Gotham Knights will have distinct ability trees for each character

Gotham Knights characters will each have their own distinct ability trees, creative director Patrick Redding has revealed to GamesRadar. 

Nightwing, Bat Girl, Robin, and Red Hood will all have their own specific upgrade paths and gear sets due to the different styles of play that the characters boast. 

When we asked Redding about balancing the character's abilities in co-op, he told us: "It is the most important problem to solve when you have an ensemble cast in a multi-protagonist game. We're building distinct ability trees for each character. They have to stick to gear sets. They have different styles of play. So we're servicing that."

Redding delved into the reason characters will have similarities and differences in-game, telling us: "They're all trained under Batman, so have certain crimefighting approaches that are derivative of that. But at the same time, they have all kind of evolved in their own direction, and they have their different specialties. With things like traversal, we wanted to make sure that each character had a kind of different spin on that idea of being able to kind of party-crash on crime."

"So they might have access to some of the same tools, like the grapple and the Batcycle. But they also have ways of kind of approaching and entering into the fray that is really distinctive and specific to each of them."

On top of that, senior producer Fleur Marty told us that characters will be able to equip different suit styles throughout the game. She said: "It wasn't by accident we actually showcased different suit-styles. And, yes, you'll be able to have new costumes and craft new gear for your heroes. They will not only by cosmetic— there will be some very cosmetic ones, with some actual gameplay effects."

Gotham Knights is due to release on PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC sometime in 2021.

Here's what we discovered from the Gotham Knights trailer breakdown.