Gotham Knights Producer Defends 30 FPS Performance

Let's be honest, Warner Bros. Montreal's Gotham Knights was always going to live in the shadow of Rocksteady's Arkhamverse. Still, with the first reviews of the game trickling through, it's getting a pretty frosty reception from journalists.

Among critiques that Gotham Knights feels like a poor man's Arkham, the title is also being called out for some disappointing graphical capabilities. Considering the last-gen versions were shown the door, many had expected Gotham Knights to be a fully new-gen title. Sadly, some are saying it looks worse than Arkham City... a game that came out in 2015.

Why Is Gotham Knights Only?

Having scrapped the PS4 and Xbox One ports, you might think Gotham Knights would be roaring into our lives with some nippy 60 FPS visuals. There are conflicting ideals from Sony and Microsoft, with claims that God of War Ragnarok being one of the last PS4 games quickly being backtracked by Sony's promise it will keep releasing titles on last-gen hardware.

Gotham Knights joins a growing breed of new-gen-exclusive games like Starfield, Forspoken, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Gotham Knights is also joined by Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as the Arkham developers are also moving forward with a new-gen DC game. The difference is, Gotham Knights is seemingly stuck in the past.

Writing on the Gotham Knights Discord server (via Wario64), Executive Producer Fleur Marty explained why we're locked in at 30 FPS. "I know many of you are wondering about the availability of a performance mode for Gotham Knights on consoles," said Marty. "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."

Players React To Gotham Knights Performance

Given that 60 FPS has become the standard for the PS5 and Xbox Series, it's a kick in the teeth that there are no options to toggle performance. One critic simply wrote, "How to make sure your game flops 101," while another added, "Gotham Knights was first teased THREE WHOLE YEARS AGO. How could they not get this right? WB Games Montreal really fumbled the bag. Get with the times. There are no AAA current gen games that only run at 30 FPS. 60 FPS is the way to go." 

There were also numerous threats from gamers saying they were going to cancel their pre-orders. Not everyone was against WB Montreal though. One supporter wrote, "Ppl are really mad they not gonna get an extra 30 fps that their barely gonna notice. Until next gen, console users didn’t even know what fps meant. now it’s a deal breaker??" As you can imagine, the news went down about as well as rubber nipples on the Batsuit.