I played the new Lego Batman, a fun game that takes the Dark Knight seriously
If you told a comic book fan like me that you love Batman, I might ask, “What era?” Since his first appearance, nearly 90 years ago, the story of the Dark Knight has had so many chapters and narratives that it has become a cultural symbol of core themes and elements, ready to be repackaged into new versions for TV, film, audio drama, games and more.
The latest of these redefines the Caped Crusader’s adventure using the world’s most famous building blocks. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is undoubtedly a family-friendly game, with light action and slapstick gags — but even if it doesn’t have, say, the brutal violence of Frank Miller’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns, I got the sense that Traveller’s Tales, a British game developer, is treating the British character badly.
I asked Jonathan Smith, director of strategy and head of the development team at TT Games (the studio’s parent company), what makes a Batman game. “The extraordinary story you connect with when you step into the shoes of the Dark Knight is a lesson in turning trauma into justice,” he said.
It’s a bit off for the person leading a kid-friendly Lego game, but it shows the tone of the new Lego Batman game, which I played for a few hours at a preview in Los Angeles. There are joys in playing in the colorful world of the Caped Crusader and fun Lego moments, that’s for sure. But the game has a regular narrative filled (sorry) with references to Batman stories and characters over the decades, being faithful to the hero’s motivations in all his variations.
The tribute comes as no surprise to Traveller’s Tales, which has been making mass media video game adaptations since its inception in the early 1990s. Over the past 20 years, it has created a niche by transforming popular buildings into Lego games, starting with Lego Star Wars in 2005. It’s fitting that the most recent Traveller’s Tales title before Legacy of the Dark Knight was 2022’s Star Wars Lego: The Skywalker Saga, an ambitious science-fiction series by developer Smith.
In its next take on Batman, Traveller’s Tales expanded its combat system to showcase Batman’s prowess in hand-to-hand combat. As I played, I got the sense that the developers took deep inspiration from the Batman Arkham games from Rocksteady Studios, cousin to TT Games under the Warner Bros. umbrella. Games. In the Arkham games, players control the aging Dark Knight, who fights many enemies at once. Smith confirmed that they had a big impact on Legacy of the Dark Knight. Aside from the cool Lego look, the combat is fluid and responsive, with well-timed counters for enemy attacks and takedowns.
Fighting isn’t the only thing Arkham games inspire, as players will spend a lot of time roaming around the sprawling Gotham City filled with side missions and tasks to complete.
“[We built] Gotham City was truly immersive, rich, dense, full of wonders, [which is] it’s fun to break through, a real playground,” says Smith. “It was a second step forward from what we started with Lego Star Wars,” he adds.
The game has sequences where Batman and his friends build things to get through the levels.
What Lego brings to Batman, and vice versa
It wouldn’t be a Lego game if you didn’t build something, though in the stages I played, this was a limited and occasional event — a break between battles to assemble a battering ram to break down a vault door, say. Lego’s influence on Legacy of the Dark Knight is far-reaching.
“The world of Lego can’t help but be fun, and the drama and darkness are transformed when you enter that world. It’s still powerful; it still has meaning,” Smith said. “It’s no joke, Lego world. You’re still on this journey. Bruce is still losing his parents. There’s still crime in Gotham city.”
And there’s still the Lego physics: In open-world sections, as you roam the streets of Gotham, you summon the Batmobile that builds around you, brick by brick. For anyone who has assembled their own sets of figure blocks, there is the joy of seeing and hearing the pieces fit together or knock each other apart. And forgive the obvious metaphor, but when you’re creating a story made up of many different iterations of a character, piecing it together with Lego means accepting that some of the parts can collide in fun ways.
“It’s the Batman characters that really got us excited about the creative process — sifting, comparing, discriminating, arguing about preferences,” Smith said. “The more time we spend in that process, the more we come to rediscover some things that we may have forgotten or create new contrasts and combinations … that can all be put together by using the binding agent of this Lego feeling.”
The game features iconic locations from the Batman films, shows and comics.
Curating decades of Batman stories
The game adapts stories from the Batman movies, TV shows and comics, aligning them into a single narrative. The intro cinematic I saw shows a young Bruce Wayne confronting crime boss Carmine Falcone before going abroad to train with the League of Shadows, just like in Batman Begins. Moving on to the game, the first part I played had Batman returning to confront Falcone at his bar, the Iceberg Lounge, although this time he had to fight his way through the crowd like in the latest superhero movie, Batman.
“You’ll see parts of Gotham as you open it. You’ll see cinematic sequences as you go from chapter to chapter and mechanical scenes that slowly reference Tim Burton’s movies, Batman Returns, Schumacher movies and more,” Smith said. “Taking comic book titles, both as well-known as Nightfall, and as obscure as The Long Halloween.”
Those are some of the most famous Batman stories in the character’s history, and it’s impossible to tell from my preview how the game will integrate those moments into its narrative. But what I saw was walking a fine line between being honest and avoiding anger.
The second part I played featured Dick Grayson, Robin’s predecessor, as he took to the skies with his acrobat family and teamed up with Batman to foil Two-Face’s plan to blow him up. His parents don’t die tragically this time — but at some point, they might, as Grayson is later seen as Bruce Wayne’s right ward before the third preview (the boss fighting Poison Ivy and her mutant snapdragon plant monster, which was tougher than I expected).
Over the course of the game, Batman will grow his Bat family with other playable characters, including Robin and Catwoman.
If the game can weave these limited Batman tropes into its own new version of the Bat-mythos rather than just mash up references, it’ll have power to it. But there are many (and many) references I’ve seen anyway. The game has tons of costumes, including costumes from different eras (such as the weird Zur-En-Arrh) and Batmobiles from all the movies and TV shows. You’ll get these through missions, but you can also buy some using in-game currency (not a microtransaction) from mpish’s Bat-Mite.
There are deep cuts in the game from nearly a century of Batman stories, Smith told me. I don’t believe that stealing an archive of almost-forgotten material is a guarantee of quality, but it does suggest that the team has done their research — and that the developers have their preferences.
“When I first saw Tim Burton’s 1989 film, I was shocked by the style, the design, the verve, the cheekiness of it,” Smith said. “And the idea that we’re now going to be able to secure Prince’s Partyman song and play it with a Lego version of the Joker defacing the artwork in the Flugelheim Museum, which is actually my photo series, is a dream come true.”
That’s not the last time Batman gets a brick-and-mortar reboot. My first viewing ended with a Lego-ified cinematic version of Batman: The Animated Series that geeks of a certain vintage have committed to memory. Not every reference will come with every player, but maybe there is an old costume, character or scene that will bring back memories.
“That’s part of what we do, we both remind people of the richness of this story, but maybe we also bring some of it out of the archives,” said Smith. “There’s a lot to find.”
Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, starting at $70, comes out on May 22 to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PC again Nintendo Switch 2.
