same point in time at when they left.

However, if they completed a major story beat or villain arc as a guest, then the game will give them the option to either play it again or instantly complete it.

The developers say that there's an end-game but refuse to go into details at this time.

IGN's final take is that it all looks good in theory but they must reserve judgement until they have an opportunity to play it beyond the tutorial.

The End-Game Unknown

Having here described a Gotham City where crime can never be defeated, only held at bay, and a combination of scripted and procedurally generated crimes, there is considerable potential for longevity beyond completing the game's story.

To gamers known as "end-game".

But the developers' refusal to talk about it is potentially suspicious.

Warner Bros. promised that Gotham Knights won't have microtransactions.

However in July it was revealed that they will publish a series of Gotham Knights comics which include codes that unlock additional cosmetics in the game.

That's not technically a microtransaction but for players who just want access to all of the game's cosmetic options - which is a natural desire - then the physical comics are irrelevant.

If players buy those six comics just for the game cosmetics then from their perspective it's effectively a microtransaction.

When Gotham Knights' colorway system was unveiled - the ability to apply predetermined colour sets to costumes rather than players just being able to choose freely - we didn't object.

This is an established franchise.

Each character has known looks and colour limitations make sense, especially with gameplay being streamed on platforms like Twitch and YouTube.

However there remained a niggling doubt because their colorway system is essentially the same as online shooter Halo Infinite's, which was wildly unpopular.

Previous Halo titles allowed for free-form application of colour.

For "technical" reasons, that was reigned back in Halo Infinite and the developers then opted to charge exorbitant fees to apply paints.

But Gotham Knights isn't a live service game.

It's single-player.

And if you're playing on PC, which we would be, player made and freely shared mods can often easily solve problems like this.

So colorways shouldn't be cause for concern.

However, Halo Infinite was also a single player game with a standard box price, alongside which its developers launched a free-to-play component packed-with-microtransactions multiplayer game.

Warner Bros. might try the same trick with Gotham Knights, and insist that their promise of a microtransaction free Gotham Knights is upheld if the single-player component remains free of them.

Apart from their comic promotion.

And whatever else in a similar vein might follow.

In May the PlayStation store entry for Gotham Knights listed the game as allowing up to 4-player co-op.

That entry was swiftly amended to 2-player which is the officially supported maximum.

Was this a simple error or might its end-game be tailored for larger groups of players?

Possibly not client-side but rather hosted on Warner Bros. servers as a live-service.

Like IGN we think this game looks promising but have reservations, and they multiplied after watching this preview.

Gotham Knights is scheduled to release on PC, Xbox and PlayStation on October 21.

[ Main Image: Gotham Knights - Jason Todd. Credit: Warner Bros. via YouTube. ]

References

Hopley, Alex (November 21, 2022). Halo Infinite Charges $8 for the Color Blue. Game Rant.

IGN (September 1, 2022). Gotham Knights Preview - IGN First. YouTube.

McMillan, Graeme (July 22, 2022). DC's upcoming Gotham Knights game gets a comic book prequel. The Popverse.

Skrebels, Joe (May 10, 2022). No, Gotham Knights Hasn't Added 4-Player Co-op. IGN.