![]() ![]() This interplay of history and gameplay can be seen across the city. So the player always has the choice to pick the best tool and the best navigation verb to be as efficient as possible, and with different neighborhoods that will give you different experiences.” “So we have two very different themes while being in a third theme that is very organic, and has a completely different way for the player to navigate over. “This spot is kind of like a transition area between the Financial District and the Southside,” continues Kvasznicza. But all of this is a distinct gameplay choice, too: The Cauldron’s history is written into its walls, with tumbledown buildings and cramped, unplanned streets, all set in the shadow of the more prosperous districts around it. ![]() It would attract workers for the mining operation. So this had a specific consequence on the environment around it. So they decided to wall off the two sides of a portion of the water, and they dredged it for mining operations. “We always would like to tell a story with every borough,” says environmental art director Daniel Kvasznicza, “and there's one specific one that is not necessarily related to the family, but is an effect of some of the projects that those families undertook, which was a mining operation that happened in the Riverbed. Take the Cauldron, built into the Cobblepots’ Lower Gotham area: The team has a historical and gameplay basis for every new environment. So we tried to have a lot of those areas where it's almost stuck in time, so the player can really experience what it was back then a little bit too, and see how the city evolved without actually just having to read lore alone.” All those things are more interesting for the player than just a modern city. Even something as kind of generic as construction, it becomes interesting when it's halted construction or it's now abandoned and overgrown, or it's ruins. So there's a lot of areas that are kind of stuck in time. “So because we're making a game, really what we want to do is kind of obviously reveal some of that stuff. “If you visit a city in real life, it's hard to tell some of that history,” explains McMahon. Within those boroughs, the team tries to tell stories without simply having someone speak them out loud: Cobblepot Steel on the other hand informs the industrial nature of its borough, with squat, flat-roofed buildings and towering chimney stacks. Wayne Tower is a modern skyscraper, set amid a landscape of high-rises, perfect for surveying crime from above and swooping in. Each borough includes a signature building, the founding families’ monuments to themselves, and each of those buildings informs the history, architectural style, and level design around it. The result is a Gotham that drastically changes depending on where you are in the city. So then we build around that to where the identity for those districts really is based off of that family.” “The families moved there, they built imposing structures within those districts. “So for us, the five boroughs, it started with the families,” says open world level design director Kristofor McMahan. Key to this take on Gotham are those five boroughs, and the worldview of the families that historically controlled them. The team didn’t just build an open world to play in – it’s truly trying to build a city. The timeline informs everything from the plot, to the gameplay, to the game’s biggest mystery, the Court of Owls conspiracy. Games Montreal created that centuries-long history early in production a whole new timeline for a whole new version of Gotham City.Īnd it isn’t merely window dressing. Which brings us to the present day, and the Gotham you’ll be exploring as Batman’s proteges in Gotham Knights – an open world as soaked in history as it is by neon light and vigilante-friendly shadow. The Waynes, meanwhile, invested their billions in New Gotham, helping advance the town into a new technological age. By the 1960s, Gotham had truly become a patchwork of industry and architecture – the Arkhams settled in North Gotham, building their famous asylum (yes, it’s in the game, and no, it’s not as you’ve previously seen it) near the leafy university. Gotham continued to transform over time – in the 1920s, the Elliots took hold of the 20th Century’s newest means of control, mass media, and built Downtown Gotham in a new art deco image. By the 1850s, Gotham had become a major trade hub, helped along by the industrialist Cobblepots and their smoke-belching Southside steel mills. In the early days, the Kanes established themselves on Gotham’s natural harbour (now known as Historic Gotham), tying the family to their new country’s military might, building ships and weapons of war. The city quickly spread beyond its original bounds, developing five boroughs – and, in each, one of those five founding families would take root. ![]()
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