Gotham Knights can be played entirely offline and completed solo

Gotham Knights is playable from start to finish in single-player, developer WB Montreal has confirmed. Despite its co-op focus, the whole game can be tackled offline.

Some had speculated that the game would be run as an online service comparable to Destiny - perhaps because of its loot-shooter style damage numbers that are visible in combat. But the similarities end there.

“It’s a third-person, open-world action-RPG,” senior producer Fleur Marty told GameSpot. “The whole game is fully playable solo. You can play on your own offline if you want to. There is no always-online. And on top of that, if you want to experience that with a co-op partner in a very seamless drop in, drop out way, you can do so. There are no game-as-a-service elements designed into the game.”

Marty expanded on that answer in a separate conversation with IGN.

“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,” he said. “But that does not mean that this is a game-as-service.”

That’s pretty clear, and chimes with GamesRadar’s own understanding of the game as gleaned from our interview. 

The four player characters - Nightwing, Bat Girl, Robin, and Red Hood - will each have individual upgrade paths in Gotham Knights. They’ve all trained under Batman, and taken his abilities off in different but complementary directions. That said, we also learned that Gotham Knights co-op won’t tie players together - they’ll be free to roam where they wish.

While WB Montreal previously worked on Arkham Origins, the story of Gotham Knights isn’t connected to Rocksteady’s series - nor to any DC comics out there. It’ll be nice not to have a clue where the plot’s going.

From what we've seen so far, Gotham Knights looks like a bold and energetic evolution of the Arkham formula.