I played the new Lego Batman game, a whimsical game that takes the Dark Knight seriously

If you told a comic book nerd like me that you like Batman, I might ask, “In what era?” Since his first appearance, nearly 90 years ago, the Dark Knight’s story has encompassed so many chapters and narratives that he has become a cultural icon for core themes and elements, ready to be remixed into new versions for television, film, and audio dramas. games And more.

The latest of these reinterprets the Caped Crusader’s adventures with more use than most Famous building blocks In the world. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is definitely a family-friendly game, with light-hearted action and slapstick – but even if it doesn’t have, say, the gritty violence that distinguished Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, I felt that Traveler’s Tales, the game’s British developer, is taking the character’s legacy seriously.

I asked Jonathan Smith, chief strategy officer and head of development at TT Games (the studio’s parent company), what makes a Batman game. “The extraordinary story you relate to when you play the Dark Knight is a lesson in turning trauma into justice,” he says.

It feels like a small arc of someone piloting a kid-friendly Lego game, but it echoes the tone of the latest Lego Batman game, which I got to play for a few hours at a preview in Los Angeles. There’s fun fun in the Caped Crusader’s colorful world and some funny Lego moments, it’s true. But the game has a traditional story filled with (sorry) references to Batman stories and characters from across the decades, and faithfulness to the hero’s motivations across his many variations.

This reverence is not surprising for Traveller’s Tales, which has been making video game versions of it for mainstream media since its inception in the early 1990s. For just over 20 years, it has achieved cult status by adapting popular properties in Lego games, starting with Lego Star Wars in 2005. Fittingly, the most recent Traveller’s Tales title before Legacy of the Dark Knight is 2022’s Star Wars Lego: The Skywalker Saga, an ambitious reboot of the sci-fi series that taught developers a lot, Smith says.

For its next Batman film, Traveler’s Tales enhanced its combat system to reflect Batman’s proficiency in hand-to-hand combat. While playing, I felt like the developers were seriously taking inspiration from the Batman Arkham games from Rocksteady Studios, the cousin of TT Games under the Warner Bros. umbrella. Games. In the Arkham games, players control the agile Dark Knight, fighting several enemies at once. Smith confirmed that they had a major influence on Legacy of the Dark Knight. Despite the bland Lego visuals, combat is smooth and responsive, with well-timed counters to enemy attacks and takedowns.

Combat isn’t the only thing that seems inspired by the Arkham games, as players will spend a lot of time freely roaming around the vast Gotham City full of side quests and missions to complete.

“(We built) a Gotham City that was really immersive, rich, dense, full of surprises, (and) fun to walk around, a real playground,” Smith says. “This was the second progression of what we started with Lego Star Wars,” he adds.

What LEGO brings to Batman, and vice versa

It wouldn’t be a Lego game if you didn’t build something, although in the passages I played, this was a limited and occasional event – ​​pausing between battles to assemble a battering ram to break down a vault door, for example. Lego’s influence in Legacy of the Dark Knight is even more extensive.

“The world of Lego can only be fun, and the drama and darkness turn when he enters that world,” Smith says. “It still has power, it still has meaning.” “It’s no joke, Lego World. You’re still on this journey. Bruce still lost his parents. There’s still crime in Gotham City.”

And there’s still Lego physics: in the open-world parts, as you roam the streets of Gotham, summoning the Batmobile builds it around you, brick by brick. For anyone who has assembled their own sets of iconic cubes, there is a sensory pleasure in seeing and hearing the pieces come together or scatter. And sorry for the obvious metaphor, but if you’re crafting a story made up of many different iterations of a character, putting them together through Lego means accepting that some parts might conflict in interesting ways.

“It’s the multiple issues of Batman that have given us so much joy in the creative process — sifting, comparing, differentiating, and arguing about favorites,” Smith says. “The more time we spend in this process, the more we come to rediscover some things we may have forgotten or create new contrasts and juxtapositions… which can now be brought together through the binding agent of the LEGO sensibility.”

Adapting decades of Batman stories

The game adapts stories from the Batman movies, TV shows, and comics, harmonizing them into one story. The introductory trailer I saw shows young Bruce Wayne confronting crime boss Carmine Falcone before heading overseas to train with the League of Shadows, just like in Batman Begins. Skipping ahead in the game, the first part I played had Batman returning to confront Falcon at his bar, the Iceberg Lounge, though this time he made his way to confront the gangster like in the hero’s most recent film, Batman.

“You’ll see sections of Gotham when you open it up. You’ll see cinematic sequences as you move from chapter to chapter and mission environments that gradually reference Tim Burton, Batman Returns, the Schumacher films and beyond as well,” says Smith. “Taking into account comic book stories, relatively well-known like Nightfall, and perhaps more obscure ones like The Long Halloween.”

These are some of the most famous Batman stories throughout the character’s history, and it’s impossible to tell from the preview how the game will blend those moments into its own narrative. But what I saw was walking a fine line between sincerity and avoiding depression.

The sequel I played showed Dick Grayson, pre-Robin, as he tumbled through the air with his stunt family and teamed up with Batman to thwart Two-Face’s bombing plan. His parents don’t die tragically at this moment – but at some point, they might, as Grayson is later seen as a suitable ward for Bruce Wayne before the third preview segment (a boss fight against Poison Ivy and her mutant snapdragon monster, which was harder than I expected).

If the game was able to weave these poignant Batman beats into its new version of the Bat mythos instead of just stringing together references, it would be stronger for it. But there are lots (and lots and lots) of references I’ve spotted anyway. The game features a cavalcade of cosmetics, including costumes from different eras (such as baffling outfits). Zur un arh) and Batmobiles across movies and TV shows. You’ll earn them through quests, but you can also buy other things using in-game currency (not microtransactions) from the villain. Bat mites.

Smith told me that there are deeper cuts in the game than in Batman stories that go back almost a century. I don’t think rifling through archives for nearly forgotten items is a guarantee of quality, but it does indicate that the team did their research – and that the developers have their favorites.

“When I first saw Tim Burton’s 1989 film, I was struck by its style, design, verve and chutzpah,” says Smith. “And the idea that now we’ll be able to secure the Prince’s Partyman soundtrack and play it Lego version From the joker Defacement of the artwork at the Flügelheim Museumwhich for me is a truly iconic sequence, is a dream come true.”

These aren’t Batman’s last moments reimagined in brick. My preview ended with a Lego-ified cinematic version of Batman: The Animated Series Introduction That nerds of a certain kind have committed themselves to memory. Not all the references will resonate with every player, but there will likely be a vintage costume, character, or scene that will bring back memories.

“That’s part of what we do, we remind people of the richness of this story, but also maybe bring some of it back from the archives,” Smith says. “There is so much to discover.”

Batman: The Dark Knight Legacy, starting at $70, will be released on May 22 PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, computer and Nintendo Switch 2.