Heading into hype-filled events like Gamescom, it’s easy to guess which blockbuster titles will dominate the spotlight. But almost no one saw a new Lego game stealing the show — or the reason why it’s making waves.
After developer TT Games unveiled Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight at Gamescom Opening Night Live, the response was almost immediate: Fans finally have a spiritual successor to Rocksteady’s Arkham series. For starving Batman buffs who have experienced a decade’s worth of disappointing games, it’s a shot at greatness they never thought they’d see again.
The Arkham games were known for rich storytelling and open-world design that expanded alongside the narrative, with fluid combat that ramped up the momentum. Rocksteady’s 2015 sequel Batman: Arkham Knight, the fourth game in the series, has been called the perfect Batman game — perhaps even the best game of its generation. Reviews readily throw out words like “masterpiece” and “revolutionary” when describing it. It topped game of the year lists in 2015, and is widely considered the best comic book adaptation the medium has to offer. If aura farming were a video game, it would undoubtedly be Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham Knight. Years later, people still regularly marvel over its impeccable art direction, and the way modern games, for all their bells and whistles, still can’t match the grit of Gotham’s seedy streets.
That’s just the fourth game, but the impact of the entire Arkham series is far-reaching. If you’ve ever punched a baddie, lurked in the shadows, or investigated a clue in a triple-A game, chances are high that you’ve played a game influenced by the Arkham series. And yet, it’s been a decade since Rocksteady’s open-world triumph and there hasn’t been a follow-up. (Granted, Rocksteady did say that Arkham Knight would be its final Arkham game. But in an industry that is obsessed with sequels and re-imaginings like this one, it is slightly shocking that such an acclaimed series has been left alone for so long.)
As you can see in the comments for Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight‘s reveal trailer or basically any time the DCU is evoked in nerd spaces, the ongoing appetite for a new Arkham game is real and yet to be satiated. That pain has been made all the worse by the types of games that have risen up to usurp Arkham’s place. Take, for example, Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice, which is set in the same universe as its hit Batman franchise. When the studio announced Suicide Squad in 2020, Arkham fans couldn’t help but scratch their head at the prospect of a studio primarily known for its single-player narrative action games taking up a multiplayer title instead.
And Rocksteady obliged that aversion by repeatedly refusing to even name the genre of the game at all, instead only assuring players that the essence that made the Arkham series so good was embedded at the heart of Suicide Squad. It didn’t matter. Suicide Squad was basically dead on arrival in 2024. A month after launch, only about 1,000 people were still playing the game on some platforms. A Joker DLC with a grindy mission structure that forced players to repeat boring quests only made fans even angrier. This wouldn’t be one of those grand turnaround live service stories, like that of No Man’s Sky. It would be a whimper in a saga that could have been avoided altogether had Rocksteady stuck to its strengths, and yet another example of high-profile industry flop in a long list of live-service misfires.
As Suicide Squad began its prolonged death march, WB Games did little to assure fans that it understood what made its previous hits so great. Gotham Knights was released in 2022 and landed with a thud as fans decreed the co-op game mid. In this take on the Batman universe, more emphasis was placed on the story, but the gameplay itself seemed to bore most people who tried it. While this game didn’t fall into the live service trap, it was also a victim of fads. Gotham Knights’ quest design, crafting mechanics, and repeatable missions tried to position it as an “endless” game in the vein of series like Diablo and Borderlands. But the juice wasn’t there to keep fans coming back for more. Where Arkham Knight kept fans engaged with delightful Riddler puzzles that flexed the game’s narrative and gameplay strengths, Gotham Knights only provided busywork with little payoff.
The last decade hasn’t been defined entirely by meh Batman games that were completely overshadowed by the legacy of Batman: Arkham Knight. Some people remember 2016’s VR Batman game fondly, for example. The motion-oriented game did a good job of allowing players to feel like they were actually investigating crime scenes, and meeting classic villains in another dimension is an experience unto itself. But Batman: Arkham VR only lasted 90 minutes, and it was stuck on a platform most people don’t have or want. Even for the people who did play it, Arkham VR was at best a momentary diversion.
Through all of these mishaps and teases, one thing has remained certain over the years: people want a new Arkham game. And it’s that bat-shaped void left in the series’ wake that has now set up Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight perfectly. To be sure, some of the comparisons being drawn between the two games are wishful thinking. By their nature, Lego games are lighthearted affairs that love to poke fun at their source material. The Arkham series were dark tales that explored Batman’s tortured psychology and had no shortage of disturbing moments that could never be fully recreated in a Lego game. But if we’re not getting a new Arkham game anytime soon, this might be the next best thing. Maybe it’ll even be cathartic to have Lego poke fun at all the drama after so many years of sadness.
But the similarities in Legacy of the Dark Knight are purposeful, too. The game appears to mash together the best parts of the wider Batman canon, from Robert Pattison’s menacing, upside-down stride in The Batman to Bane’s dramatic monologue in The Dark Knight Rises. Naturally, this means TT Games will be cribbing from the popular games as well, and it’s evident throughout most of what’s been shown publicly so far.
The Gotham that players explore in TT Games’ take on the DC universe features the same colorful blooms that made the Arkham series so iconic. Both games are open-world, and reportedly the Lego version will be even larger than the spaces people explored in the Arkham series. Gotham’s going to be brimming with Riddler puzzles, though it remains to be seen if these will be anywhere near as vexing as the ones in Arkham. When they involve things like teddy bears, the Lego Riddler puzzles will certainly be sillier.
Then there’s the combat: There are well-timed combos, satisfying counters, and fluid crowd control as Batman gracefully punches his way through groups of enemies — only this time, the baddies will explode into tiny studs after you give them a noogie. You’ll be grappling and gliding through the streets, just like Arkham, though.
There’s even a chance that Legacy of the Dark Knight might outdo Arkham in at least one respect: the Batmobile. As veteran fans know, the Batmobile was one of the worst parts of the near-impeccable Arkham Knight. Boss battles with fan-favorite villains were often reduced to wildly difficult “tank” fights via Batmobile. By focusing these encounters on driving and shooting, these segments failed to capture what made those Batman characters so memorable to begin. Players would often get stuck in these sections, which only made the Batmobile all the more frustrating as a mechanic.
You’d think fans would groan at seeing the Batmobile rev its engines once more, but no. There’s nothing but glee in the responses to footage of people driving around in the Lego Batmobile, as evidenced by this short clip on X that’s been viewed 7.9 million times:
“Close enough welcome back Batman Arkham Knight,” reads one of the top replies.
The Lego Batmobile readily evokes the memory of jetting around the streets in Arkham, and the way Rocksteady subtly reflected the turf battles weighing down Gotham. It’s also, in a way, a perfect encapsulation of the memory hole where the fandom has placed the Arkham series. It’s been long enough that even the imperfect elements that people readily rejected a decade ago are looked back upon fondly. Hell, it’s been long enough that people might not even remember that the Arkham series ostensibly reached an apex already that no game will ever be able to match.
“After Arkham Knight, trying to find more meat on the Batman bone would define futility,” our review in 2015 declared.
But maybe Legacy of the Dark Knight doesn’t have to match or outdo its inspiration at all. For one, there’s that rumor that Rocksteady itself is already working on a new Batman game. But even if that weren’t the case, maybe it’s enough that TT Games is continuing its approach of making games that appeal to adults.
Kids might be able to pick up Lego games like these easily, and they’re guaranteed to giggle at the way Batman pulls out a frying pan before knocking out a thug out cold. But it’s the adults who know the full breadth of Batman’s life in pop culture, from Tim Burton to Christopher Nolan, who are best equipped to appreciate all the deep cuts Telltale’s buried here. Then again, grown-ups who cut their teeth on Lego Star Wars also know that you need zero knowledge of the source material to have fun with a TT game. If anything, Lego games serve as a perfect introduction to a daunting universe with decades’ worth of lore.
“Lego Batman game, inspired by EVERYTHING, Arkham style gameplay…Lord, you’re too kind,” reads a comment on the official trailer.
“You know they’ve cooked when you got every adult Batman fan fully ready to buy it,” reads a post on X.
