In a shake-up for TT Video games’ LEGO sequence, the newly-announced LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight options only a handful of playable heroes, even when many extra DC Comics characters will seem in the recreation as enemies or NPCs — one thing that’s prompting lots of fan debate.
Sometimes, TT Video games’ LEGO adventures embrace lots of of characters to unlock and play as, with character assortment a enjoyable half of totally finishing a LEGO recreation. TT Video games’ earlier mission LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga supplied one of the greatest rosters but — with round 400 characters relying on whether or not you owned the base recreation or all of its DLC.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is taking a distinct strategy, nonetheless, with an official Q&A web page for the recreation confirming simply seven heroes can be playable — and no supervillains.
“LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight will function seven playable characters, together with Batman, Jim Gordon, Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Catwoman, and Talia al Ghul,” reads the recreation’s official Q&A. “Every character is supplied with distinctive abilities, combos, and devices — like Batman’s Batclaw, Jim Gordon’s foam sprayer, Robin’s line launcher, and Catwoman’s whip.”
This makes it sound like the recreation’s focus is on offering a smaller quantity of distinct characters, fairly than lots of of choices with many gameplay similarities. Certainly, chatting with IGN at Gamescom, TT Video games Head of Manufacturing Jonathan Smith mentioned Legacy of the Dark Knight had been designed to focus extra squarely on the story of the “Bat Household.”
“That is wholly a Batman recreation to deal with that character, to actually convey that character,” Smith mentioned. “Meaning you may nonetheless play as and with different playable characters, Jim Gordon, Catwoman, Robin, Batgirl, to spherical out the bat household. However we predict we actually must deal with Bruce Wayne and his story for that participant journey, that participant expertise in Gotham.”
Moreover, for collectathon followers, the recreation’s seven characters can have a number of costumes to unlock. For instance, Batman’s go well with choices embrace his look from 2022’s The Batman film, the animated Batman: The Courageous and the Daring sequence, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Batman’s authentic Golden Age comics look, plus properly as his colourful Rainbow Batman go well with.
On stage at Gamescom this week, Smith confirmed the look of a number of characters from DC Comics inside the recreation, together with Bat-Mite and Condiment King — although to be clear, these won’t be playable. Bat-Mite sounds prone to pop up as a pleasant NPC, whereas Condiment King feels almost definitely to be one other non-playable villain.
(As a side-note, Smith additionally mentioned that Superman and Peacemaker wouldn’t seem in Legacy of the Dark Knight, and gave a “no remark” to Harley Quinn, Bob the Goon, Terry McGinnis, “Good Coat Man from Batman Begins,” and amusingly, Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav.)
“If it’s solely seven in the entire recreation then I’m not shopping for lol,” one fan wrote in a prolonged reddit thread discussing the seven character restrict. “Actually shocked by this,” wrote one other, including that “half of the enjoyable of LEGO video games is the large rosters.”
“Controversial opinion: I desire seven fully totally different characters to play than 200 that solely change their look,” countered one other fan.
Stated one other: “I perceive what made the big minifig rosters cool and neat however I do not suppose it made for a greater recreation over extra refined play patterns which might be tremendous character particular as an alternative of a handful of interchangeable skills and instruments.”
Some followers have mentioned this strategy higher matches a extra story-led recreation, although others stay of the opinion that extra LEGO characters needs to be playable in the recreation’s open-world model of Gotham.
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is ready to launch on Nintendo Swap 2, PC through Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X and S.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s Information Editor. You may attain Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or discover him on Bluesky (*7*)