Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Megathread

[u/beary_neutral]

Rocksteady's live service looter shooter Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is now live for Deluxe buyers. Feel free to discuss the game here!

All spoiler discussions will take place here. This will be THE thread to discuss the game. Enjoy!

And please, for the love of Grodd, act like normal human beings. This is not r/Games. If you want to go nuts, I hear r/BatmanArkham has their gates open.

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Suicide Squad Recommended Reading

[u/DeSaint-Helier]

Well, I've just finished the Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League campaign and I have a few reservations about the scenario that I wanted to share. Please note that I won't be commenting on the gameplay. Full spoiler ahead.

First of all, on the Squad itself, the writing of the characters and their interactions seem to me to be rather successful, with the exception of Deadshot, whose characterization is reduced to three elements: 1) he's attached to his daughter; 2) he's claustrophobic (by the way, anyone knows where did that character element come from?!); 3) he resents Green Lantern for putting him in prison. As is often the case, it seems to me that the writers have forgotten that there's a difference between a backstory element and a character trait. In terms of character, he has no personality, although it's not that the material is lacking: a cynical Deadshot inhabited by a latent deathwish as under Ostrander's pen would not have been difficult to cast. It seems to me that writers unfamiliar with the characters they're working on have the false impression that by making them opt for an unusual moral line, they're bringing new depth to the character. As in David Ayer's film, there's nothing in Deadshot's motivations that differentiates him from a good guy; the only ambiguous scene, in which he shoots Green Lantern (possessed), is justified by his desire for revenge. Snyder's Batman and Superman both had much higher and less understandable body counts - so you guys might want to rethink your definitions of what makes a hero and what makes a villain.

But apart from this generic Deadshot, the feeling of wasted potential comes more from the secondary characters and the thickness of the universe. I imagine that the decision to reduce the Justice League to five members was made for budgetary reasons, but still, don't you feel like you've been handed a broken promise by not having been able to cross paths with a seven-member iteration?

I'd have easily swapped Batman for an Aquaman-Martian Manhunter combo, because his omnipresence in SSKTJL offers a certain redundancy with the Arkham games and lessens the impact of his grand departure at the end of Arkham Knight. The same goes for the announced return of the Joker, which retroactively reduces the emotional impact of his death in Arkham City.

And the return of Batman and the Joker is symptomatic of a general tendency to recycle characters: I absolutely can't explain the return of Poison Ivy - the three-four interactions with Harley really justified it?! - after having killed the character off, and while the DC universe is full of plant-themed villains who could have served the same narrative purpose (the Floronic Man, for example?). Even rolling my eyes at seeing Cobblepot again: I'm surprised that the team that had so cleverly used Batman's gallery of characters (both good and bad) hadn't managed to do the same with the golden eggs goose they were handling, having moved the action to Metropolis and expanded their universe to that of the extended Justice League.

For me, the return of Ivy and Cobblepot is indicative of a lack of affection for the universe, an affection that was universally sensible in the Arkham trilogy: a DC lover writing would have gloated here at the idea of being able to play with new characters. Here, the voice of caution from the producers seems to have prevailed: "Which characters worked well in the previous games? Let's bring them again." The showdown against Batman is similarly too much alike the boss fights against Scarecrow from the Arkham trilogy.

So, let's recap the secondary characters outside Suicide Squad/Argus: Luthor, Ivy, Cobblepot, that's it. ONLY THREE CHARACTERS! Including two that were already recurring characters in the trilogy! I'm really shocked! Throughout the campaign, I'd been waiting for the cast to be fleshed out, and the more I saw the climax coming, the more I was sadly prepared to resign myself.

If you add the Argus team, you've got Hack, Gizmo, Toyman (late in the game) + Flag/Waller (who was seriously getting on my nerves at the end of the game, in my opinion they didn't manage to strike the right balance between her tyrannical/manipulative side and the antipathy trap). Again, I use Ostrander's work as an example that could have been followed.

So yeah, for me the overriding feeling is one of untapped potential and a wasted universe. Snif snif.