Controlled Chaos: TT Games' Design Director On LEGO Batman's Mayhem Collection DLC

Published Sep 17, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Lee D’Amato is a writer born, raised, and based in Queens, New York. With collective thousands of hours in games like Final Fantasy, Metal Gear, Elden Ring, and The Legend of Zelda, he's now writes game features, guides, and reviews for Screen Rant, but has covered a wide range of topics, including ancient history, affordable travel, and overall health.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is soon to get a welcome dose of chaos in the upcoming Mayhem Collection DLC. Set for release on September 18, the Mayhem Collection allows players to step into the role of beloved Batman villains Joker and Harley Quinn, with access to a new arsenal of gadgets, a new story mission, and a new roguelike-inspired game mode.

Throughout the development of the Mayhem Collection DLC, "chaos" became kind of a mantra at TT Games' development studios. "We say it about a hundred times a day," says design director Jimmy Sedota. "It does feel chaotic, and causing chaos can be great fun." ScreenRant spoke with Sedota to get an inside look at what's included in the Mayhem Collection, and what fans can expect from this turbulent DLC.

New Characters, New Tools

The Mayhem Collection introduces Joker and Dr. Harleen Quinzel in a brand-new story mission, beginning with an "interview" between the two taking place within Arkham. Over time, the two hit it off, eventually escaping Arkham together and turning to a life of chaotic crime.

To create a new, LEGO-fied origin story for Harley Quinn, TT Games drew on a variety of different Batman sources, chief among them Batman: The Animated Series, in which Harley originally debuted. "I'm a hardcore fan," says Sedota of Batman's '90s television run. "Of all the Batman stuff, that's the one I love the most."

Accordingly, the DLC contains a number of winks and nods in The Animated Series' direction. During some of the Mayhem Mode runs, players will encounter a jewelry shop called Sorkin's Gems. This is a tribute to the late Arlene Sorkin, the voice actor who originated the role with dynamic pitch shifts and an iconic New York accent that would eventually become central to Harley Quinn's identity.

References to other bits of the Batman chronology affect the visual style, too: all the cutscenes in the Mayhem Collection are rendered in a 4:3 aspect ratio, the industry standard for pre-HD TV, and the framing used by The Animated Series. "Even that interview section is very similar to what you see in the Mad Love comic," Sedota continues, referencing a 1993 one-shot by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm.

Mad Love uses sparse scenery and bold colors in its retelling of the Harley Quinn origin story. To that end, Sedota says of the DLC's interview segment, "There's not a lot of background and environment. It's spotlights, and it's very simplistic, but in a good way."

Naturally, Joker and Harley Quinn play very differently from the main cast of heroes and sidekicks who populate the base game of Legacy of the Dark Knight. "We really wanted them to feel a little bit different," Sedota explains. "They are different characters, so we didn't want it to feel just like playing Bat-Family characters."

To that end, Joker and Harley use a similar flow combat system to the rest of the characters in Legacy of the Dark Knight. But they don't have as much health as Batman and his allies, nor do they have access to powerful finishers like focus takedowns. "They're not as powerful as that," says Sedota, "And so, we pushed more of their gameplay moment to moment into gadgets."

In the Mayhem Collection, Joker picks up a couple of new weapons — the Paintball Pelter and an extendable boxing glove — while Harley gets a glitter launcher called the Fun Gun. As a result, the game shifts focus from the base game's melee combat to ranged combat. "You can run and gun," Sedota describes it. "You can move while you're using the gadgets. And so that feels really different, even just a small change like that."

In addition, Joker and Harley can summon their very own clown crew throughout Gotham. Whenever one of them has a full focus meter, they can call a troupe of clowns to fight by their side. Over time, they'll recruit more and more sidekicks, and the player can tailor their team to include the gadgets and abilities they find most useful.

Joker and Harley each have their own separate crews of up to five members. "If both summon," says Sedota, "Now you've got ten crew running around fighting with you ... It's chaos. Like, it is pretty crazy. And just to see them all fighting each other and engaging with each other is really fun."

The Making Of Mayhem Mode

The Mayhem Collection DLC opens with a new story mission, then takes the player to Amusement Mile on the North Island. This is where the so-called Mayhem runs, a type of replayable mission that Sedota calls a "light roguelike," commence. "A big part of it was, we wanted the DLC to be good value for the money. The level's great, there's a lot of fun stuff to do there, but we really wanted it to be something that could keep players entertained for hours."

Each Mayhem Mode level has a unique objective: create what the TT Games team called "villain builds," like a set of parade balloons. You can complete only one per run, and once you do, it appears in the city indefinitely. Beyond that, though, Mayhem Mode's main goal is to cause chaos.

"You can rob ATMs, and rob stores, and you can smash cash registers. You can take out ARGUS roadblocks," says Sedota. Players can spend studs to change their bonus objectives for each run; completing them earns you even more studs, which, in turn, extends the time of your run.

Later in a Mayhem level, you can visit the in-game store to purchase power-ups that last you the rest of the run. "Things like grapple and glide, those aren't default abilities for Joker and Harley," says Sedota. These and other power-ups, like increased sprint speed and bigger stud-collecting radius, may later become available for purchase in the new villain hideout.

Each run also features different enemies. Five minutes into Mayhem Mode, a randomly selected assortment of Task Force X members will show up to hunt Joker and Harley down. These "mini-bosses," as Sedota calls them, are based on combat archetypes from the main game, but with more complex attack chains and bigger health bars.

"We wanted to make sure we toed that line of bringing something new and making it feel like a new experience, but also not feeling too different from the main game in terms of the mechanics," says Sedota.

Mayhem Mode has an extraction element: if you take too long to complete your objectives, Batman and Robin will show up. "You narrowly get away because you want to live for another run," Sedota explains, "But there's a stud loss for that." To avoid that, players can instead extract early by finding a hidden sewer exit, and get away with all their loot.

Absolute Difficulty Is Available To All Players

Image via Warner Bros

Launching alongside the DLC is Absolute difficulty, a new game mode for only the most hardcore LEGO Batman players. According to Sedota, this new, more challenging setting was borne out of player reception, with many claiming the base game was too easy even on the hardest difficulty: "We actually had a lot of fans say [Dark Knight mode] wasn't hard enough. And so we're like, okay, challenge accepted.

This is more than just a straight scaling of enemy damage and player character health; Sedota, whose background is in developing combat, says that he took inspiration from Dark Souls. Instead of the three lives provided to player characters in Dark Knight mode, Absolute gives them just one. For a bit of extra chaos, Sedota also notes that Absolute difficulty works with Mayhem Mode, so you can introduce even more tension by giving yourself just one life to complete the entire run.

In addition, most — if not all — of the incoming attack button prompts have been removed. "So, you really need to spend more time watching the enemies," says Sedota. "Watching their animations, preparing for what they're doing. It's a blast. I think fans are really going to enjoy it."

The Mayhem Collection comes out on all platforms where the base game is available — PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S — and day-and-date with the release of the Switch 2 version on September 18. With Absolute difficulty being released on the same day, there's something new for every LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight player.

Systems