There’s a moment in TT Games’ upcoming Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight where the scope of the thing finally clicks. I went in expecting a tidy Lego playground and linear puzzle-laden levels. There are a few of those, but as soon as you make it to Gotham City, you find yourself in a city sprawling with villain missions, rooftop puzzles, vehicle challenges, and enough Bat-history to make a continuity obsessive start pointing at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It big.
TT Games isn’t subtle about its ambitions for the May 22 release. According to head of development Jonathan Smith, the studio approached Legacy of the Dark Knight with one very specific goal in mind: “We set out to make the definitive Batman game,” Smith tells Polygon. “And definitive means complete.”
After two hours of previewing the game, that intention translates to loads of Easter eggs and costumes, with nods from the Adam West Batman to Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and Batman: The Animated Series. But it also speks to some unexpectedly sophisticated gameplay. Legacy of the Dark Knight feels like TT Games trying to evolve the Lego formula, particularly for players who grew up on these games and now want something with a little more muscle under the cowl. Like Rocksteady’s Arkham games before it, the brawls are a centerpiece of the game, even more than the building.
“When we look at Batman, the world’s greatest detective, the world’s greatest hand-to-hand combat fighter, combat was going to be an aspect of this new game that we really needed to work on,” Smith says.
That meant rebuilding combat systems around larger enemy groups, more dynamic gadgets, and — for the first time in a Lego Batman game — actual difficulty levels. Legacy of the Dark Knight introduces a harder “Dark Knight” mode designed to push more experienced players.
“We still want something that’s appealing to all ages for everyone to be able to be Batman in combat,” Smith says, noting there are ultimately three tiers of challenge a player can select from. “But we’re able to create depth with some new systems that we’ve implemented and new AI behaviors.”
