Gotham Knights Diaries Part Three

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 a trip to GCPD to decrypt Dr Langstrom’s hard drive, we were left with more questions thanks to Talia al Ghul personally cremating her father…

Before I could look into that, however, I swapped over to Jason Todd so that I could give him a try. I wasn’t allowed on patrol yet though, I had to craft a new melee weapon: Stock Pistols. Yes, apparently as Red Hood used rubber bullets, his guns were classed as melee weapons? That’s…. not how that works… Even though he hits people with the butt of the gun, it’s still a gun.

Anyway, it let me discover that the crafting materials I had been collecting were Polymer, Titanium Mesh, and Industrial Solvent, and now I had a stronger power level. From there, I went across to the training area and completed all of the available VR training missions, then logged onto the Batcomputer. Since I had foiled some crimes of opportunity on my way to the university, it had unlocked intel on four premeditated crimes. There were two kidnappings, an investigation, and an armoured truck robbery. Since the robbery was closest, I set it as my active objective.

But first, before I could leave on patrol, I checked out the rest of the Belfry, finding a number of Easter Eggs. Pow! energy drink, an apron with Wonder Woman’s logo on, an unused wheelchair, an arcade cabinet with Spy Hunter available to play, and a poster of Black Canary playing a concert at the Monarch Theater.

Finally leaving Belfry, I headed for the armoured car robbery on Tricorner Island (curiously situated on the East side of the city instead of the South) using the Batcycle. Spotting a break-in at a church, I beat those people up and interrogated one of them about Langstrom, but they knew nothing. After a short drive, I grappled up to a… actually, I’m not sure what its purpose is, so no idea what to call it. It was a post a couple of stories tall with a platform and floodlights at the top — there was also a Batarang which I grabbed, only to be told that there were 11 more in Historic Gotham.

At the same time as I snatched the Batarang, the Freaks broke into the Secur-Corp armoured truck, so my idea of picking them off carefully had to go out of the window. I took one out by surprise, but then had to keep an eye on anyone trying to make off with a bag full of money while I beat up everyone else. Once they were all incapacitated, I set out for a kidnapping in progress. However, once I was close by I ditched the Batcycle and took to the rooftops, only to stumble across someone being shot at! I had no idea what it was about, but I beat up the handful of presumed gang members and jumped off of the roof.

Arriving at the scene of the kidnapping, I was confused why a couple of Freaks were beating up the victim instead of putting them in their ice cream truck. Fortunately, it gave me time to quietly knock out two of the group before I was spotted and took the rest of them down. Interrogating one of them, they let slip that Langstrom had promised them “super hearing”...

My next objective was another kidnapping, but this time by The Mob and not the Freaks. It was close by, so I used the grapple to get there and drop behind one of them, intending on silently taking them down. This backfired when I shot him instead, alerting everyone who rushed to beat me down…

Once the situation was contained, I drove over to a crime scene where a body had been partially buried after being killed with a baseball bat. Some of the evidence was shrapnel from a homemade explosive which pointed to Freaks in South Side, so I drove over there to find the murderer. Of course, I was sidetracked by another attempted break-in which I foiled, and I stopped to have a look at the Stacked Deck pub and Big Belly Burger. Then, some Freaks were trying to break into an ATM!

Eventually reaching the dockyard where some Freaks were holed up, I took the time to scan everyone and everything. There was loud music which could drown out some loud attacks, or be disabled to draw someone towards it, as well as something that would explode if I shot it. So, I went to quietly take down a lone Freak — and shot them instead… Yes, it happened twice, I was thoroughly unamused…

When they were all finally unconscious, I opened a nearby chest to get 924 Industrial Solvent and 2,134 Titanium Mesh. However, since I still needed to interrogate some of The Mob, I set course for Gotham’s West End. Upon arriving, I just so happened to spot and scan some street art, a piece titled Born This Way. I was also not too far away from an armoured truck being broken into, so I put a stop to that and interrogated a Mobster. They admitted to being paid by Langstrom, but even their boss didn’t know that it was going on.

Calling in to Belfry, I reported my findings and was told that Talia al Ghul had been located, and that I should go and see if she was more communicative today. Luckily, there were some criminals along the route that needed dealing with, the closest of which I managed to knock out without them becoming alerted! The next lot were on top of a building, so I threw two of them off of the roof, which knocked them unconscious, honest! I also spotted a Jitters coffee shop.

Talia was on top of Stagg Industries, near the Koul-Brau building, just chilling. As I spoke to her, she explained that the League had ousted and were hunting her, likely due to her incinerating Ra’s, and they were focusing on completing his mission. She also blamed the repeated trips into the Lazarus Pits for why Ra’s went after Batman. She refused to answer any more questions and left after I refused to answer why we had been at the morgue.

As I returned to road-level, Robin called to tell me that I was needed at Belfry. They had received an “interesting” message from Harley Quinn…

Returning to Belfry, my patrol summary said that I had stopped five crimes, completed four bonus objectives, and rescued one cop and four citizens. That involved defeating 66 enemies, nine of which were silent takedowns.

FOOTNOTES

Pow! is a sound effect from the 1960s Batman TV show, as well as many comics over the decades.
Wonder Woman is a DC character, arguably one of the physically strongest characters.
The reason there’s a wheelchair, and the fact that Belfry is very handicapped accessible, is because Barbara Gordon was paralysed from the waist down for a while and became the uber hacker/information source called Oracle. She got better, but now not so much?
I’m honestly not sure why Spy Hunter is in this game, but the high score board features Superman and Wonder Woman! Though, this might be a reference to the awesome comic Grayson, where Dick Grayson was a spy working for the mysterious Spyral.
Black Canary is somewhat related to the Batfamily as she’s frequently worked with Oracle as part of the Birds of Prey comic.
Monarch Theater is one you might not remember, but you know it — it’s where Martha and Thomas Wayne took Bruce the night that they were murdered.
The Secur-Corp Armored Car Service is a subsidiary of LexCorp, which is owned by Lex Luthor of “Superman villain” fame.
Stacked Deck is a pool hall which appeared in Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, and the first volume of the comic Harley Quinn.
Big Belly Burger is a fast food franchise that’s been in many DC comics since the 80s and had a bunch of mentions in the Arrowverse.
Jitters first appeared in issues of The Flash in 2010, before being a prominent location in episodes of The Flash TV show.
Stagg Industries is known as Stagg Enterprises in the comics, and has made many appearances since 1965, as well as its owner Simon Stagg. Both were most notably in Batman: Arkham Knight.
Koul-Brau has been a beer in the comics since the late 90s, and another subsidiary of LexCorp.