Rocksteady Ending Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Next Month
Much like the game did to Batman, Rocksteady is putting a bullet in the head of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In the latest announcement on the game’s official website, Rocksteady teased today’s release of season 4, episode 7, “Control,” which will introduce Deathstroke as a playable character and make an offline mode available to players. That’s important because the announcement also reveals that Rocksteady will end support for the game, with the final new DLC being season 4, episode 8, which will be released in January and mark the end of the battle against supervillain Brainiac. Gamers will be able to access the main story campaign through the new offline mode, as well as the various “seasons” they’re pretending aren’t DLC; you can also access the seasons and co-op multiplayer online. But insofar as updates and the like, this is the end of the line for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
In April, video game scooper Miller Ross reported that season 5 would be the last hurrah for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and feature the final battle with Brainiac. It could be that the fourth season was always intended to be the last or that Rocksteady changed course because the game failed so spectacularly, but according to the announcement on the game’s website, Ross was right about a few season 4 story elements (the next week or two should reveal if he was right about all of it… whether we see the return of justice and the night), so I tend to think they retooled season 4 to be the end, or they’re just canceling season 5 and rebranding this one. Either way, Rocksteady is pulling the plug on the seemingly universally reviled game that tarnished the Batman Arkham series and tore down some of the most beloved DC Comics heroes for something that, by all accounts, didn’t even have good gameplay. And if you want to know how embarrassingly quick this is, another recent bomb that should have been amazing, Marvel’s Avengers, took three years to lose online support from its developer, and that was considered fast.
That’s what happens when you get in bed with Sweet Baby Inc. and other DEI consulting firms. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was the game that brought Sweet Baby Inc. into the light, with the image of Harley Quinn executing Batman while giving him a lecture about how he causes emotional damage making gamers wonder who was behind this nonsense. That felt like the moment when gamers really started demanding that the woke influence be expelled from their games, and since then, a string of failures rocked the gaming industry, with Sweet Baby Inc. seeing every subsequent release they worked on go down in flames and a movement dedicated to removing them from the industry launch, particularly with Kabrutus and his Sweet Baby Inc. Detected curator and subsequent website. Meanwhile, games that visibly rebuffed identity politics and woke scolding were huge hits, with the two big examples being Stellar Blade and especially Black Myth: Wukong. If nothing else, I guess gamers can thank Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for that.
What does this mean for the Batman Arkham series? Batman: Arkham Shadow has been released, though it’s only available for the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S, and it was developed by Camouflaj, not Rocksteady. While the sales numbers are unknown, it does at least indicate interest in keeping the Arkham series alive, which would gel with Vara Dark’s report that Warner Bros. wants more Arkham, including a remake of Arkham Asylum – which is unnecessary and a potential disaster depending on whether they decide to “modernize” it – and a new Arkham game with the Arkham Origins voice cast – which would be fantastic, provided it’s a good game. (Vara’s sources also confirmed Miller Ross’ information, another reason I think Rocksteady pivoted.) I hope this isn’t the end of that excellent series; it deserves a much better end than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, if it has to end at all. In fact, the best way to begin the next one would be to have Harley Quinn about to shoot Batman, then allow the player to turn the tables and kick her ass. The amount of goodwill that would earn is immeasurable. (And for God’s sake, cool it with the Batmobile this time.)
Let us know what you think of Rocksteady ending support for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League in the comments!
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