Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is the upcoming game from Rocksteady set in the studio’s Arkham universe. The game will throw players into a four-player co-op fight as Harley Quinn, King Shark, Captain Boomerang, and Deadshot face down an evil Superman in DC’s Metropolis (and other members of the Justice League, presumably).
One detail in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s one and only trailer appears to reveal a trend in the new game. The abandonment of cities is derived from the studio’s Batman Arkham games and has big implications for the design and role of Metropolis in the game.
In Batman: Arkham Knight, the city of Gotham is locked down after Scarecrow threatens to release fear gas in the city, with almost all of the city’s civilian population being evacuated. It’s a convenient plot-point that allows the game to avoid implying that Batman endangers civilians as players tear through the streets of Gotham City bouncing NPCs off the stun-bumper of the Batmobile.
However, while Gotham City in Arkham Knight is significantly larger in-game than the map of Arkham City, the evacuation essentially makes Gotham a larger version of Arkham City, filled almost entirely with supervillains and their goons. Though Scarecrow plans to spread fear gas over the whole East Coast, the immediate threat is relieved and the story stakes are slightly lowered.
The Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League teaser trailer shows that Metropolis is already under attack, with Brainiac’s Skull Ship hovering over the city as special forces and robots battle in the background and helicopters spin out of control. Considering the fact that Brainiac appears to have already enveloped a decent amount of downtown Metropolis, it’s likely that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will not feature civilians in the city either.
Instead it is likely that, like in Arkham Knight, most of the story will take place once most civilians have already evacuated Metropolis. Either that, or the trailer alone implies the city already has a huge death toll that would seem out of place with Suicide Squad’s comedic tone and the constant quips thrown back between Deadshot and Captain Boomerang. However, it is possible to make a superhero game with civilians that doesn’t end up feeling like a Grand Theft Auto game.
Insomniac Game’s Spider-Man for PS4 had Peter Parker wave or shoot finger guns if the player pressed the attack button near a random person on the street. While this sort of light-hearted solution wouldn’t work very well for a character like Batman, it could for the members of the Suicide Squad. While having no civilians in Gotham helped Arkham Knight avoid players causing enough damage to risk breaking Batman’s no kill rule or at least his code of ethics, Rocksteady has an opportunity to make Metropolis feel more alive in Suicide Squad without worrying that the destruction caused by the gang would be out of character in any way.
Metropolis is full of iconic locations in the DC universe from Lex Luthor‘s tower visible in the trailer to New Troy and Suicide Slum. The game’s setting could risk losing character if its main locales aren’t populated with people and events that make the world feel lived in. However, with the Squad facing down a character as powerful as Superman, the destruction of the city may already be too extreme to include civilian characters without implying a high casualty count, and it’s possible having the city evacuated is the best way to let players have the most fun playing the Suicide Squad characters.
The best route forward will likely be related to how dynamic Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s Metropolis is. If most story events take place in cutscenes, it may be easier for the studio to tell a high-stakes story and keep the city mostly populated. If the trailer is anything to by, however, the game seems to follow the trend of previous Arkham games.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will release in 2022 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.
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