Gotham Knights Diaries Part Four

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…

After finding out little about the Langstrom case, and getting few answers from Talia al Ghul, we had an “interesting” message from Harley Quinn arrive at Belfry…

The message had arrived from Blackgate Penitentiary via pigeon-borne USB drive, according to a pitiful Dick Grayson. I say pitiful because he begged for help to get a video playing on the tablet that he was holding, and yet he held himself up as a formidable detective…

Harley Quinn appeared on the monitors and said that she had completed some task that Batman had asked her to do, though Tim Drake claimed to be in the dark as to what that might have been. In fact, he was under the impression that Quinn left Gotham after “her ex” killed Jason Todd — the script went to lengths not to mention Joker by name. Jason, however, had heard that Quinn went straight after “some government thing”, but the video said she was in Cell Block 3 at Blackgate.

Switching to Robin, I had a read of my emails which had just arrived. Two were from Tim himself to the team, asking for help with a school art project and wanting to check out the Gotham Historical Circuit, both of which required the team to go around the city scanning things. Another was from Dick Grayson to the team, reminding them about some Batarangs that were hidden around the city and required collecting. More notably, there were two from Tim’s fellow members of the superteam Young Justice, Impulse and Wonder Girl, checking in on him.

At the workbench, I upgraded my bo staff as well as my suit and slingshot before heading out on patrol. I had uncovered evidence of six pre-planned crimes the night before, and the closest was a bank robbery, so I went over the rooftops and snuck in through a ventilation shaft. While I was scanning crooks, however, they breached the vault meaning that I had to jump down and start breaking teeth. It was for the best, as no sooner had I knocked down the first two when a couple of others started making for the exit with bags of money!

Once everyone was subdued, I exited the way I had come in as I didn’t want the police outside to shoot me. There was a Criminal Stronghold in the West End, but before I could go there I had to deal with two lots of gang members with stolen money, as well as an armoured car being broken into until I smashed some faces.

Close to my destination, I found a group of ne'er-do-wells next to a burning, overturned vehicle, so I beat them up before going to the stronghold. Most of the entrances were on the ground floor, but I found a staircase leading into the upper level and went inside. While scanning for enemy positions, I was spotted and had to smack them all about in a big fight instead. After opening two crates and scanning a planning board, I hacked a server which alerted more goons to fight while I remained inside a circle… It wasn’t too difficult, at least.

100 metres or so away were some members of the Freaks trying to break into a Harvester’s Bank and Trust ATM across from Star City Trust, which I put a stop to. My map had an unknown crime on it across the river, so I wanted to check it out — but was interrupted by a break-in which I felt that I had to stop.

A short distance away, at Robinson Park, some Blackgate escapees were holding hostages. I managed to get rid of some of them quietly, but I must have missed some with my scanner, as seven somehow turned into 12… Not far away, two sets of Freaks were doing some run-of-the-mill assault, so I hit them.

With those people out of commission, I started making my way over the rooftops to a road, and accidented into yet another assault! Feeling pretty fed up with these minor crimes, I set out for the Bowery where a kidnapping was supposedly in progress. When I arrived, I found a whole mess of Freaks outside the Gotham Goliaths stadium. Two of them went down stealthily, but the rest had to be beaten up the old-fashioned way.

Just down the road were members of The Mob breaking into an ATM, and upon interrogation one of them told me about a witness being targeted on Tricorner Island. I stopped a break-in along the way before arriving at the Gotham Naval Research Facility where members of The Mob were trying to break into a building. I managed to stop them while preventing them from touching the door.

Before leaving Tricorner, I saved a police officer from some Freaks and stopped another group of them from breaking into a building. Arriving at a prison transport attack in the financial district, the GCPD dispatch mentioned that this was at the corner of Dozier and Harbor, it’s fun finding out where streets are in Gotham. The doors of the transport were already down to 64% strength when I jumped in to fend off the Freaks, and were down to 60% by the time I had finished. I had to laugh when I heard a voice inside the truck asking if the other Freaks were alright!

On the way to the next crime, I stopped a break-in, an armoured truck robbery, and caught two suspects fleeing from a police officer. As I was in The Cauldron, I was near to a bomb threat and leapt in feet-first. Which was a mistake, as upon spotting me the three bombs were armed, and to my horror attached to hostages! The 60 seconds ticked away as I beat up Freaks and disarmed the bombs, and I managed to defuse the final one with literally one second left!

At a dock in the financial district was a yacht with a corpse on board which I investigated, finding a flyer for The Happy Eggroll, a known Freak front on Tricorner Island. It was really sloppy of them to shoot a guy and leave such obvious evidence, but I drove back over to Tricorner and along the way I saved a police officer from a gang.

At Tricorner, my restaurant lead had somehow brought me to a warehouse known as Armory. I went in through a hole in the roof, but only managed to knock out one person before being spotted. Fortunately, it wasn’t that tough to beat them all up, so I finally set out for Blackgate, driving past the police on the road bridge and grappling across the underneath of a foot bridge to reach the island.

Entering through a hidden passage, Alfred told me to head past Nexus Processing to Cell Block 3, and cautioned that the guards had been withdrawn from the area. Gaining entry to the actual prison, I overheard some guards talking about an attempted escapee who had “tripped”. There were two unconscious inmates with four guards, though only one was in my way as I dropped to the floor, so I knocked them out quietly and scarpered before the others noticed.

In the very next hallway were three prisoners beating the body of a dead guard, so I knocked them about and heard Quinn’s voice on the tannoy. She was expecting “a guest” and wanted “the home fires burning” which didn’t bode well, especially as when I entered the next area I found the cell block, decorated with balloons and banners, with several fires and a bunch of angry inmates. To my surprise, I managed to smash their faces in without being hit once, and went to see Quinn in her cell.

Quinn greeted me as this was apparently our first time meeting, and when I asked what Batman had her working on, she realised that meant Batman really was dead. After a moment where she seemed to consider her response, Quinn explained that she had been profiling criminals for Batman, but before I could have her book she needed something from the records room in the basement, sending me off with half of a card from a card catalogue. Before I left, I tried to have a good look at the cork board that she had set up in her cell, covered in newspaper clippings, photographs, and coloured string. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make out much of it, though I did spot her beaver. It was named Bernie.

Exiting the cell block, I knocked out some inmates silently and entered the courtyard. Since there was an altercation between some inmates and guards, I went around to the left and only had to knock out a single guard; much safer. However, in the next areac a big inmate knocked out two guards and came at me, followed by more guards who also attacked me! Then, in the next area — where I had seen the four guards and two inmates earlier — there was more fighting between prisoners and the screws!

With everyone having a me-induced nap, I opened a crate hidden behind the elevator shaft, then grappled up to get through a gap and into, then down, the shaft itself. A ventilation shaft took me down to the basement where three inmates were… actually, I’m not sure what they were doing? I knocked them out in any case, then opened another crate before entering the records room. The card catalogue pointed me towards a room to the right, but I wanted to check out what else was there. First, was a newspaper clipping from 1847 that hinted at zombies, the next was a prisoner profile of Cyrus Gold who died on a Saturday, the third was a note from the warden about an author named Joan Crowne who was imprisoned for murder, and the final was a business card for a mid-1800s lawyer named Jonathan Brindley.

After grabbing what Quinn wanted from a filing cabinet, something apparently related to Oswald Cobblepot, I left the way that I had entered. I fought my way back, and Quinn complained over the tannoy that she had places to be. As I arrived at her cell, she inhaled some helium from one of the balloons in her cell, then took the paper from me and placed it in the book that she had compiled. Then, she tied it to a unicorn balloon and sent it out of a door, when I clearly could have grappled it as it went past me, but no!

An alarm rang out and inmates hurried past as I gave chase to the unicorn which went outside. I avoided fighting, not wanting to lose the book, only to enter a real donnybrook in the courtyard! The unicorn circled while I beat up inmates, and was annoyed to find the guards turning on me! At one point, Quinn said that she was out, then said “just kidding”, but I was too distracted at the time by the people trying to bash my head in, and the unexpectedly even more upbeat version of Livin' la Vida Loca blaring over everything. Eventually, however, I managed to get Harley’s book from the unicorn and (somehow) escape the prison. Once safely outside, Quinn called me promising that I would see her very soon. With that in mind, I headed back to Belfry…

Returning to Belfry, my patrol summary said that I had stopped nine crimes, completed four bonus objectives, and rescued four cops and nine citizens. That involved defeating 213 enemies, 43 of which were silent takedowns.

FOOTNOTES

The “some government thing” is likely a reference to the Suicide Squad, a government sponsored task force which operates out of the Louisiana-based prison Belle Reve.
Young Justice was a team that Robin, Impulse, Wonder Girl, and Superboy belonged to with their mentor/chaperone Red Tornado, in a comic that ran for over 50 issues.
Star City Trust is named after the city which Green Arrow operates out of.
Robinson Park has been featured in more Batman media than some of the supporting cast. It’s probably named after Robin and Joker co-creator Jerry Robinson.
Gotham Goliaths is the name of a baseball team, a basketball team, a football team, and a hockey team, all based in Gotham. All named in the comics between 1969 and 1985.
The street name Dozier is named after William Dozier, a producer from the Batman TV show from the 1960s.
Bernie is the name of a taxidermied beaver that was all that remained of Harley Quinn’s possessions after Joker blew up her storage in the first issue of 2014’s Harley Quinn ongoing comic. She hallucinated that it could speak to her, and it was great.
1847 is the year that Bartholomew Lash AKA Bat Lash had his secret origin, starting a life of crime fighting. Bat Lash first appeared in 1967 in an issue of Showcase.
Cyrus Gold is the original identity of the supervillain Solomon Grundy, a very strong, usually stupid zombie that keeps being resurrected despite many apparent deaths. In most incarnations it can only say verses from the 1800s poem Solomon Grundy.
While Joan Crowne herself has never appeared in a comic, the Crowne family are on Nightwing’s family tree.
Oswald Cobblepot is better known as the Penguin, a crime boss who runs the Iceberg Lounge under the guise of now being a legitimate businessman.
Harley’s book contains a bunch of Easter Eggs! Mainly illustrations, showing her hyenas Bud & Lou (from her first ongoing comic), her original costume, probably more if I get a good look inside!