Gotham Knights is not a Games-as-a-Service product. That means you can experience the title completely offline without having to worry about missing out on anything. A few words were also lost about grinding.
After the release of Gotham Knights, no Games-as-a-Service mechanics will be used, as you know them from Destiny 2 and similar games. The senior producer Fleur Marty announced it in a conversation with the editors of IGN.
“This is very much not designed as a game-as-service,” he said. “There is an ability tree, which is different for each of the characters, and then there’s gear that you craft – and so choices that you’re going to be making – but that does not mean that this is a game-as-service.”
Ultimately, Gotham Knights is a self-contained story that you can experience alone despite the co-op orientation. According to Marety, you won’t miss anything: “If you’re playing single player, you can be offline if you want to. We think that teaming up and living that dynamic duo fantasy can be also a really great experience for players, but we won’t force it on them.”
Co-op gameplay has been limited to two players for a number of reasons. “You can have four-player brawler experiences, [but] I think the more you try to lean into that, the more you end up having to create environments that only really work for that,” says Patrick Redding. In addition, the restriction to two players is more helpful in creating an experience that works equally well for co-op players and individual players.
But what about the progression? Is something like this necessary to move forward? Apparently not, as can be seen from Redding’s further words. The map will also be completely open from the start, which in turn means that the level of the opponents will be adjusted.
“It’s true that, as you are getting more powerful in your progression, you’re gonna see a sliding scale in terms of not just the level of the enemies, but even some of the types of enemies that you’re going to be coming up against. But it’s not a grind, it’s not a situation where you’ll say, ‘Oh, God, I have to go grind this type of mission in order to level up to this, and then I can get this.'”
Gotham Knights will be available for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and PC in 2021.