‘We Are Not Leaving Anything Behind’ — How Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is Balancing Old and New | IGN Fan Fest 2026

“We privation to support that Lego thought of ‘fun’ modern, relevant, and up to date, and not get stuck successful the past”, says Jonathan Smith, Head of Development Team astatine TT Games.

It’s a tricky balance. For good implicit a decade, Lego games were the explanation of consistency. You ever knew what you were going to get: a bid of puzzle and action-filled levels navigated by a wide roster of multiskilled licensed characters. But Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight looks acceptable to region itself from that formula, astatine slightest slightly. This is simply a caller section successful TT Games' history, 1 that blends a reverence for each things Batman — including, notably, Rocksteady’s Arkham games — with a deeper gameplay acquisition that was archetypal experimented with by 2022’s Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

“With Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, we made a mates of truly important changes that fans truly appreciated”, Smith states. “In particular, getting person to the character, having a truly immersive camera system, and past conscionable starting to marque the combat acquisition oregon immoderate of the halfway gameplay systems deeper and richer than they had been before”.

“We don't privation to suffer the accessibility and immediacy, but that showed that we could adhd layers to that and marque environments that were truly large and wide and truly heavy and affluent and rewarding,” Smith explains. “We've conscionable gone further with Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and past besides recovered aspects of the Batman quality and the Batman story, and successful Gotham City, that person truly worked good with that aspiration to get deeper. To beryllium adjacent much authentic successful our attraction of Lego, successful our attraction of the story, successful our attraction of the characters.”

Characters, and successful particular, the fig of playable ones, person been a large talking constituent ever since this Lego Batman’s reveal. Fans of the bid had go accustomed to rosters stretching into the hundreds successful erstwhile Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and Harry Potter Lego projects, but successful Legacy of the Dark Knight, that fig has been stripped down to conscionable seven.

You are perpetually upgrading and processing caller skills and opening up caller abilities.“

It’s each successful work of depth, says Smith. “We're taking these idiosyncratic characters connected a journey,” helium explains. “So you are perpetually upgrading and processing caller skills and opening up caller abilities for each of those characters. Within the Bat family, arsenic well, we truly wanted to absorption connected making those characters truly unique, making their personalities travel crossed and their abilities precise distinct.”

One of those characters is Catwoman, who we got a marque caller look astatine successful enactment arsenic portion of IGN Fan Fest. TT Games is aiming to contiguous the “essential version” of each Bat leader and villain, truthful naturally, Batman’s feline foe/friend channels each eras of her surface depictions, ranging from Julie Newmar’s ‘60s TV amusement thief to Zoe Kravitz's modern revenge seeker. Across the game, we’ll spot glimpses of each of her incarnations, conscionable arsenic we’ll spot her skillset turn beyond what we’ve seen successful the films arsenic the communicative progresses.

Tools astatine Catwoman’s disposal see a whip that tin not lone harm enemies, but assistance successful solving puzzles acknowledgment to its flexibility (just don’t inquire maine however Lego integrative tin beryllium rather that bendy, I’m not a materials scientist). She’s besides equipped with a precise useful laser pointer that tin rapidly summon a sharp-clawed kitten to scratch a Joker goon’s look to ribbons, oregon let you to straight power a tamer four-legged person to distract guards with a meow oregon crawl done vents to assistance unblock paths. Of course, she’s besides highly trained successful hand-to-hand combat, which remains mostly accordant crossed each of the playable characters and is rooted successful a punch, dodge, and parry strategy that TT Games isn’t acrophobic to accidental is influenced by Rocksteady.

“To marque an essential, truly chill Batman combat experience, of course, we honor, and we look to, and we gully upon the definitive enactment that Rocksteady did to bring that quality to life,” explains Smith. “We privation a truly fluid combo-based combat system. We privation precise dynamic encounters.”

The communicative is much focused connected a tighter roster of characters that are present much differentiated with overmuch deeper gameplay.“

That doesn’t mean that Legacy of the Dark Knight is afloat pushing into enactment crippled territory, though. This is inactive a crippled that wishes to cater to each ages and audiences, truthful galore of those old-school, adventure-focused Lego crippled staples are inactive to beryllium found.

“The communicative is much focused connected a tighter roster of characters that are present much differentiated with overmuch deeper gameplay,” confirms Smith. “So they enactment good successful concern with each other, and we past privation to springiness you tons and tons of options to spot the afloat scope of what those characters tin beryllium by giving you much than a 100 antithetic suits to collect. So you inactive get that infinitesimal successful the Bat Cave wherever you've got each the antithetic suits from each the antithetic characters arrayed successful beforehand of you, colorful and glorious. You're inactive compelled to privation to implicit that collection.”

Trying to entreaty to everyone’s desires is often a risky strategy. Introducing an other furniture of complexity to combat, arsenic good arsenic quality progression crossed a much-shrunk roster of heroes, could entreaty to those looking for much of an action-heavy, “traditional” Batman crippled that the lack of an Arkham crippled has near a void for, but could hazard alienating those who loved the joyful quality of the Lego games that TT built its estimation on. That’s not thing that Smith is disquieted about, though.

“On the contrary, what we find with each our Lego games is that the much we tin gully upon antithetic aspects of a character, the wider we tin marque our gameplay, the much appealing it is to america arsenic players, and to younger players and older players,” helium answers. “There's thing astir Lego that conscionable translates good for everybody. So the much we tin enactment into that, we don't find that it misses the people for anyone astatine all. It conscionable brings much to the party.”

The Bat enactment volition genuinely get started erstwhile Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight arrives connected PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC connected May 29, 2026, with it coming to Nintendo Switch 2 astatine a aboriginal date.

Simon Cardy is simply a Senior Editor astatine IGN who tin chiefly beryllium recovered skulking astir unfastened satellite games, indulging successful Korean cinema, oregon despairing astatine the authorities of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him connected Bluesky astatine @cardy.bsky.social.