There’s A Joy In The Design Of LEGO – Talking All Things Legacy Of The Dark Knight With TT Games

Batman made his first comic book appearance back in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Fast forward 87 years, and The Caped Crusader has endured, thrived, and become one of the most iconic fictional heroes in human history. Spanning across every conceivable entertainment medium, The World’s Greatest Detective has gone through countless iterations and been at the centre of more memorable moments and storylines than you can count. So, when creating an ambitious video game that chronicles and celebrates this vast legacy, you would assume that a deep pool of resources would be a gift, right? Sure, but, as a Batman fan, which I’m sure you are, tell me, where would you start?

During a recent preview event in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to sit down with Bob Scott, the Cinematics Animation Director on LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight. During our chat, Scott detailed the team’s vision for this bold and brave new direction for LEGO Batman, the enduring connection between LEGO and video games, and whether  TT Games would be interested in revisiting and revamping the other properties it’s worked on over the past 20 years.

WellPlayed: There are over 85 years of Batman history, everything from comics, movies, video games, and animated shows. With Legacy of the Dark Knight being a culmination of many Batman stories, where did TT Games begin when shaping the game?

Bob Scott: We basically started from our favourite moments. So we took all the favourite iconic things that we love about Batman and each of the IPs. And some of that was comics, some of it was from games, obviously a lot from the movies and the TV shows. And that was our starting point. And we used the Dark Knight trilogy as a spine, but then it evolved, and it changed. 

We had this huge board where things were being taken in and out of. We spent a very long time honing it and moving all these parts. And it changed a lot over that time. It was getting those iconic moments that we knew we had to hit. There are some of them that are my iconic moments that haven’t been seen yet. So it would be a spoiler to give it away. 

WP: Speaking on iconic moments, there’s such a wide variety of references and callbacks here. You’ve got Batman Ninja from the anime through to Absolute Batman, which is a very recent comic run. Do you have a favourite obscure reference that the team pulled from? 

BS: That’s a good question. I can’t think. You mentioned Absolute Batman and Batman Ninja; we actually put out some content on these recently, as well as Zur-En-Arrh. But he’s not technically Batman; he’s an alien. It’s hard to know where to start, because we have references not only to Batman stuff, but to movies that are associated with people from those movies. There are so many references. I don’t want to give anything away. 

WP: Completely fair. I did spot a Kord Industries sign while I was gliding through Gotham, so there’s a nod to Blue Beetle, and I’m sure there’s plenty more to be found.

BS: Even if you look at the graffiti. We had one guy whose whole job was just to design graffiti for the city; he’s amazing. But it also changes. As you play the game, the graffiti will change and adapt to the different eras. It gives that sense of development, being a living, breathing city, and you can see the influence of Batman on Gotham.

WP: Legacy of the Dark Knight is easily the most mechanically dense and complex LEGO title to date. I feel like that shift may have started with the Skywalker Saga, which introduced the closer camera and more involved combat. Can you speak to the team’s approach to balancing mechanical depth with the pick-up-and-play aspect that LEGO games are known for? 

BS: We spent a long time developing the combat, making sure that it was fluid and easily accessible, but there was enough nuance there, and you can upgrade it so you can play and develop the style if you want to, but you can also just go through vanilla the whole way if you want. 

And certainly you could do that in Classic Mode, but if you go into Dark Knight, you’re going to want those extra movesets and gadget upgrades, because they are super satisfying. There are some great things in there. Again, I don’t want to give away too much, but there’s some great stuff we haven’t shown

So it can be as simple as, or as complicated as you want it to be, because you can customise your character. You can just go through pretty much, hitting X and dodging, but if you want more satisfying gameplay, you can upgrade those movesets, and you can volley over a character and grab them as you’re doing it. You can fly into the air and dive bomb on top of a group of bad guys. There aren’t a lot of buttons involved in combat, but it’s more about fluidity and timing. 

We worked hard to make [combat] feel satisfying, much like the traversal, so it’s something you want to engage with. We also do a lot of tutorialisation for younger players. 

WP: One of the other trademark aspects of LEGO games is a robust set of playable characters that typically fall into a few archetypes. Legacy of the Dark Knight takes a bit of a different approach, with a much smaller, more focused set of playable heroes. What went into the choice to narrow down the number of characters, and what went into choosing which characters would make the cut? 

BS: It was a decision we made really early on. And it was a hard decision because a massive roster of characters is so associated with LEGO games. But we felt that we needed to evolve, we needed to bring something new, and we wanted to build a combat system and put some more complexity into it. Older players were playing Star Wars, and we wanted to give them something to get their teeth into. The only way to do that and to do it well and concentrate on it was to have fewer characters with more satisfying movesets for each of them, so we could really make them feel particular to them, because there is a lot of animation associated with those. It’s all hand-keyed as well. We have a big animation department that does the whole lot. So we don’t use mocap or shortcuts. 

WP: It would be hard to do mocap with LEGO, I’d imagine?

BS: We did try it, and it was disastrous.

WP: What does motion capturing for LEGO even look like? 

BS: We didn’t go with it, let’s put it that way. 

WP: Enough said. So TT Games and Rocksteady are both under the Warner Brothers umbrella, and the combat within Legacy of the Dark Knight seems to draw a lot of inspiration from the Arkham series. Was there any knowledge sharing or collaboration between the two teams? 

BS: Well, we’re always talking to our partners, and there’s a lot of cross collaboration, but mostly the influence of Arkham came in because it’s a big IP, like the Dark Knight movies and the Animated Series. 

And we have a whole level that’s basically the pastiche that opened the Arkham, and there’s some great stuff in there where you follow the Joker going into the asylum. Again, I don’t want to give away. I’m always nervous, because what do people know? The joy of the game is people turning corners and discovering stuff. I’ve heard some guys today say, “Oh my god, he said the line.” That’s the joy, and it’s great. I’m still finding stuff that other people have put in there. 

WP: TT Games has been developing LEGO games for a few decades now. What do you think it is about these little plastic bricks that translates so well into the video game medium? 

BS: Ooh, that’s a good question. I suppose there’s a joy in the design of LEGO. People who buy those sets, there’s a reason they are the number one toy in the world. 

The aesthetic. The one thing that we’ve done with [Gotham] and the environments we have is that we took the dimensions of the LEGO figures and we made sure that that was replicated in the geometry of the city. You’ll even see in silhouette sometimes, there’s the outline of LEGO, but just in the shape that you might glance at. LEGO inhabits everything. The veneer of LEGO creates this beautiful world where even the darker moments from the story come across in a much more playful way because it’s a toy, and it’s a world that’s fun to play in. It’s a safe world that you can have adventures in and tell these stories. But you know what you’re going to get with LEGO. You know that you’re in this zone. And I think we’re really careful to make sure that continues. That people are in safe hands, and certainly that LEGO knows that their IP is in safe hands. Definitely. 

WP: Is there a lot of hands-on with LEGO in the TT Games office? 

BS: We have tons of LEGO in the office. We’ve had guys who do sculpts for us, they professionally make sculptures. Everyone has tons of LEGO in their house. 

You go on Zoom calls, and everyone’s got it all displayed all over the walls. Because sometimes you go, “Oh, I need a prop for this,” and you dig into the LEGO set and find your bits. And a lot of the guys build the Batman builds and stuff; they will build them for real, put them together, and make them work. Sometimes in cutscenes, we want to do this, and they go, “You can’t do that with real LEGO, you cannot allow it.” 

So we always have to make it work properly. And it always works better when we lean into the LEGO because that is essentially what it is. We’re not trying to hide it. We want to be on display and feel LEGO to the end. Like it’s a world that exists in the LEGO universe. 

WP: Do you have a favourite minifig from the game? 

BS: I do love Skeleton Gordon. Has he even been announced? And I do love Ninja Batman, even though it’s a difficult one for cutscenes. But he’s really cool. I love that IP as well. I’m a big fan. 

WP: Now to finish off with a bit of a cheeky question. We’ve already seen a reinvention of the Star Wars franchise, and we’re seeing it now with Batman. Is there any interest in revisiting the other IPs you have worked on in the past, to draw out something more complex, as you have with the last two games? 

BS: Yes. Yes is the answer. 

Well, I don’t like the idea of looking back. And I think that with Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, we’ve gone story-first. We’ve really leaned into putting the story centre stage so that everything fits with that, fueling the narrative as well as the gameplay. So I would really love to see us continue to evolve and try different things going forward. But not lose who we are, you know, and I think that’s also important.

WP: Bob, thank you so much. I had a great time playing Legacy of the Dark Knight, and I can’t wait for launch.

BS: Thanks so much.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight releases on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PC on May 22.