At the heart of Gotham Knights lies an unexpected philosophy. It might be a game about four superheroes trying to fill the hole left by the murdered Batman, but the developers don’t want you to feel like you’re creating four successors. . They want you to find their favorites and turn them into one new Dark His Knight.
“We always understood that by the end of the story, and the end of our investment in a hero, there had to somehow be a sense of going beyond this character’s obvious potential to become a symbol. Creative Director Patrick Redding said:
“This is someone I believe can fill the vacuum Batman left. It’s such an important aspect of fantasy that I felt it needed a moment to reflect in the ability tree.” The basics of RPG games.”
With that overall philosophy in mind, a game mechanic that constantly changes and experiments with new techniques feels right. Gotham Knights offers a lot of options in that regard, from new superhero suits to ability-altering gear, but nothing makes the idea clearer than Skill Trees. Yes, and provide individual directions for specializing your heroes.
“The main abilities you see in the ability tree are abilities that you can unlock after earning ability points. It’s a natural ability to level up in this standard RPG way,” Redding explained. increase. “You gain XP, you level up, you gain some ability points. And there are dependencies and prerequisites like you’d normally find in an action RPG, but it’s a gating mechanism for those abilities. You is spending points. Decide where you want to spend them.”
Of course, if you have four heroes, you’ll likely want to experiment, and the game accounts for that.
“I mean, obviously,” asserts Redding. I’m invested in their progress and evolution I’ve been wanting to play that character for a long time and with that said there are three other heroes that I might decide at some point he is. Interesting to try. We also want you to be able to play quickly without getting penalized or feeling like you need to go back and start over. A lot of work to advance them.
“So what happens is that if you decide to switch characters, you basically have a surplus of ability points that you can go into the menu and spend. You sit there and assign them. You You can look at the entire ability tree, and you can decide which ones you want to access.”
The skill tree itself consists of a combination of upgrades that change abilities and stats, but the paths they can take you down are intentionally diversified so that you can build different versions of the same hero. increase.
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Batgirl can specialize in one-on-one melee combat, but can also focus on hacking prowess and survivability. Nightwing can build on his acrobatics, but can also provide massive buffs to co-op play. , and techniques that help enhance elemental effects as well.
We explored the tree of the final hero Red Hood (which you can see in the slideshow above) in more detail – Marksman, Brawler, and Revenge. “It’s really about doing more damage at range. That skill tree is mainly he’s focused on damage per second, rewards for shooting and precision shooting over time. Focuses on rewards for doing
“The Brawler skill tree is all about melee combat, but more importantly reinforces the fact that Red Hood is our biggest character and has the best grab and throw mechanics in Gotham Knights. And it’s a really brutal hand-to-hand combat-focused skill, so if you’re into that style of play, it’s a great place to invest early and get the most out of Red Hood.
“Vengeance Tree essentially reflects the wrath of the Red Hood in a number of ways. He can be an intimidating character, so take advantage of some of his personality and use them as abilities. Being incarnate makes him scarier and allows him to do more damage against certain types of enemies, the ones he’s really angry at in his heart.”
You may have noticed that I said four It has the old skill tree and another unique set of options. It’s Nighthood. Perhaps the most interesting of all the ability options, Knighthood is available to all characters and represents the moment of self-realization when the hero finds a way to become his own Dark Knight rather than just the new Batman. Although they begin to unlock after certain points in the story, every character must complete a unique set of challenges to acquire their inner abilities.
“Unlocking the Order tree gives you a few things,” says Ellenor. “It unlocks Hero Traversal for that hero. So if you’re Batgirl, you can suddenly slide. It unlocks your ultimate ability – if you’re Batgirl, it’s Drones.” -And it unlocks a Knights Ability Tree that you can start adding, providing heroes with very powerful mechanics that are not available until that point in the story.”
Redding adds: Challenges for that hero associated with these additional abilities. ”
Knighthood is a really interesting mix of narrative and mechanics, the way it uses traditional RPG ideas to help tell the story of Gotham Knight’s rising heroes.
“There are literally moments when you can give your character this epiphany,” Redding enthuses. ‘Cause he’s kind of the newest member of that team,’ Robin said, ‘Wait a minute. Batman wasn’t even just in the Batcave. , nor was it something he wore.It was also his relationship and connection to the larger universe of these superheroes.” Justice League Satellite.
“So when he said, ‘Wait, I can take advantage of it. I can take advantage of it. If I use it this way, it opens up an array of abilities and several ways to fight crime.’ . . ‘ And that first moment is where his intrepid traversal begins, ‘I can do short-range teleportation. These are the kind of theme he links I tried to make on the Knighthood branch. ”
In addition to all these skill trees, there is another unlockable menu: Momentum Abilities. These will be special attacks that can be assigned to specific button combos. Many of the Momentum Abilities are tied to the Skill Tree, but are earned differently.
“For momentum abilities, you get them by challenging yourself in the world,” explains Redding. four or five
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Ellenor continues. Her tree abilities allow her to do it more effectively, allowing her to deal piercing damage.
The developer’s goal with all of these trees was not just to add RPG mechanics to action games, but to provide a legitimate sense of how heroes grow, learn, and change over the course of Gotham Knights’ story. As a player, you’re being asked to help create your own versions of these heroes – the team hopes you’ll be able to simply fill out the entire skill tree on your first playthrough. We encourage you to choose and choose carefully.
“If [I’m] Play Gotham Knights the normal way – meaning you’re tracking all the main story arcs and battling villain arcs – unlocking most, but not all of the skill trees. Your choices always matter as long as it takes to beat them.
“I think players mix and match to get the most out of their Gotham Knights abilities, and I think they probably should. I know to pick clusters, abilities, but there’s a lot of synergy between trees, and you’ll have to experiment to find what you really like.”
You can see how that experiment unfolds in a video of two different versions of the Red Hood playing together. You can also see how visual presentation is important with the reveal of 28 superheroes and his suits. If you want to see everything we’ve revealed so far from Gotham Knights, check out the IGN First hub.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News.follow him twitterAny tips? Want to talk about possible stories?please send an email to newstips@ign.com.
