At the Warner Bros Games studio in Montreal, a 7ft Batman statue greets visitors at reception. Comics are crammed into every shelf between each desk. And rather than images of lattes and flat whites, the coffee machine proudly displays the bat symbol. So, it might surprise you to learn that the people who work here have killed Batman. For the team behind the new video game Gotham Knights, their murder was the answer to a big question: how do you do something new with a character who has been throwing the Joker in jail for 83 years? If you're thinking that Batman has been done to death, you'd be right.

DC's Fandome event was intended as a replacement for the company's usual big presence at this year's cancelled San Diego Comic-Con, and within minutes the company came out swinging with its first big announcement: Gotham Knights, a video game about a city without Batman, where his various proteges have to step up to defend their home. In the action-adventure title the player will get to play as one of four prominent members of the Bat-Family: Nightwing, Robin, Batgirl and Red Hood. Bruce Wayne is dead, and it won't take long for the villains of Gotham City to figure out that Batman is gone too. Luckily, he's left behind plenty for his associates to work with, including a well-equipped headquarters and of course, the ever-faithful Alfred. The mechanics lie in the vein of games like Marvel's Spider-Man for PS4 and the Assassin's Creed series, with plenty of stealth and brawling, though we also get to see Batgirl drive a pretty sweet bike through the streets of Gotham. The one standout is that this game will be a co-op title, with players able to work together to clear areas and defeat villains -- in the gameplay footage shown, we got to see Batgirl and Robin make their way through a building taken over by perennial Batman villain Mr. Freeze.