Gaming has become one of the staples, and an entertainment source for many people globally. It is one of the only things that can be appreciated by many despite the border limitations. As such, we love to see racial diversity in such games, because it not only allows us to appreciate those characters, but it makes the game feel a lot more enjoyable.
Especially now that each game is evaluated by eyes across the globe, and played among friends across borders, racial diversity makes your characters feel more real. Many games do it in their own way, some being so dedicated to this, that they cast different people to match the role of the character.
It is something we all gamers appreciate, but when a game does not do that, it doesn’t make it naturally bad, because sometimes it can be overlooked. However, that is not the case with Gotham Knights.
Gotham Knights | The Batman Family.Gotham Knights Reception
Gotham Knights has had a rollercoaster of mixed reviews. It started with the criticism regarding the game being locked at 30FPS and having almost no performance mode options in consoles. On PC, the game requires some beefy hardware, making it a target of criticism for many gamers.
Even if you look past those things, there are many other things that don’t meet the expectations that fans had built over the recent months. In light of these events, Gotham Knights were compared to many older superhero games, like Batman: Arkham Knight, showing negligible evolution of games over the past 7-years.
Aside from the criticism, many appreciated the game as well, calling it a victim of unfair criticism. So, all we can say is that the game has some things which could be heavily improved, yet it still does some things great.
One of the things they could have improved was racial diversity. And yes, they had many options to make the Bat Family much more diverse than it is. That is exactly what we will be looking into today.
Major Points
- The Bat Family has many diverse characters, which is excellent, yet Gotham Knights still only picked the most white characters.
- The only places they did go for People of Colour is where they has no other options.
- This has caused some players to be extremely disappointed with the game, with some not even recommending it.
Gotham Knights’ Bat Family
Since Batman is dead, our main focus in the game is the Bat Family. Our keen eyes at TopTierList found a thread by Resetera user PhoenixAKG, who started this whole discussion. If you pay attention, there are no POC playable. In fact, there are members of the Bat Family that we didn’t get to see, most of which are racially diverse.
First off, we have Cassandra Cain (Asian Batgirl), Damian Wayne (Middle-Eastern Robin), and Duke Thomas (African-American). None of them were in the game or even got mentioned. We only had Luke Fox being mentioned, and Helena Bertillini, the Afro-Italian Huntress (DC Rebirth) portrayed as white.
(Left to Right) Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, and Duke Thomas.The only character we can consider as POC is Renee Montoya, a major ally in the story, along with Lucius Fox. But even he is only available to rescue and in side missions.
One of the game’s main themes is police corruption, which is different from how it is portrayed normally. Usually, it is the system that is flawed, and not all cops are shown as being corrupted. Renee Montoya’s existence here stresses the need for good cops. Still, cops are the only enemies you don’t get XP from.
The game itself discourages you from fighting them, even though they are supportive of progressive social movements. So, you don’t stand up against cops, despite the POC being one of their targets. That aspect is depicted in a weird way, and Gotham Knights could have done that a lot better to at least show its support for POC.
Last but not least, an important thing that PhoenixAKG mentioned in the end included:
There is also the portayal of Talia once again which falls into the Morrison thing of portraying her as completely villainous without many nuances while also taking the chance to darken her skin and make her more visibily a WOC.
Ending Remarks
Although Gotham Knights could have been one of the most diverse games we had this year, it ended up becoming the opposite. Normally, we wouldn’t criticise it if there were no options, because changing a white character to a different race is also weird. But, they instead changed some POC to white, making it much worse.
What are your thoughts on the matter? Do you think the game could have done a lot better on racial diversity? Share your thoughts with us below and we will get back to you!
Here is a Similar Read: Konami Hiring Recruits for In-House Team for Silent Hil.