Interview
September 21, 2026
TT Games brings Gotham City to life in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight
Launched in May 2026, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight gives players the chance to experience the essential Batman story in a bold, action-packed adventure with hard-hitting combat, an open world Gotham City, and the signature LEGO charm that fans know and love.
The game’s release was well received by critics and consumers alike, which is no easy task considering the breadth of the Batman faithful. However, since TT Games are known for their ability to make games that are indisputably fun while focusing on themes like friendship and family, the game’s success doesn’t come as a surprise.
Made with Unreal Engine 5 and leveraging key features such as World Partition and the Gameplay Ability System, the devs crafted the uncompromised version of Gotham City that they envisioned.
Now, with the game’s Mayhem Collection downloadable content (DLC) offering all-new challenges as well as the ability to play as The Joker and Harley Quinn, players are invited back for more of what has made the game so great.
To learn all about the project and the role UE5 played in helping the team deliver it, we caught up with Jonathan Smith, Vice President, Product at TT Games.
The game’s release was well received by critics and consumers alike, which is no easy task considering the breadth of the Batman faithful. However, since TT Games are known for their ability to make games that are indisputably fun while focusing on themes like friendship and family, the game’s success doesn’t come as a surprise.
Made with Unreal Engine 5 and leveraging key features such as World Partition and the Gameplay Ability System, the devs crafted the uncompromised version of Gotham City that they envisioned.
Now, with the game’s Mayhem Collection downloadable content (DLC) offering all-new challenges as well as the ability to play as The Joker and Harley Quinn, players are invited back for more of what has made the game so great.
To learn all about the project and the role UE5 played in helping the team deliver it, we caught up with Jonathan Smith, Vice President, Product at TT Games.
Thank you for joining us! For those that might have missed the release, could you please provide a brief overview of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight?
Jonathan Smith, Vice President, Product at TT Games: LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight invites players to embark on Bruce Wayne’s epic journey to become the hero of Gotham City, from origin to legend. It’s a celebration of all things Batman inspired by decades of Batman films, TV, comics, and games, and jam-packed with Batman nostalgia, countless DC references, and TT Games’ signature brand of fun-filled LEGO humor. We've raised the bar once again for LEGO gameplay, with high-impact combat and thrilling traversal systems across a living, breathing Gotham City full of challenges and surprises.
The response to the game’s release has been great! Is there any particular piece of feedback that has made your team especially proud?
Smith: The main goal of any LEGO game is to make something that is fun, and looking at the feedback from players, they are really enjoying it. Seeing the videos and comments on social media, press reviews, and comments on forums, you can see that people really love playing the game and that they can see how much love has gone into making it.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
What’s the new DLC all about?
Smith: The upcoming Mayhem Collection DLC stars The Joker and Harley Quinn as new playable characters, available for Epic Games Store Deluxe Edition owners on September 18. There’s a brand-new story mission, so you’ll get to play as The Joker and Harley Quinn, each with their own abilities, gadgets, takedowns, and outfits, as they orchestrate a breakout from Arkham Asylum.
There’s a completely new Mayhem Mode where you can unleash chaos in Gotham City through time-limited Mayhem Runs—smashing landmarks, stores, vehicles, and completing challenges—while also battling A.R.G.U.S. Agents and members of Amanda Waller's Task Force X, like Deathstroke, Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, King Shark, Polka-Dot Man, and other notorious DC Super-Villains.
And there’s our Sinister Pack, with a variety of DC-themed outfits for the original playable characters, plus a new vehicle to cruise around Gotham City and new items to customize the Batcave. On top of that, we’re adding an Absolute difficulty level as a free update for all LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight owners, designed to be even more challenging and requiring greater skill, awareness, and precision in combat, also coming on September 18.
You have a long history of using an in-house engine for your games. Why was Unreal Engine 5 chosen for this project?
Smith: Unreal Engine 5 offers developer-friendly tools and features that allowed us to quickly migrate from our previous engine, which has greatly benefited the development of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
The game features an open and immersive Gotham City for players to navigate and explore. Were there any particular UE5 tools used to make this expansive version of Gotham possible?
Smith: We have used the World Partition system to help develop some of the content in our game, particularly within the Gotham City open world environment. We’ve been able to minimize the content that is loaded and active in the game at any one time, allowing us to create a large, dense open world for the player to explore. The system also allows many team members to work in parallel on one large-scale map. Building on this system, we have been able to create a living, breathing Gotham City—alive, with pedestrians, traffic, and fun gameplay.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
The game provides a variety of vehicles and gadgets for traversing the environment. Can you please speak to the UE5 features that helped you achieve this aspect of the experience?
Smith: We have used the Gameplay Ability System (GAS) as the basis for our player abilities system, which includes the traversal mechanics. It manages the interaction state machine of a player for each gadget and ability the playable and non-playable characters have. With some customization to suit the specific needs of LEGO games, GAS provided a great starting point, giving us a boost when creating gameplay mechanics in, what for us, was a new engine.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
Can you please speak to the character animations in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and how UE5 helped you achieve them?
Smith: The animation framework provided by Unreal Engine has given real creative power and freedom to our technical animators, whilst maintaining a consistent interface to the coders. We have also made use of a customized version of Sequencer and motion warping to help create the combat and environmental interactions. Sequencer provided a great foundation for that work and really helped us hit the ground running.
Which UE5 feature(s) had the largest quantifiable impact on cross-discipline workflows? How did these features help the team reduce iteration time, improve team collaboration, and/or lower production costs throughout the development process?
Smith: Unreal Engine provides frameworks for unit testing, functional testing, and automated testing that can be used in the editor and on consoles. We used these frameworks to push a test-driven development philosophy on LEGO Batman, allowing us to consistently provide stable builds for the team to play every day.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
How did UE5 help your team optimize the game across the various platforms it is available on?
Smith: Through Gauntlet, we were able to run regular performance tests on all platforms and create dashboards from this output. Unreal Insights captures were provided on overnight runs, along with an in-house dashboard, which displayed key performance information from Unreal Engine. This allowed us to quickly identify performance bottlenecks during production and fix them.
Has having access to Unreal Engine’s source code been beneficial to your team during development? If so, how?
Smith: Sometimes, you just need to know what's going on under the hood, and access to the source code gives us that. At times, it was essential that we were able to debug into the engine source code to decide if we were using the engine correctly, and if the engine was behaving correctly.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
Did the team take advantage of the UE documentation, Epic Developer Community, or other parts of the ecosystem like Fab throughout development?
Smith: There is a lot of knowledge on Unreal Engine on the internet. Through the documentation and community, team members can quickly search for features the engine provides and find more information on a particular feature they are interested in. Transition to the new engine for those not experienced in it was boosted by tutorials and documentation early on. An on-boarding pathway of tutorials, articles, and other information provided a quick start to those who were new to the engine.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Games
How did access to Epic Pro Support (EPS) benefit the team when navigating technical challenges throughout development?
Smith: If you're not sure, the first rule of thumb is to post on EPS and ask the question. Response time is generally great, and the staff at Epic are responsive when we contact them.
Thanks for your time! Where can people go to learn more about LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight?
Smith: Wherever you normally go for information and discussion about games, you should find people talking about the cool things they’ve discovered in LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight! You can also go to our website, LEGOBatmanGame.com for some great images and videos, or any of our social and community channels, like @LEGODCGame (X), @LEGODCGame (Instagram), and WBGames (YouTube). Don’t forget to check out the new Mayhem Collection DLC, featuring The Joker and Harley Quinn as playable characters, arriving on September 18!
DC LOGO, BATMAN, and all related characters and elements © and TM DC. © 2026 The LEGO Group.™ & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s26)