Gotham Knights - open world action-RPG where Batman is dead

[Zombra]

And the vigilantes can get to the street, for God's sake

Nonsense. This is the first time ever that comic book vigilantes have openly operated outside the law. Yep. First time ever.

 

[ferratilis]

PC Gamer has been shit for the last few years, but damn, this review was savage.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gotham-knights-review/

[Arkham's Batman is] a walking Swiss army knife of gadgets and fighting techniques, all of which is at your disposal. But Gotham Knights killed him, split his body into four parts, and forces you to play as one severed limb at a time.

Gotham Knights tried to distance itself from Batman by killing him off, but instead it just split him into four pale imitations adrift in a bland open world. It's just as well he's dead; even Batman couldn't fix this mess.

 

[Dexter]

Congratulations to WB, they've finally reached Marvel levels of cringe.

Kinda reminded me of Nu-Soys Row levels of Cringe from that Cutscene before release: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/soys-row-2022.139888/post-8068807
Similar dynamic, 4 juvenile characters "casually hanging out" in their flat share talking about banal SitCom style shit, iconic characters made to play out Zoomer Cringe. Hijabi newswoman and Gay flag in the background adding to the ambiente. Seems to be some sort of thing that either Zoomers think is "cool" or Clueless Boomers working on this crap believe Zoomers will find "cool".

 

[Silentstorm]

And the vigilantes can get to the street, for God's sake

Nonsense. This is the first time ever that comic book vigilantes have openly operated outside the law. Yep. First time ever.

Man, i almost wish we would go back to the Silver Age, where Batman was a deputized member of the law and thus he could imprison people legally just to see people's minds explode, he and Robin were just allowed that, somehow without having to reveal their identities to the cops, it was a plot point in the Adam West show even, Superman at some point also did this, with his origin being that he went to court, showed off his powers and just pestered the government until he was deputized because pestering governments with your absurd super powers to get what you want is a good message!

Though it meant that everything Superman did was legal, which is also something that no show or movie has shown with Superman, personally, i want the episode where he pesters Metropolis's mayor by knocking on his window every 5 minutes or so asking "am i deputized yet?...what about now...am i deputized now?" with the mayor letting that happen so Superman can pester off some other guy...maybe that Lex Luthor fella!

Thank God i am not in charge of DC and it's adaptations because i feel like i would force that in.

 

[racofer]

It never ends.

 

[Salvo]

It never ends.

Laugh, laugh in the face of clown world

 

[racofer]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

can't tell if they forgot it's supposed to be a city, or they had to remove everything because the performance is awful even without it

 

[racofer]

 

[Softgels]

Warner Bros has removed Denuvo from Gotham Knights in just five days​

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Unlike other forms of DRM, denuvo is licensed on a per-seat basis. Even for people who strongly believe piracy affects game sales, it's simply not profitable to keep denuvo on a product once you start slashing the price.
Must mean sales are horrendous though.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Nice, afaik denuvo takes a ridiculous amount of money for each build of the game that they encrypt, so i guess they removed it because they are planning a lot of updates.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

arkham knight's water looks a little too much like jello, I think it's the specular highlights in the elevated regions, and perhaps a lack of foam
still looks significantly better than gothan knights tho which is obviously just a plane with a vertex deformation shader

 

[Silentstorm]

The worst part is that i do think a Batfamily game without Batman can work, they all have had their own titles over years with some great runs, i mean, Cassandra Cain(i know, not in the game) got to stay till now partly because her own title was so damn good...the first one, admittedly, every other title where she is a main character still has to hit the heights of her first title.

Meaning, they can survive on their own, Nightwing has had his own series for decades, Robin had his own series in the 90's and there are now two series about Robin solo(one for Tim Drake and another for Damian...because both are Robin at the same time now for some reason...don't want to be mean, but you'd think one of the two would come up with a new codename)...really, Batgirl has her own series and Jason...well Jason is off to do his own thing in Joker, these are characters that comics-wise have grown to a point where Batman doesn't need to be near them 24/7 and they got 4 of them at once, there is no reason why the game shouldn't work...at the hands of a talented developer that actually knows what they are doing, all this did was make people remember that Rocksteady rocks and to pay attention to their upcoming Suicide Squad game instead.

 

[racofer]

Warner Bros has removed Denuvo from Gotham Knights in just five days​

Actually, it was a mistake on their part

Newest update released today: denuvo is back in https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/9810934/

 

[J1M]

The worst part is that i do think a Batfamily game without Batman can work, they all have had their own titles over years with some great runs, i mean, Cassandra Cain(i know, not in the game) got to stay till now partly because her own title was so damn good...the first one, admittedly, every other title where she is a main character still has to hit the heights of her first title.

Meaning, they can survive on their own, Nightwing has had his own series for decades, Robin had his own series in the 90's and there are now two series about Robin solo(one for Tim Drake and another for Damian...because both are Robin at the same time now for some reason...don't want to be mean, but you'd think one of the two would come up with a new codename)...really, Batgirl has her own series and Jason...well Jason is off to do his own thing in Joker, these are characters that comics-wise have grown to a point where Batman doesn't need to be near them 24/7 and they got 4 of them at once, there is no reason why the game shouldn't work...at the hands of a talented developer that actually knows what they are doing, all this did was make people remember that Rocksteady rocks and to pay attention to their upcoming Suicide Squad game instead.

Or maybe we could just have a high-budget batman game where the villain isn't the joker.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There was the basis for something fun here in the style of AC Odyssey that ripped off a bunch of games and made some fun entertainment. An action RPG where you play as Batman with the batfamily as NPC companions would have been cool. Shadow of Mordor nemesis system for Gotham criminals and such...

After this faceplant we'll never see anything like it though.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Warner Bros has removed Denuvo from Gotham Knights in just five days​

Actually, it was a mistake on their part

Newest update released today: denuvo is back in https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/9810934/

Modified – Mercury/Binaries/Win64/GothamKnights-Win64-Shipping.exe (+315.60 MiB)

honk

 

[Lhynn]

There was the basis for something fun here in the style of AC Odyssey that ripped off a bunch of games and made some fun entertainment. An action RPG where you play as Batman with the batfamily as NPC companions would have been cool. Shadow of Mordor nemesis system for Gotham criminals and such...

After this faceplant we'll never see anything like it though.

I think playing as the batman family would still be fun. Especially through each characters most interesting arcs and most distinctive features, playing to what sets them apart from Batman instead of just making 4 minibatmans.

Like a game about nightwing after leaving his robin persona and starting as a lone vigilante in bloodhaven. Trying to get under the shadow of your mentor, facing a new rogue gallery in a city thats more of a shithole than gotham, where gang violence and the mob are the main enemies. Getting to interact with other members of the league.

Or playing as Red Robin, with a more strategical layer, instead of going out and searching for crimes you have to get the intel and prepare for the problem before it is a problem. Perhaps splitting the gameplay between traversing gotham and traversing the cyberspace version of it in the unternet. Weapon and armor modification could be its own feature.

Playing as red hood would involve a more brutal kind of vigilantism, crossing lines, an emphasis on choices leading you two very different destinations. You could go with a crippling lack of resources and constantly being chased by the law, or even by batman.

These are all things that you really cant do with Bruce Wayne that would be fun to explore with someone with a similar skill set.

 

[Mangoose]

I managed to get the game running 30-60fps with my 10-year old bulldozer FX6300 and my somewhat new RX580 AND record with OBS.

I have made some mods and figured out what to tweak finally (esp since I have experience with dealing with Arkham Knight, see below). I've been too lazy to throw up the mods lol.

Main thing: It's the same problem as Arkham Knight - they're using UE4 variables meant for console OS memory allocation/threading.. and they didn't change it anything for the PC.

Worse: They're using UE4.25PLUS as that's the one geared to the nextgen consoles - PS5/XboxX. In other words they ported over a next gen game.

But by knowing this, I know where to find fixes. For example, I found out that the cutscene video is mp4 format.. 4K - 2160p - evidence that corresponds to PS5/XboxX resolutions. In other words it was 20Mbps in bitrate and 1.7GB.
They lazily didn't add a 1080 or at least 1440 version, as it seems like either their downsampling sucks ass and/or that the bitrate was too high for streaming things. WhichI believe puts the cpu, hd, and ram as bottlenecks.
Secondly, the audio is actually in a different file. Thus if the video slows down... without dropping any frames.. you're desyncing more and more. Dropping frames would technically be a fix.

I decided to just downsample. I don't know if their engine downsampling was the problem or simply bitrate, so I decided just to resize it since the the mp4.

Anyways, original source again is 3840x2160.
1920x1080 is 2:1 in both directions, so it's actually a reduction by 1/4.
So I just threw the video into Vdub and 30min later I just packed a mod that has a 1080p video: 400MB at RF22 quality. (x264 preset medium, profile 5.2 <- that was the metadata for the original cutscene)

I also made a 720p at RF20. Another high quality level. It's 300MB.
Note: 720p is 1/9 the resolution of 2160p so look at that completely unnecessary overhead of 88.89% fucking percent.

I haven't seen anybody do this yet... and I haven't yet thrown it up as a mod because yet bc lazy and crappy upload. You can easily do this on your own, though.


--


And in terms of FPS, I have customized my engine.ini enough so decently smooth that I can actually record with OBS. This video actually is I think RF24 thus crappier quality and also heavier cpu load.



But ugh I'm going to need to recheck everything from the new patch (namely the stuff in that 40gb .pak content). If they added in lower resolution videos I'm going to kill them for beating me to it.

 

[Mangoose]

Congratulations to WB, they've finally reached Marvel levels of cringe. And the news anchor is even wearing a hijab, just brutal; anyone who plays this is gambling with his soul, and anyone who pays for it is going straight to hell.
I really hope the studio closes down before they can even release a patch, and for the upcoming Zoomer Squad: Arkham Cringe gayme and the Nigwarts thing to follow the same fate. Just crash and burn, please.

P. sure that's one of those random secret things you can pick up in the world. Or a reward for a challenge.

Nah the game has been playing the characters pretty faithfully to the comics, personality-wise. With Red Hood actually it increases your shooter-mode damage and decreases aim time lol, and you can snipe your way through if you want to be cheap.

Edit: Another reason that the FPS is better than in Arkham Knight is because much of the game happens indoors. It's not Arkham Knight's outdoor fortified enemies. Instead outdoors are just mooks like the other Arkham games, and they're optional fights in terms of main storyline.

That being said, being inside does not make it Arkham Asylum in quality or Metroidvania-ness. The content balance seems to be similar to Arkham City or Origins (quality not so much because City is a high bar).

But I'm enjoying it so far, and I'm just starting to work on the second case. Got distracted enjoying my fps being usable for taking out criminals in outdoors Gotham.

In any case... Who wants to play co-op?

 

[Mangoose]

PC Gamer has been shit for the last few years, but damn, this review was savage.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gotham-knights-review/

[Arkham's Batman is] a walking Swiss army knife of gadgets and fighting techniques, all of which is at your disposal. But Gotham Knights killed him, split his body into four parts, and forces you to play as one severed limb at a time.

Gotham Knights tried to distance itself from Batman by killing him off, but instead it just split him into four pale imitations adrift in a bland open world. It's just as well he's dead; even Batman couldn't fix this mess.

It's because Gotham Knights has nothing to do with the Arkham games. It's a different developer. Different combat system. But yes a lot of borrowing and there is splitting - though just to clarify and not defend, it's Batman split between Batgirl and Robin. Batgirl can hack, is tanky, and can glide. Robin is the only one who can do the vantage point takedowns, and he even gets to walk at normal speed to stealth behind someone and silently take them down. His combat is kinda is own thing; he can summon a decoy that explode damage, nanobots, drop a smoke bomb after aerial attacking, later can teleport by hacking the Justice League teleportation system. Nightwing and Red Hood have different mechanics altogether.

So the gameplay isn't Arkham's counter-build-combo-execute thing. It's more generic and I dunno if I'd say better or worse in quality; more like apples & oranges, and we'll see how I feel about the quality after I play more of the game.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

PC Gamer has been shit for the last few years, but damn, this review was savage.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gotham-knights-review/

[Arkham's Batman is] a walking Swiss army knife of gadgets and fighting techniques, all of which is at your disposal. But Gotham Knights killed him, split his body into four parts, and forces you to play as one severed limb at a time.

Gotham Knights tried to distance itself from Batman by killing him off, but instead it just split him into four pale imitations adrift in a bland open world. It's just as well he's dead; even Batman couldn't fix this mess.

It's because Gotham Knights has nothing to do with the Arkham games. It's a different developer. Different combat system. But yes a lot of borrowing and there is splitting - though just to clarify and not defend, it's Batman split between Batgirl and Robin. Batgirl can hack, is tanky, and can glide. Robin is the only one who can do the vantage point takedowns, and he even gets to walk at normal speed to stealth behind someone and silently take them down. His combat is kinda is own thing; he can summon a decoy that explode damage, nanobots, drop a smoke bomb after aerial attacking, later can teleport by hacking the Justice League teleportation system. Nightwing and Red Hood have different mechanics altogether.

So the gameplay isn't Arkham's counter-build-combo-execute thing. It's more generic and I dunno if I'd say better or worse in quality; more like apples & oranges, and we'll see how I feel about the quality after I play more of the game.

gotham knights is made by the same studio that did arkham origins
arguably the weakest entry in the series, sure, but it was still pretty good.

 

[Mangoose]

PC Gamer has been shit for the last few years, but damn, this review was savage.
https://www.pcgamer.com/gotham-knights-review/

[Arkham's Batman is] a walking Swiss army knife of gadgets and fighting techniques, all of which is at your disposal. But Gotham Knights killed him, split his body into four parts, and forces you to play as one severed limb at a time.

Gotham Knights tried to distance itself from Batman by killing him off, but instead it just split him into four pale imitations adrift in a bland open world. It's just as well he's dead; even Batman couldn't fix this mess.

It's because Gotham Knights has nothing to do with the Arkham games. It's a different developer. Different combat system. But yes a lot of borrowing and there is splitting - though just to clarify and not defend, it's Batman split between Batgirl and Robin. Batgirl can hack, is tanky, and can glide. Robin is the only one who can do the vantage point takedowns, and he even gets to walk at normal speed to stealth behind someone and silently take them down. His combat is kinda is own thing; he can summon a decoy that explode damage, nanobots, drop a smoke bomb after aerial attacking, later can teleport by hacking the Justice League teleportation system. Nightwing and Red Hood have different mechanics altogether.

So the gameplay isn't Arkham's counter-build-combo-execute thing. It's more generic and I dunno if I'd say better or worse in quality; more like apples & oranges, and we'll see how I feel about the quality after I play more of the game.

gotham knights is made by the same studio that did arkham origins
arguably the weakest entry in the series, sure, but it was still pretty good.

Okay, then take that sentence out and everything will read the same. You know, the important part of what I wrote?

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

I'm gonna be the contrarian here, but this game is much better than Arkham. I'm not a fan of Arkham's simplistic ass combat, while Mordor expanded to be fun, the base Arkham series is pretty boring. Here in Gotham Knights I take more active decisions in combat and the combat only keeps getting better the more you play due to abilities etc.. unlocking. And overall I prefer the writing in this to Arkham where everything was so pedestrian, here atleast it's more fun comic book vibes. Performance is horrid though, but I have put over 30 hours here and haven't finished, soon it's gonna pass my playtime from the whole of Arkham trilogy.