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It's been kind of a long time since we had a proper new Batman action game that solely focused on the Cape Crusader. More than a decade in fact, as 2015's Arkham Knight was the most recent one. But that's going to change with Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight. I had the chance to recently get about 2 hours of hands-on time with this new Lego Batman Epic, and it feels as much like a new Arkham game as it does a new Lego Batman game. It didn't take long for the parallels to become obvious. My session began with a battle against Carmine, Falcone, Thugs at the Iceberg Lounge, and I felt immediately at home with the familiar control scheme. Square to attack, triangle to counter, cross to
evade, or jump over an enemy's head. As you play, you'll unlock gadgets and additional moves that will make each brawl more dynamic and fun. Though the battles certainly aren't as difficult as they were in the Arkham games, Lego games are not generally intended to be challenging in that way. After all, got to focus. The feeling of familiarity didn't fade once I got out into the open world of Gotham City, gliding around and using Batman's grappler to zip all over the place with ease or drifting around corners in a Lego version of Robert Patson's Batmobile. But it's not the aesthetic similarities between Rock Steadyy's games and this new Lego Batman that matter since it's not as though there are a lot of
different ways for Gotham City to look. What really matters is that Legacy of the Dark Knight sports the same sort of smooth gameplay that the Arkham games had. If you played any of the Arkham games, Legacy of the Dark Knight will fit you like a glove. According to Jonathan Smith, head of production at longtime Lego developer TT Games, the Arkham games definitely had a major influence on the new Lego Batman experience. Quote, "Of course we're influenced," Smith said. "We set out to create a distinctive Lego combat system that suited Batman in co-op with gadgets telling the story we wanted to tell that had more depth and rewarded skill more than we'd ever done before. And when we look to design that, of course, we look
at other games and of course we draw upon and honor and appreciate the work of our friends and colleagues at Rock Steady and other video games as well. but we then make our own choices to make that approachable for players of all ages and tailor it to some of the particularly unique aspects of the game that we're building here." End quote. LEGO games typically don't have a fail state. That means losing a fight doesn't set you back or make you restart a sequence. Your character just respawns and keeps going. But it's in this area where Legacy of the Dark Knight tries something new for a LEGO game by adding difficulty settings. It's another injection of the Arkhamness into this Lego Batman game. There are three
difficulty settings with the easier two making use of the Lego games's traditionally more forgiving stance on death. But at the highest setting, Dark Knight, Batman actually can die and you have to reload your game from the last checkpoint if he does. But even this setting won't be too tough for most gamers since the game is loaded with checkpoints even in the middle of boss fights. So dying isn't too punishing. Even so, the shift was a big deal for developers. quote, "Just the very principle that now there is a state in LEGO games where if you get hit, you'll lose hearts, and if you lose lives, you'll get reset to the beginning of the
mission or the challenge is a new level above where we've been before," Smith said. End quote. Having spent about half my play session on the Dark Knight difficulty, I'd say the battles felt roughly on par with the standard difficulty of an Arkham game, so don't expect any sort of Elder Ring level challenge here. Quote, "We wanted to make Dark Knight mode genuinely challenging, but also still interesting and fun. We don't want players to ever sort of feel grounded down," Smith said. End quote. The result feels just about right. "It's got a bit of challenge without ever feeling overwhelming, and the frequent checkpoints keep the frustration to a minimum. It's all the
fun of being Batman without any of the anxiety." Of course, narrative is a big part of Batman in any medium, and we've had a lot of Batman stories over the past century or so, whether it be in comic books, theatrical serals, TV shows, movies, video games, or any other method people use to tell stories. So, when Smith said that Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight will feature the definitive Batman story, my ears definitely perked up a little bit. I played several main story missions, including one that came straight from the big screen, Robin's origin story from Batman and Robin, and also had some time to explore the open world of Gotham City. It seems as though this game will
be enormous because it's drawing on so many different things from the sprawling source material. But this kind of thing isn't new for the folks at TTGame, which has been making Lego games for two decades, going all the way back to the original Lego Star Wars in 2005. Their most recent big game, for example, was Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which included nine movies worth of plot. Even so, Batman has way more material than that to wade through since his character's nine featurelength theatrical movies are just the tip of the iceberg. Batman's also got years of comics and piles of other notable adaptations to draw from. Quote, "We come from a unique perspective with the history of LEGO games, with our team so
experienced now in finding joy in the stories that we love," Smith said. And now having the whole breadth of 80 plus years of stories by some of the greatest creators in modern history to draw upon. We had such a rich opportunity. Coming from our LEGO perspective meant that we were going to be unique. But we were also going to draw upon all our heritage and history and bring it together by focusing on the character by telling the story of the character, that essential story of Bruce Wayne. End quote. The question of course is how do they take all those stories and make something coherent when they combine them. Smith said, "I think what fueled this game was
really going deep into that story, really caring for all the different perspectives that have been put on it over the years. As a team that meant talking about, discussing and appreciating all those different aspects and different elements and then just carefully fitting them together and coalesing them through the Lego framework. In our story, there is one person who becomes the Joker. We see them first as Jack in Crime Alley. We see them then as Red Hood 1 in Ace Chemicals. We see them become the Joker as we saw Jack Nicholson play the Joker in Tim Burton's 1989 movie. And then we see them sort of increasingly become more colorful and over-the-top and traumatized until they then have echoes of Heath Ledger's Joker. That's one
character going on that journey. End quote. The same will go for all the characters who have multiple backstories from various tales including of course Batman who Smith said at different points he will resemble or channel different aspects of the character different kinds of performances, different suits, different vehicles. Yes, that does mean you can use pretty much any existing bat suit or Batmobile, though you'll need to unlock them by playing missions. It really doesn't seem to be an exaggeration that Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight will have more Batman stuff jammed in there than any other game ever has.
