Gotham Knights Diaries Part Fourteen

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…

With Harley Quinn back behind bars, I had to see a woman about some assassins…

Leaving Belfry, I thwarted some crimes both premeditated and random, including: stopping an Armed Robbery and a Prison Transport attack, stopping Criminal Deals, clearing out an Owl’s Nest and Criminal Stronghold, completing a Crime Scene Investigation, rescuing Officers Under Attack, saving hostages at a Bomb Threat, and stopping a Kidnapping in Progress. I headed over to see Charlotte, a member of The Watch, who wanted me to defeat three criminals with stealth attacks, and just straight defeat eight criminals, in Historic Gotham.

Arriving at Talia al Ghul’s location, I found her having just killed some assassins from the League of Shadows in a parking structure. After a brief catch up about the attack on the Court of Owls by the League, Talia explained what Doctor Langstrom was creating before his murder. The Talons that I had been facing were reanimated corpses, but with Langstrom’s research the Court apparently had ways to create Talons using living subjects…

Talia left, suggesting that she was leaving Gotham City, and so I headed across town to speak to Detective Montoya. She had read the evidence that we’d sent over, proving that Jacob Kane was involved with a secret society, etc, etc, but she didn’t want to move on it without officers that she could trust. So, I headed a few blocks over to bash in some skulls, as corrupt detectives now showed up on my HUD. Five cops later, Belfry sent the info over to Montoya, while I headed uptown to investigate a murder scene. It seemed that Montoya wanted us to get there ASAP to check it out.

Arriving in Bristol, I found some GCPD detectives already there, but they weren’t investigating. In fact, they were cleaning up, and had a barrel fire ready to burn some evidence. After silently knocking out all five of them, I checked things out and found some emptied blood vials, a baseball bat with the wrong blood on it, and a Court of Owls mask ready to go in the fire. Belfry reported that Montoya would take over the scene, so I ended Night 14.

Returning to Belfry, my patrol summary said that I had stopped 12 crimes, completed nine bonus objectives, and rescued one cop and four citizens. That involved defeating 144 enemies, 21 of which were silent takedowns…

We had received an urgent message from Penguin, so of course we waited until the middle of the day to listen to it. Before that, I checked my emails where Montoya thanked us for the help and a photo of the court mask Batgirl had sent over, Alfred Pennyworth told Barbara Gordon to take some time off, and Tim Drake detailed the history of the Lazarus Pits. At least, the history as far as the Batfamily could tell, with Talia seemingly having used the pits eight times, and since Ra’s had been around for over 500 years there was no telling the number of times he had been submerged. Tim promised more details once he had gone through more of Batman’s notes.

Taking this opportunity to really look into my equipment — as I had noticed that the base Power stat that I had been picking up wasn’t going any higher than my current equipment — I realised that equipping mod chips was the key to better stuff. So, I started with 382, 340, and 343 Power on my Suit, Melee, and Ranged, I ended up with 840, 1066, and 1044 respectively! Then I moved on to skills, which I upgraded with Hacking Overload and Enemy Counter Focus.

Listening to the message, Penguin was apparently being attacked by his family as they’d discovered that he had aided the Bats, so clearly this was urgent. Still, patrol wouldn’t begin until it got dark, so I checked the latest email that Barbara had received from the dating app Hooq App, from @DizzyPHD. They wanted to go and see the latest Swift & Serious movie.

Swapping to Jason Todd, his emails also had him emailing a Court mask photo to Montoya? But also two emails from Dick Grayson, one praising him for his mentorship program idea, and the other saying how glad he was that they were teammates. Tim Drake’s email also had him sending that Court mask photo? And he had emailed Dick about wanting to go hunting for Mothman in Virginia once this was over, just as Conner Kent had invited him to do. Finally, Dick’s emails had the same email to Montoya as the others, why did all four of them email her? The only other email was from Clark Kent with “some more” bird puns for him! So, the email full of puns that had gotten the sender blocked was all a prank on Barbara by Dick.

Heading out on patrol, I stopped more crimes including two Illegal Hacks, three Criminal Deals, saved an Armored Truck, stopped an Organ Trafficking, cleared an Owl’s Nest, investigated a Crime Scene, found some Batarangs, and located two Landmarks of Gotham City. I did fail to prevent a prison transport from being broken into, but I did defeat the escapee.

I spoke to Oscar from The Watch who rewarded me with resources and asked me to stop three more crimes in Lower Gotham, then I headed to Otisburg to speak to Lucius Fox. He wanted me to craft three Rare suits or weapons and three Rare Melee Weapons. Detective Montoya wanted to give me some resources too, and asked that I defeat two corrupt detectives and interrogate eight criminals.

Along the way, I upgraded with Critical Focus, as I had been getting hurt quite badly and wanted to get more critical hits in. Then, I headed to the Iceberg Lounge. Inside, all of Penguin’s guards were dead and I could hear the man himself calling for help in his office. I found him pinned to the wall, Court of Owls-style, so pulled him down — which set off a gas trap! As I succumbed to the gas, Penguin made some kind of apology, saying that he was always going to choose himself over others.

Waking on a bed in a large stone room, I stumbled forward along the stone corridor. My scanner didn’t work when I tried it, so as I ran around a corner I was caught off guard and hit a spike trap. Waking back on the bed, it hadn’t killed me! Instead, on the hallway ahead of me was a portrait of the incident. Worse, as I rounded the corner — now going right instead of left — I pressed the wrong button and was hit by the spikes again…

Two portraits now decorated the stone walls ahead of me, but I managed to slide beneath the spikes this time. Court members and the Voice of the Court taunted me as I slid below more spikes, and quite easily avoided some rotating blades, following the passage to my right. It was a dead end, so I returned to the blade room — but it had been replaced by a room with flamethrowers embedded in the ceiling! Those were simple to avoid, thankfully, as I just didn’t walk on any scorch marks, heading again into the right-hand passage.

Bruce Wayne’s voice began taunting me as I came across his opened grave. Following the passage, I saw a Batgirl wearing a Court mask, and assumed a “dark twin” fight, so simply walked past only for it to disappear. Bruce continued to taunt as I slid under more spikes, then found Alfred dead in a chair, in front of the Batcomputer. It was, of course, another hallucination, but further along was a semi-circular table with three Court corpses, which I assumed were more real because they didn’t disappear.

The next chamber had the voice of Commissioner Gordon complaining about Batgirl as well as the time she “disappeared” because she was temporarily acting as Oracle. Leaving his office behind, I managed to reach a door out of the labyrinth! Before me was a giant metal orb with some owl sigils placed around the room. Upon activating them all, I had to quickly reactivate them to open up a secret door.

Entering the next chamber, part of the floor rotated, and a wall moved, making me think that it was about to crush me. However, it was just a place to fight some Talons — as were the next three chambers… The final chamber had a large statue in the centre, atop which stood a larger-than-average Talon who was actually capable of speech, called a Gladiator Talon. Presumably the very thing that Talia had warned me about earlier…

We fought, and its defeat ended up destroying the statue in the middle and squashing them. It also bashed through a wall, and grappling out revealed that the whole labyrinth was actually just sections of passageway that were being moved into place by some apparatus. The whole thing was a lot easier to navigate without so many walls, and I came across a control room being operated by three members of the Court. I took them all down silently, then moved a section out of the way to reveal a tank of gas. Chucking Batarangs at the valves on either side, it exploded and gave me access to a pit behind.

There was freezing gas spraying out of some pipes as I followed the tunnel and grappled up to an industrial hallway overlooking a laboratory. A lone scientist was doing something to a corpse and making it twitch, which Batgirl commented upon while I snuck over and grabbed the scientist to interrogate them. As she was still talking to herself when I pressed the Interrogate button, she put the scientist in a hold and knocked them out. With no idea what the scientist said, I was left with the Voice saying that the labs were compromised, and that Project Polias was to be initiated. So, I looked it up afterwards, and the scientist was supposed to tell me that they were turning volunteers into Talons now, rather than corpses.

Around the corner was a notebook explaining that Project Polias was the process of inducing cardiac arrest and immediately injecting the dionesium into the subject. In that state, they could remain in suspended animation indefinitely, so long as they didn’t get too cold? Using the elevator behind me, I can only assume I descended, exiting into a massive chamber filled with coffins containing cryogenically frozen Talons. There was a handful of Court members guarding the area — perhaps fewer than I’d expect given the fact they knew that I was wandering around — so I took them all out silently. The Voice announced over some speakers that more Talons were being awakened than ever before, as they were going to war against the League of Shadows.

With the coast clear, I turned some valves to overload the cooling controls, fighting some Talons and Gladiators as I did so. The coffins began to open, but most of the Talons were freezing solid in the process. However, as I made my escape, so too were a bunch of Talons, spreading across the city…

Returning to Belfry, my patrol summary said that I had stopped 12 crimes, completed eight bonus objectives, and rescued two cops and three citizens. That involved defeating 140 enemies, 18 of which were silent takedowns…