When you release a successful video game, the sequel is usually about taking the same concept and going bigger. That makes the third game a bit of a challenge because how much bigger can you go? Take Lego Batman, for instance. First game is about Batman and the Bat-family doing stuff in Gotham. It was a hit, and so they did a sequel where you could play around with the entire Justice League. That was also a hit, plus the Lego-style Batman became more of a household name thanks to a certain Lego movie you may have heard of called The Lego Movie. Naturally, a third chapter is needed, but where can you go from there? There are three answers to this question: more characters, go to space, and add celebrities. Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (“Two Batmen enter... One Batman leaves...”) has Batman travel the cosmos to stop Brainiac from using the combined power of all the various Lantern rings. Green Arrow is playable, which isn’t a big deal on its own, except Stephen Amell, TV’s Arrow, will be voicing him.
This isn’t his first time voicing Oliver Queen in video game form, as Injustice: Gods Among Us had a special Arrow-based skin for Green Arrow, complete with Amell’s voice. Director Kevin Smith will be joining the fray, which has to be the biggest honor for him. Smith is a massive Batfan, named his daughter after Harley Quinn, and wrote some comics where Batman smoked weed and peed himself. I mean, other stuff happened in those comics, but that’s really all anyone’s going to remember. He’s made an appearance in DC media prior in the animated movie Superman: Doomsday where he played himself, lampooning his infamous unused screenplay of the Nick Cage Superman movie. DC honcho Jim Lee will be there because if Lego Marvel can have Stan Lee, you might as well toss in another Lee to counter it. Then there’s Conan O’Brien, the most unexpected name in there. The talk show host will join the other heroes and famous people in space because...well, I have no idea, but I’m going to pretend it’s because Jay Leno has stolen an Orange Lantern ring.
Conan’s connections to DC and Batman are looser than the others, though he did write a failed pilot for an Adam West sitcom called Lookwell. If anything, it’s more shocking that the Bruce Timm-created alter-ego Flaming C isn’t there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that hero doesn’t pop up somewhere, even in the form of DLC. Check out this behind-the-scenes trailer of our celebrity superheroes in action. Below that are some pics of some of the other heroes and villains you’ll see in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, including obscure animated names Condiment King (Batman: The Animated Series), Music Meister (Batman: The Brave and the Bold), and the Green Loontern (Duck Dodgers). There’s also an appearance by the Bruce Wayne from In Darkest Knight, the Elseworlds tale where Abin Sur’s Green Lantern ring chose Bruce instead of Hal Jordan. Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham will be hitting stores in mid-November. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek.
And Google+, if that's your thing!If you would like to appear to be from a different country - e.g. to change the displayed currencies - select a country from below.We have detected a history of abnormal traffic from your network so we ask that you please complete the following form to confirm that you are not a robot and are indeed a real person. Most of this time this happens if there has been a lot of malicious bot activity from your current internet provider's network or you are using a VPN. It likely has nothing to do with you. We're really sorry for the hassle.While Batman is usually preoccupied with the villainy that consumes Gotham - villainy that he’s not been very good at laying to rest, frankly - he does sometimes bugger off into space. It’s usually because the Justice League have got some sort of extraplanetary crisis on their hands. And that’s exactly what’s happening in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. From Comic-Con, a new trailer for TT’s latest not-really-about-Batman DC Lego romp has appeared.
And, of course, it looks flipping excellent. While the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings Lego games are high up on my list of games that bring me a great deal of joy and feed my sometimes compulsive tendencies, it’s the comic spin-offs that have hooked me the most. For a while, Batman 2 ranked - in my mind - as the best of the bunch, but then Marvel Super Heroes came along and took its place. These games rarely shake things up, but it’s the little things that make them so damn special. Batman being a bit jealous of Supes in Batman 2, Banner’s comical transformation into the Hulk in Marvel Super Heroes. TT can’t help but inject character into these bricks and minifigures. So I am, not surprisingly, rather excited about Batman 3. I mean, there’s Plasticman turning into a jet, and Batman’s Batrocket frying a bunch of innocent ducks. What’s not to love? And only in the Lego games can Superman be funny instead of a tiresome bore. Batman goes to space this autumn.
These are affiliate links - clicking them and playing the games directly supports PCGamesNLego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham Format - PlayStation 4 Genre - Action & Adventure Release Date - 26/11/14 You may also need: Batman - Joker Pop! Batman - Joker 1966 Pop! Batman - Arkham Asylum Killer Croc Pop! Batman - 75th Yellow Rainbow Batman Pop! I agree to the WB terms & conditions I agree to the WB privacy policyThe empire of family-friendly fan-favorite games the TT Games has built is on the backs of small yellow-faced men and interlocking bricks. We are of course talking about the series of LEGO video games. With licenses like DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit empire, TT Games makes it look easy to churn out one or two of these games a year, but the teams working on them refuse to stop innovating. With Fall 2014’s LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, they’re not looking to reinvent the wheel, but they might be expanding the base and putting on some slicker tires.
With a space-spanning storyline that takes Batman, the Justice League, and over 150 total characters far (as the title says) beyond Gotham City, there are plenty of chances for change, from all-new space battles reminiscent of a PS4 hit to “BigFigs” as seen in other franchises and a whole lot more customization/selection than ever seen before in the entire LEGO series. For more on what’s to come, including some brand-new story details and some teases and hints about some of those 150 characters (announcements are of course coming at Comic-Con International: San Diego next week), we sat down this morning with TT Games’ Associate Producer Sam Delaney at a press event in New York. Newsarama: So Brainiac is the big bad this time around, right Sam? Sam Delaney: Well, I can’t give it away! But he’s there on the poster. You see him there. We actually wrote the story ourselves, with the help of DC Entertainment. It doesn’t follow any comic books or specific stories that have been told before, though.
We’re continuing the story from LEGO Batman 2. If you played that, at the end, in an after-credits clip, you hear a voice that says “I’ve found them.” That voice is referring to the Lanterns and their various rings. So that voice is coming towards Earth, and the Justice League is alerted by the Watchtower, and they go to see what this threat is. That’s why we’re in space. We’ve left Gotham behind – we’ve done Gotham – and go into space. That allows us to go to these iconic worlds, these Lantern worlds, places where we haven’t seen Batman go before. So it enables us to have over 150 characters from the DC Universe. It enables us to have our new Space Combat mode; going back to an old-school retro style we used to play as kids, it’s really fun. Nrama: Yeah, I was wondering with the new space combat after playing it at E3, who on the team was a huge fan of Resogun? Delaney: (laughs) Well, when you make a game today, it’s hard to not find another game that’s like it.
But yeah, we love Resogun, it’s a great game, it’s superb. You can make a comparison to it, but our intention wasn’t just that, we wanted to make a great new section of the game. We’ve done space combat before, of course, in the Star Wars games, where you’re behind the ship; we just wanted to do something new for LEGO Batman 3. Nrama: One of the most fun parts when Geoff Johns first introduced the rainbow of Lantern Corps in the comics was in Blackest Night, when some of the core heroes and villains were deputized and got different lantern rings temporarily. Is that something fans should be looking out for? Delaney: (shifts around) Um… I’m not going to spoil the story for you. You’ll have to pick up and play it! But I mean… yeah, having that vast array of characters, we will have different Lantern Corps coming into it. Having LEGO, it really enables us to have the free reign to mix characters up and do stuff like that. In Batman one, we got you playing as Villains, in 2 as the Justice League.
I’ll have to save some of the story for you to play, though. Nrama: Now when you’re designing these other Lantern worlds (Odym and Zamaron are confirmed) – how different will they each be? Delaney: We worked very closely with DC Entertainment. Everything goes to DC, they look over everything and advise us. When you type “Batman” in Google, you get like fifty variations of Batman. That’s the same with Lantern worlds! People do different interpretations, their own style. So we went directly to DC and asked them how they wanted us to go with this, and they provided reference and showed us how they want them presented. So we’ll stay true to the comics, stay true to the fans. When a fan picks up the game, they’ll instantly see these and know what they are. Nrama: What was the principle behind going so Lantern-focused for the story here? Was it just wanting to go out to space, and that was the natural way to get there? Delaney: Yeah, when we wrote this story – we actually wrote the whole story at the start of LEGO Batman 2.
So we always knew we were coming out to this with LEGO Batman 3. It was already written, and we knew we were going to do it. When we’re making a LEGO game we always look at what we can do that’s new. We don’t want people to pick up a game and say “Well I’ve just done this already.” We’re also introducing a lot of characters that kids have never seen before. We’re introducing kids to these DC Franchises! They may know Batman and Robin, but they might not know Plastic Man or Atom, some of these characters that haven’t been in films before. Nrama: Of course with various Lantern worlds, and various Lantern Corps, fans are going to want to play as some of these other Lanterns they haven’t gotten to play as in a video game before. Are we going to see some of the iconic Lanterns of the other corps playable, like Saint Walker, Atrocitus, and others? Delaney: (smiles) Well, I can’t give you the full list of characters, but you can definitely play as different Lanterns.
We have over 150 characters, and we’ll definitely have characters who DC Comics fans will enjoy and be excited about (with more announcements coming next week at Comic-Con). We got a great response when we just announced that Atom is going to be in the game. Hopefully we have all the characters you want – we worked very closely with DC to get the final list of them. It was a long process. Nrama: One of the other things you guys are bringing into this game are the “BigFig” characters that were prominently featured in last year’s LEGO Marvel Superheroes. What made that work and what do they bring to the gameplay? Delaney: They were such a big success. The team do such a great job in animating those characters. (Pulls up Cyborg on the demo) So several characters now have the character wheel you can pull up, not just Batman and Robin anymore. Cyborg has different suits, and Lex Luthor has different suits. So I can pull up the wheel and go to the big figure version of Cyborg.
The BigFigs are amazing, and they do a lot to animate them for each individual character. Solomon Grundy is a zombie, so he walks around with his arms loosely in front of him. And they all of course have super strength, so those work differently in some puzzles. Nrama: Now you’re developing for all major platforms, but what do the new generation consoles do for you specifically? Delaney: Well the new generation is obviously a lot more powerful, in terms of loading times, the graphics themselves, the details and number of characters on screen – it opens the doors to all of those things. Nrama: What’s one specific tease or character or little bit that you’re excited for fans to get their hands on in LEGO Batman 3? Delaney: Well we just announced this week that Adam West is in the game. I can’t get into that much, but we are super excited to have him along. DC has been really great, and LEGO has been great, about giving us pretty much anything we want. “Sure, we have Batman, but we want the Lanterns,” we said, and they gave them to us!