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

“We want to keep that Lego idea of ‘fun’ modern, relevant, and up to date, and not get stuck in the past”, says Jonathan Smith, Head of Development Team at TT Games.

It’s a tricky balance. For well over a decade, Lego games were the definition of consistency. You always knew what you were going to get: a series of puzzle and action-filled levels navigated by a wide roster of multiskilled licensed characters. But Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight looks set to distance itself from that formula, at least slightly. This is a new chapter in TT Games' history, one that blends a reverence for all things Batman — including, notably, Rocksteady’s Arkham games — with a deeper gameplay experience that was first experimented with by 2022’s Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

“With Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, we made a couple of really significant changes that fans really appreciated”, Smith states. “In particular, getting closer to the character, having a really immersive camera system, and then just starting to make the combat experience or some of the core gameplay systems deeper and richer than they had been before”.

“We don't want to lose the accessibility and immediacy, but that showed that we could add layers to that and make environments that were really big and broad and really deep and rich and rewarding,” Smith explains. “We've just gone further with Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and then also found aspects of the Batman character and the Batman story, and in Gotham City, that have really worked well with that aspiration to get deeper. To be even more authentic in our treatment of Lego, in our treatment of the story, in our treatment of the characters.”

Characters, and in particular, the number of playable ones, have been a big talking point ever since this Lego Batman’s reveal. Fans of the series had become accustomed to rosters stretching into the hundreds in previous Marvel, DC, Star Wars, and Harry Potter Lego projects, but in Legacy of the Dark Knight, that number has been stripped down to just seven.

You are constantly upgrading and developing new skills and opening up new abilities. It’s all in service of depth, says Smith. “We're taking these individual characters on a journey,” he explains. “So you are constantly upgrading and developing new skills and opening up new abilities for each of those characters. Within the Bat family, as well, we really wanted to focus on making those characters really unique, making their personalities come across and their abilities very distinct.”

One of those characters is Catwoman, who we got a brand new look at in action as part of IGN Fan Fest. TT Games is aiming to present the “essential version” of each Bat hero and villain, so naturally, Batman’s feline foe/friend channels all eras of her screen depictions, ranging from Julie Newmar’s ‘60s TV show thief to Zoe Kravitz's modern revenge seeker. Across the game, we’ll see glimpses of all of her incarnations, just as we’ll see her skillset grow beyond what we’ve seen in the films as the story progresses.

Tools at Catwoman’s disposal include a whip that can not only damage enemies, but aid in solving puzzles thanks to its flexibility (just don’t ask me how Lego plastic can be quite that bendy, I’m not a materials scientist). She’s also armed with a very handy laser pointer that can quickly summon a sharp-clawed kitten to scratch a Joker goon’s face to ribbons, or allow you to directly control a tamer four-legged friend to distract guards with a meow or crawl through vents to help unblock paths. Of course, she’s also highly trained in hand-to-hand combat, which remains largely consistent across each of the playable characters and is rooted in a punch, dodge, and parry system that TT Games isn’t afraid to say is influenced by Rocksteady.

“To make an essential, really cool Batman combat experience, of course, we honor, and we look to, and we draw upon the definitive work that Rocksteady did to bring that character to life,” explains Smith. “We want a really fluid combo-based combat system. We want very dynamic encounters.”

The story is more focused on a tighter roster of characters that are now more differentiated with much deeper gameplay. That doesn’t mean that Legacy of the Dark Knight is fully pushing into action game territory, though. This is still a game that wishes to cater to all ages and audiences, so many of those old-school, adventure-focused Lego game staples are still to be found.

“The story is more focused on a tighter roster of characters that are now more differentiated with much deeper gameplay,” confirms Smith. “So they work well in partnership with each other, and we then want to give you lots and lots of options to see the full range of what those characters can be by giving you more than a hundred different suits to collect. So you still get that moment in the Bat Cave where you've got all the different suits from all the different characters arrayed in front of you, colorful and glorious. You're still compelled to want to complete that collection.”

Trying to appeal to everyone’s desires is often a risky strategy. Introducing an extra layer of complexity to combat, as well as character progression across a much-shrunk roster of heroes, could appeal to those looking for more of an action-heavy, “traditional” Batman game that the absence of an Arkham game has left a void for, but could risk alienating those who loved the joyful nature of the Lego games that TT built its reputation on. That’s not something that Smith is worried about, though.

“On the contrary, what we find with all our Lego games is that the more we can draw upon different aspects of a character, the wider we can make our gameplay, the more appealing it is to us as players, and to younger players and older players,” he answers. “There's something about Lego that just translates well for everybody. So the more we can put into that, we don't find that it misses the mark for anyone at all. It just brings more to the party.”

The Bat party will truly get started when Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on May 29, 2026, with it coming to Nintendo Switch 2 at a later date.

Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.