With the release of WB Montreal’s Gotham Knights now less than a week away, fans are feeling a bit blindsided by the developer and their publisher WB Games after a less-than-ideal nugget of news was revealed about the game this weekend. Gotham Knights will be running at a locked 30 frames per second (FPS), with no Performance Mode available on consoles to boost the framerate any higher. In a day and age where options such as Performance and Fidelity modes are readily available to give players the opportunity to prioritise either visual flair or a smoother playing experience, the fact that Gotham Knights is not offering players this option, and enforcing a less than-optimal framerate upon its players has certainly not been well received by the player base so far.
The internet’s keenest eyes, such as renowned insider and deal-sharer Wario64, were quick to pounce on the news, revealed by WB Montreal and Gotham Knights‘ Executive Producer Fleur “Flaoua” Marty, in the game’s Discord channel. Console players had been asking her and the team the same questions about framerate and performance/fidelity modes regularly, and so she wanted to put the questioning to rest. Unfortunately, her answer has only upset the player base further. Marty wrote
I know many of you are wondering about the availability of a performance mode for Gotham Knights on consoles. Due to the types of features we have in our game, like providing a fully untethered co-op experience in our highly detailed open-world, it’s not as straightforward as lowering the resolution and getting a higher FPS. For this reason, our game does not have a performance/quality toggle option and will run at 30FPS on consoles.
The community response to this news has been less than positive based on the reactions of those in the Discord channel but also on the internet more broadly, reflected by comments to the likes of Wario64’s sharing of the news. Fans have been restless in recent months as the publisher has opted to show a range of character trailers but has refrained from sharing any insight into the game’s narrative, from discussing more of their background, Batman’s “death”, or to what appears to be the primary antagonist being the beloved and highly feared, Court Of Owls.
Recently WB Montreal did share that Gotham Knights will be getting a 4-Player cooperative mode soon after launch. Dubbed Heroic Assault, the mode will allow four players to get together, to explore the world, and fight crime, as all of us had imagined they would right out the gate. The update will arrive on November 29, 2022. In the meantime, Gotham Knights will launch on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 21, 2022.