GoKawiilIf you told a comic book nerd like me that you love Batman, I might ask, "Which era?" Since his debut, nearly 90 years ago, the Dark Knight's story has had so many chapters and retellings that he's become a cultural symbol of core themes and elements, ready to be remixed into new versions for TV, film, audio drama, games and more.
The latest of these reinterprets the Caped Crusader's adventures using the most famous building blocks in the world. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is undoubtedly a family-friendly game, with lighthearted action and slapstick gags -- but even if it doesn't have, say, the gritty violence of Frank Miller's seminal The Dark Knight Returns, I got the sense that Traveller's Tales, the game's British developer, treats the character's legacy seriously.
I asked Jonathan Smith, strategic director and head of the development team at TT Games (the studio's parent company), what makes a Batman game. "The extraordinary story that you are connected to when you step into the shoes of the Dark Knight that is a lesson in transforming trauma into justice," he says.
It comes off a little arch for someone leading a kid-friendly Lego game, but it does reflect the tone of the newest Lego Batman game, which I got to play for a few hours at a preview in Los Angeles. There's playful joy in the colorful world of the Caped Crusader and some goofy Lego moments, true. But the game has a conventional narrative riddled (sorry) with references to Batman storylines and characters over the decades, a fidelity to the hero's motivations across his many variations.
The reverence is no surprise for Traveller's Tales, which has been making video game versions of major media since its inception in the early 1990s. Just over 20 years ago, it carved out a niche by adapting popular properties into Lego games, starting with Lego Star Wars in 2005. It's fitting that Traveller's Tales' most recent title before Legacy of the Dark Knight was 2022's Star Wars Lego: The Skywalker Saga, an ambitious revisiting of the sci-fi series that taught the developers plenty, Smith says.
For its next take on Batman, Traveller's Tales ramped up its combat system to reflect Batman's competency in hand-to-hand fighting. As I played, I got the sense that the developers had taken serious inspiration from the Batman Arkham games from Rocksteady Studios, cousin to TT Games under the Warner Bros. Games umbrella. In Arkham games, players control an agile Dark Knight, fighting many foes at once. Smith confirmed that they're a major influence on Legacy of the Dark Knight. Despite the cutesy Lego visuals, combat is fluid and responsive, with well-timed counters to enemy attacks and takedowns.
Combat isn't the only thing that feels inspired by the Arkham games, as players will spend plenty of time free-roaming around an expansive Gotham City filled with side missions and tasks to complete.
"[We built] a Gotham City that was truly immersive, rich, dense, full of surprises, [which is] fun to traverse, a real playground," Smith says. It "was the second progression from what we'd started with Lego Star Wars," he adds.
The game has sequences where Batman and friends build things to get through levels. TT Games
What Lego brings to Batman, and vice versa
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