Gotham Knights Diaries Part Eleven

This is my exploration of Gotham Knights where I will chronicle my playthrough like a text-based Let’s Play. I’ll point out all of the Easter Eggs that I can spot in the footnotes at the end of each part. Now let’s continue Gotham Knights…

Having discovered Clayface making a movie and stopped Mister Freeze from creating a new Ice Age, I was ready to continue the main plot…

The first thing I did, however, was resolve all of the premeditated crimes in the city, and a bunch of the random assaults and break-ins that I came across along the way. After all, I still had to interrogate people to get information. During this section, I stopped an Illegal Hack on the GothCorp building, an Organ Trafficking, and a Prison Transport Attack, saved some Officers Under Attack, completed a Crime Scene Investigation, and cleared out an Owl’s Nest in a church. I also resolved a number of crimes of opportunity.

Unfortunately, the Court of Owls had worked out a way to get my attention: by posing random crimes. I found a bunch of corpses and two crates in an alleyway, with one pinned up in the signature Talon style with knives in the forearms. One crate was full of resources, but opening the second one triggered a trap! The crate belched out something toxic and some Talons came at me from the shadows! A later “crime” led me to the top of a building where there were just Talons in hiding, with no scene laid out for me to find.

Heading to the Mr. Freeze’s Regulator Operation on the map, I found an underground club filled with Regulators and equipment. After knocking out and beating up everyone, I disarmed two cryogun crates, spoiling the weapons. Unfortunately, no sooner had I done that when Alfred Pennyworth contacted me to warn that the Regulators were carrying out multiple robberies right now! So, I headed for West End to put a stop to the first one at Star City Trust.

Between me and the next heist was a member of The Watch wanting to speak to me, so I headed up to a skyscraper that was under construction. Toshio Mishima was a teacher, working part-time as a security guard to afford supplies for his students, and asked me to stop crimes and defeat criminals in New Gotham.

Once the second robbery had been thwarted — though I’ve no idea what they were stealing from the seemingly abandoned building — Alfred suggested that Mister Freeze might know what the Regulators were up to, so I should return to Belfry to make a plan to meet with the criminal at Blackgate prison. Since I had saved enough police officers, I took the opportunity to meet with Detective Renee Montoya for some rewards.

Finally, I was ready to go and meet Mark Hendricks, to get information about the security plans for the Masquerade Ball at the Orchard Hotel. Upon reaching the meeting place near the naval yard, I found an abandoned car and an unconscious Court of Owls member. A short distance away, some more Court members were trying to get into a building, and once I’d beaten them up and their Talon reinforcements, Mark exited the building to speak with me. Apparently, one of his people was feeding the Court information, so he agreed to give me the same intel.

Returning to Belfry, my patrol summary said that I had stopped 12 crimes, completed seven bonus objectives, and rescued four cops and three citizens. That involved defeating 127 enemies, six of which were silent takedowns…

While the Batcomputer worked on the intel I’d just received, Barbara Gordon asked Tim Drake what was troubling him. Since he hadn’t faced the League of Shadows before, the others gave a history lesson on Ra’s al Ghul and the League. Formed to root out corruption all over the world — by tearing things down and rebuilding them — they had set their sights on Gotham some time ago, but were stopped by Batman. As a result, the Dark Knight had been named heir to the League by Ra’s. Tim had apparently known none of this.

To my annoyance, the quartet started putting things together in a timeline that the protégés of the World’s Greatest Detective should have already known. The Court of Owls was using a Lazarus Pit extract, so what if Ra’s found out and came to Gotham to see to it personally? Batman would, of course, have had to step in if only because he had begun investigating the Court himself and didn’t want Ra’s to screw things up for him. Then, with Batman’s death, the League would have set its sights back on the corruption caused by the Court, and that was why they were in town.

Barbara Gordon summed things up: they would put a stop to the Court of Owls, which would save Gotham City from the League of Shadows. The Batcomputer finally completed what it was doing, and she and Jason Todd turned their attention to it. Tim muttered that he really missed Bruce Wayne, and Dick Grayson as the oldest Robin, the member of the team with the most experience, and the only person who heard Tim speak, just turned around and went to look at the computer.

Alfred said that Mark Hendricks was in a safehouse now, so I swapped my suit to a new Cryogenic Suit, but I had no other upgrades that would improve my stats. I then spent my upgrade points on Fear Takedown and Critical Expertise, before swapping over to the others to equip their best costumes and weapons. I also took a look at their emails while I had some free time.

Jason had an email from Isabel Ardila who wanted him to “make me your chili” when she returned to Gotham in six weeks. Tim sent a group email about them needing more vehicles, one to Tim about how Jason wanted to ask Dick to create a program for disadvantaged youths through Wayne Enterprises, and one from Dick about baking snickerdoodles for Barbara using a recipe from Tingley Bakery. There were also general emails from Niall O’Hara Real Estate, Kapow! Energy Drinks, Gotham News Network, and ReQ Totally Real Legitimate Pharmaceutical Company. Interestingly, two emails mentioned Gotham Academy.

Tim’s emails had the same ReQ spam and a Gotham News Network update, as well as a food delivery service that used armoured cars called NomOn, a Tweak Gaming subscription reminder, and a Blastfeed Movies email which was interesting. It listed two of the 10 most underrated Basil Karlo roles; Dark Tomorrow andVengeance. There was also an email from Conner Kent, who wanted to go hunting for the cryptid “Mothman of Point Pleasant”.

Similar to the other two, Dick had an email from ReQ, but also had one from the Dr. Q&A Podcast and the Gotham Insurance Network. More importantly, there was one from Kory saying that the Titans could come to Gotham to help, though they figured he’d say no. There was also one from Sonia Branch wanting to get her bank in good with Wayne Enterprises now that she had an in with Dick. The final email was from Lois Lane, asking if Dick knew anything about someone calling themself Nite-Wing and beating up criminals, or if he wanted Superman to deal with it.

And with all of that done, it was time to head out. After all, there was a magnificent ball to attend…

FOOTNOTES

GothCorp was created for the Batman The Animated Series origin of Mister Freeze, and it’s where he got his “powers”.
Isabel Ardila is Jason’s girlfriend in issues of Red Hood and the Outlaws and Red Hood: Outlaw.
Gotham Academy was first invented for 2004’s The Batman cartoon, but 10 years later it received its own ongoing comic book.
Dark Tomorrow and Vengeance are the names of two Batman videogames from the early 2000s, one of which was better than the other.
Conner Kent AKA Superboy, based on the earlier email from Impulse and a document that I found in S.T.A.R. Labs, I assumed he hadn’t been cloned yet.
Mothman AKA Byron Lewis was a character from Watchmen, though he wasn’t a cryptid.
Kory was mentioned in a previous email, from Roy Harper to Jason Todd where she was referred to as Kori.
Sonia Branch was created for the comics in 2011 and appeared in issues of Nightwing.
Nite-Wing AKA Thaddeus Ryerstad was a recurring Nightwing villain in the 90s & 00s, who most recently tangled with Robin.