How to Unlock the Glider or Wingsuit in Gotham Knights: A Comprehensive Guide

Have you been gliding and diving your way across Gotham City in the new open-world action RPG Gotham Knights? If not, you may be wondering how to unlock the ability to utilize the glider or wingsuit to traverse this expansive virtual metropolis like Batman once did.

In this expert guide, I‘ll explain exactly how to unlock the glider or wingsuit in clear, step-by-step detail, provide tips on mastering your new flying abilities, and share my insider knowledge from hours of gameplay. Read on to take your Gotham Knights experience to new heights!

An Overview of Gotham Knights Gameplay

For those new to the game, Gotham Knights is set in a stunningly realized Gotham City where Batman is dead. It‘s up to his four protégés – Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood and Robin – to defend the city from an onslaught of crime and villainy.

As a third-person open-world action RPG, gameplay involves fighting criminals, investigating crime scenes, taking on main story missions and side quests, and exploring Gotham‘s five unique boroughs. You can play solo, switching between the four characters, or team up in two-player online co-op.

A key aspect of gameplay is traversal – getting around the massive city efficiently. You start out with abilities like grapple boost and cape glide to move across rooftops, but unlocking the full glider or wingsuit opens up much more possibilities.

Why You Should Unlock the Glider/Wingsuit ASAP

Based on my experience fully upgrading all four characters in Gotham Knights, obtaining the glider or wingsuit should be one of your top priorities.

Here are some key benefits:

Faster traversal – Gliding allows you to quickly cover long distances by launching from high points and maintaining altitude. This makes exploring the huge open world much less tedious.
Access hard-to-reach areas – With gliding, you can reach rooftops and vantage points unavailable by grappling and climbing alone. This becomes important when collecting collectibles.
Stealth and combat advantages – Gliding lets you ambush enemies silently from above or perform powerful diving takedown moves. This makes many encounters easier.
It‘s incredibly fun! – Simply put, swooping and diving across Gotham with a wingsuit or cape never gets old. It captures the fantasy of being a superhero.

Based on my 30+ hours with the game so far, unlocking the glider was a clear milestone that took my experience to the next level. The sooner you get it, the better.

How to Unlock the Glider or Wingsuit in Gotham Knights

Here are the steps to unlock the glider or wingsuit:

Complete the Three Knighthood Challenges

The key to unlocking the glider is completing all three of the Knighthood challenges accessible from the Belfry. These consist of:

Timed Strike Training – Complete the timed combat challenge byreacting to on-screen prompts. This unlocks new combat abilities.
Stop Premeditated Crimes – Investigate clues at crime scenes that reveal future crimes. Stop 10 premeditated crimes marked on your map.
Defeat Minibosses – Take down three minibosses with larger health bars. They appear during investigations and patrols.

I recommend completing the Timed Strike Training first since it unlocks helpful new combat skills. From there, exploring crime scenes during the early game will naturally reveal premeditated crimes to stop.

For minibosses, investigate case files like the Harley Quinn missions where minibosses feature more prominently. Completing all three challenges may take 5-10 hours depending on your progress.

Examine the Batman Memorial

After finishing the Knighthood challenges, a new prompt will appear at the Batman memorial inside the Belfry to "examine mask."

Interact with this memorial and a cutscene will play of your character gliding around the building using their wingsuit or cape. I found this to be a fun reveal the first time!

Once the cutscene ends, the glider ability is unlocked.

Glide Across Gotham City!

Finally, you can now glide by holding down the glide button when airborne from any high point around the city.

My advice is to immediately find a tall building like Wayne Tower to launch from. This lets you test out your new ability and get a lay of the land from an awe-inspiring aerial view.

From here, you can explore to your heart‘s content through gliding, maintaining altitude, and diving down. It becomes second nature very quickly.

Tips and Tricks for Mastering the Glider

Through extensive gliding, I‘ve picked up some useful tips to master this form of traversal:

Upgrade gliding early – Improving speed, handling and duration should be a priority in the skills tree. This extends glide times significantly.
Find upgrades – Collect mods that enhance gliding, like decreasing altitude loss and increasing dive speed. These are huge quality of life improvements.
Tap dive briefly – Tap the dive button and pull up quickly to maintain momentum without losing too much altitude.
Use dive attacks – Time your dives to land on enemies for devastating damage, then quickly grapple away.
Maintain high points – Traverse rooftops and towers to stay at high altitude for maximum glide distance.
Change direction mid-air – Use the directional stick to steer left and right for navigating tricky landings.

Mastering when to dive, pull up and change direction takes practice. But with these tips, you‘ll be an expert glider beyond the tutorial in no time.

Why Gliding as Robin Feels the Most Authentic

Of course, a key decision is which hero to unlock the glider with first. Through extensive playtime with all four, I‘ve determined Robin‘s glide mechanic feels the most smooth and natural.

Here‘s why Robin sells the wingsuit fantasy best:

Cape physics – Robin‘s cape flows impressively while gliding and diving. It feels almost real.
Young/agile aesthetic – Visually Robin suits the acrobatic glider animations really well.
Glide duration – Robin‘s upgrades increase glide duration more than other heroes, enabling longer flights across the city.

While it‘s awesome soaring over Gotham with each hero, I highly recommend players new to the glider start with Robin first. The satisfaction of perfectly diving onto enemy heads can‘t be overstated!

Is Unlocking the Glider Worth It?

To summarize, should you take the time to unlock the glider or wingsuit in Gotham Knights? My verdict as an experienced player is a resounding yes!

Based on hours of gameplay, the glider is transformative:

It makes traversing Gotham City far less tedious and much more fun.
Unlocks areas of the map not accessible otherwise, adding motivation to explore.
Provides strategic advantages in stealth and combat.
Captures the fantasy of being a superhero soaring over the city.
Offers rewarding mastery as you upgrade abilities and pull off perfect dives.

If you‘re playing Gotham Knights, unlocking the glider or wingsuit should be one of your top priorities early on. The effort to complete the challenges pays off ten-fold once you take your first flight off Gotham‘s skyscrapers. Trust me, you‘ll wonder how you ever got around without it!

So upgrade those capes and wingsuits, master those daring dives, and glide your way to becoming Gotham‘s finest. I hope this guide helps you unlock this game-changing traversal ability seamlessly. Now get out there and own the skies, heroes!