The long-delayed Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is lastly seeing launch in February 2024, and followers simply received one other have a look at the sport by way of the primary in a collection of developer diaries. That new video not solely reveals new gameplay footage and the truth that Metropolis shall be twice the scale of Arkham City’s Gotham map, it additionally addresses maybe the only largest thriller surrounding the plot of the sport. Namely, how precisely can a staff this small and underpowered hope to defeat the complete Justice League?
Let’s take a more in-depth have a look at how the brand new Suicide Squad footage addresses this thriller and opens the door to the broader DC Universe within the course of.
The Suicide Squad’s Power Level
The essential character roster in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is each wise and barely head-scratching, relying on the way you have a look at issues. On the one hand, Rocksteady has gone with a fairly conventional lineup in Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang and King Shark. These are characters with a deep affiliation with the Suicide Squad franchise. They’ve appeared not simply within the comics, however in DC’s Suicide Squad movies and animated initiatives. Alongside Amanda Waller herself, they’re arguably the characters that instantly come to thoughts when informal DC followers consider the Suicide Squad.
But whereas the roster could also be a pure match by way of DC synergy, it doesn’t essentially make sense within the context of a recreation the place the entire level is to homicide the Justice League. Task Force X goes up in opposition to essentially the most highly effective superheroes on the planet, together with an invulnerable Amazonian warrior, a godlike Kryptonian and a man who can run quicker than the velocity of thought. And let’s not overlook Batman, the man who already took down two of the 4 Suicide Squad members himself within the Arkham video games.
Against a staff that sturdy, what precisely does the Squad have to supply?
Against a staff that sturdy, what precisely does the Squad have to supply? Neither Deadshot nor Harley Quinn have any actual powers to talk of. They’re simply superb at killing unusual people. Captain Boomerang has his trick boomerangs, however that’s by no means achieved a lot to maneuver him up the supervillain ladder within the DCU. Of the 4, solely King Shark has a really spectacular powerset, with the superhuman power and sturdiness the remainder of the staff lacks.
From the start, it was at all times a thriller as to how this particular staff would be capable to perform its mission. Compared to a number of the heavy hitters which have served on the Suicide Squad previously (General Zod, Solomon Grundy, Enchantress), this staff is trying pretty puny by comparability.
Granted, the Suicide Squad are normally the underdogs in any given storyline. They get by on a mix of tenacity and luck, and never everybody at all times makes it dwelling alive. But the battle on this recreation is on an entire different stage in comparison with most Suicide Squad initiatives. How can this staff hope to take down even one Justice Leaguer, not to mention the entire staff? The developer diary appears to offer us with a solution.
The Weapons of the DCU
The developer diary consists of footage from an early scene within the recreation the place the newly escaped Suicide Squad members enter the Hall of Justice and promptly start looting the place. Apparently, nobody within the League thought it was a foul thought to put absolutely practical superhuman weapons behind simply breakable glass and name it a day? But the League’s oversight is the Suicide Squad’s acquire, as we see them steal some helpful treasures to assist stage the enjoying area.
Height and verticality are clearly a giant a part of the fight in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, with a lot of the footage we’ve seen exhibiting the characters leaping up and down the skyscrapers of Metropolis and blasting away at Brainiac’s forces. It’s right here the place we learn the way the sport makes that verticality doable. Harley Quinn steals Batman’s grapnel gun and Bat-drone. Captain Boomerang liberates Dr. Sivana’s Speed Force Gauntlet, giving him a style of the Flash’s velocity and maneuverability. Deadshot claims Gizmo’s jetpack, remodeling him into a way more cell sniper. Only King Shark rejects these new toys, as he alone has the inherent power to leap tall buildings in a single sure.
It appears that is how the Suicide Squad will discover a method of competing on the Justice League’s stage. They’re “borrowing” the instruments of extra highly effective heroes and villains with the intention to make up for his or her relative lack of superhuman skills. For starters, instantly Task Force X has a speedster of its personal, which makes the concept of taking up the Flash a barely much less daunting job.
Will the staff monitor down a Sinestro Corps or Red Lantern ring earlier than taking up Green Lantern?
The query now could be simply how far the sport will lean into the concept of the Suicide Squad repurposing superhuman tech. There are definitely some attention-grabbing potentialities right here. Will the staff monitor down a Sinestro Corps or Red Lantern ring earlier than taking up Green Lantern? Will Lex Luthor (a villain we briefly glimpse within the developer diary) present Task Force X with some Kryptonite-laced weapons earlier than the large Superman showdown? Will Harley declare an Amazonian hammer earlier than dueling Wonder Woman?
This new footage additionally hints that Penguin might play a key position in opening up the arsenal of the broader DC Universe. Following up on his recurring position within the Arkham video games, we see that Oswald Cobblepot is now holed up in a bunker in Metropolis. Waller directs her staff to Penguin’s hideout as one in every of their first missions. As a villain along with his fingers in lots of pies, Penguin might be a simple method of introducing extra devices and weapons into the image.
Just what number of iconic DC weapons shall be harnessed by the Suicide Squad within the recreation? How will they be built-in into the “run and gun” model of gameplay we’ve seen to date? Rocksteady has quite a lot of room to get artistic and get away of the easy shooter mould we’ve seen in a lot of the gameplay footage to date. With any luck, the battles in opposition to Superman, Wonder Woman and Brainiac himself gained’t merely contain extra leaping and capturing, however will as an alternative combine a number of the coolest toys the DC Universe has to supply. It’s all a query of how deeply Rocksteady is prepared to dig into this huge toybox.
For extra, take a look at our information to enjoying the Arkham Games so as and our response to the DCU’s formidable online game plan.
Jesse is a mild-mannered workers author for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your mental thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
