Lego Batman: Legacy Of The Dark Knight is more like Arkham City than you think

GameCentral goes hands-on with the new Lego Batman and talks to developer Traveller’s Tales about a game that is not at all what people expected.

It is over a decade now since the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, the last big budget, single-player console game to star the Dark Knight. That is a shocking way to treat one of the most popular superheroes in the world, especially given how successful the Arkham series was. In that time Zack Snyder’s DCEU has risen and fallen and James Gunn’s new DCU has replaced it – all without any game more significant than VR title Arkham Shadow or fighter Injustice 2.

The last dedicated Lego Batman game was 11 years ago (even Lego DC Super-Villains was seven years ago), despite the release of an actual Lego Batman movie in 2017. It’s a baffling state of affairs, that speaks to the turmoil within Warner Bros. in general and their games business specifically.

There are rumours of Arkham developer Rocksteady working on a new Batman game but even if they are that will take many years to complete, but you’d be surprised just how well Legacy Of The Dark Knight fills that gap. Not just in the sense that it’s a Batman game, made by people that clearly love the character, but because it plays surprisingly similarly to the Arkham titles.

When this was first rumoured, and even after the reveal trailer at Gamescom, the natural assumption was that it would be similar to Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, which adapted all nine mainline films – each of which had their own open world planets and separate storylines. Legacy Of The Dark Knight was thought to be adapting all the various live action Batman films in a similar way, but it’s actually much more interesting than that.

Although there are very specific references to all the movies, from the 1966 Batmobile to Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon, the game has an original story that’s also influenced by comics and other media. The level we played involved Red Hood, who comic fans will recognise but has never been in a live action film. Then it slowly dawned on us, as we fought through armies of goons in Ace Chemicals, that not only was the game riffing on Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie but also the classic comic book The Killing Joke.

The story isn’t directly adapting anything, even if individual set pieces are replicated fairly accurately, with multiple references layered on top of each other. We got to speak to developer Traveller’s Tales after our hands-on and they also name-checked Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, as comic book stories that will be included in some way.

‘What we’ve done, is we’ve taken a lot of iconic moments, as well as some of the deep lore from films, television, comics, even games, and we’ve created our own unique story; our telling of the Batman legend,’ said the developer.

‘So you’ll see a mix of all the different things, coming together into a single cohesive story. So instead of it just being playing through a specific movie, we’ve created a brand new story.’

What the game is also influenced by is the Arkham titles, with gameplay that is only a few notches down in terms of variety and complexity. That might not be obvious if you play it on the lowest difficulty level, which is roughly the same as previous Lego games, but the game has three settings and the hardest is… still not that hard, but it’s not trivial either.

We played on the highest Dark Knight difficulty and while combat involves simply mashing the punch button you do get constant on-screen warnings of incoming attacks, that you have to dodge or counter. This is definitely reminiscent of the Arkham games, in terms of the rhythm of the action, even if it’s not the exact same mechanics. Batman can also throw batarangs and use his grapnel gun to grab enemies and pull them towards him, while Gordon has a foam gun that is used for puzzles and to encase enemies for a short time.

Gordon was the only other character in the level we played but apparently the full game will include Batgirl, Nightwing, Robin, Catwoman, and Talia al Ghul as playable characters. However, you won’t get the usual hordes of other ancillary characters to play as. It seems that you won’t get to play as the villains either, despite the game featuring a wide variety of Batman’s rogue’s gallery.

There’ll be over 100 different costumes, although given Batman’s extensive wardrobe half of that could easily be just him. Nevertheless, the implication is that there will be multiple different versions of many of the characters, even if the voice-acting is tied to specific incarnations, with impressions of everyone from Jack Nicholson to Michael Caine – as well as Matt Berry as Bane.

‘We have a lot of references to, not only the characters themselves but animation and films, so we do have some characters that take on different personality traits from different media,’ says Traveller’s Tales. ‘We’ll also have some deeper lore cuts, so Condiment King makes an appearance at one point in the story.’

Condiment King is from Batman: The Animated Series, something which Traveller’s Tales has referenced many times before in previous Lego Batman games. Everyone’s eyes light up as the award-winning series is mentioned, the reverence for the show being just about all we need to know that the game is in safe hands.

The seven playable characters will be introduced over time, with each getting a proper story to explain who they are. ‘We will introduce Dick Grayson, who we introduce as Robin. We’ll introduce him when he becomes Nightwing,’ says the developer. ‘All of the characters will have their own introduction; they have their own unique gadgets and mechanics that’ll compliment Batman and change things up. So when you move through the story it’s not just you and Gordon the whole time.’

While the combat is merely reminiscent of Arkahm Knight, the predator sections are almost identical. The biggest difference is they’re not portrayed as a separate gameplay element and it’s up to you whether you try to be stealthy or just go in fists swinging. But if you choose to grapple up to the rafters, or sneak under vents, you can slowly pick off goons so that they never even know you’re there.

You do have to manually grapple back up to a perch you were using, if you come down to take someone out, but according to Traveller’s Tales there are upgrades that add additional abilities. In fact, there are apparently three sets of upgrades, all enabled by a different collectible: gadget upgrades, universal skills, and individual character abilities.

Apart from the story level, we also got to play around in the open world version of Gotham, which is apparently bigger than the one in Arkham Knight. And, as you might guess by now, it plays very similarly, with Batman able to grapple just about anywhere and get a speed boost if you time things right when pinging off the top of a building.

The Riddler puzzles are also straight out of Arkham Knight, but if anything, the Batmobile was more satisfying to drive in this, compared to Arkham Knight’s controversial interpretation. Although there’s no Batplane or Batgyro, just ground vehicles. What you do get though is ordinary civilians wandering about, in need of saving, which the Arkham series never managed to feature in any of its entries.

Legacy Of The Dark Knight was not at all what we were expecting, by we mean that purely as a positive. Our only slight qualm is exactly how funny the game is going to be, but with Matt Berry as Bane it’s clear that Traveller’s Tales isn’t taking themselves too seriously, even if we doubt the script will be quite as sharp as The Lego Batman Movie (we were unable to confirm whether Bruce Wayne will have a car with the licence plate ‘Wayne Car’).

There’s no release date for the game yet, beyond sometime next year, but this is going straight on our most wanted list. We’ve always had a soft spot for the Lego games – which are still one of the only examples of local co-op in a big budget release – but combine that with Batman, and a developer that loves The Animated Series as much as we do, and we can’t wait for the Dark Knight to return.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Publisher: WB Games
Developer: Traveller’s Tales
Release Date: 2026

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