How To SAVE Batman: Arkham After Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
Suicide Squad may destroy the Arkhamverse you remember, but it doesn't have to end here.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League probably wasn't the sequel most Batman: Arkham fans were expecting. In 2015, after the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, it was widely presumed that developer Rocksteady would stay within the DC Universe for its next game, either following up its trilogy-capper with a fresh twist on Batman, a la Batman Beyond, or - perhaps most coveted of all - with a title based on DC's Man of Steel, Superman.
This did not prove to be the case, with the next full, AAA title from Rocksteady releasing a staggering nine years after Arkham Knight, and putting players in the boots of the Suicide Squad in a live-service, looter-shooter context. Their mission? Shoot the Justice League (and their mind-controlling master, Brainiac) into teeny-tiny pieces. Understandably, Suicide Squad has not endeared itself nearly as much as Rocksteady's prior efforts, departing on a tonal and gameplay front from the Arkham games of yore, and thus tying up the studio's wonderful eye for detail and immersion in a banal gameplay loop predicated around shooting glowy things and getting various purple and gold-coloured items (mostly guns). The Rocksteady we know and love is still there, evidenced by the glorious character models, detailed environments and authentic, entertaining dialogue. It's just buried underneath the unimaginative tropes of a genre that the developer's mythos feels ill-suited to.
Not that the story has helped things especially either. Exacerbating the myriad concerns with Suicide Squad's gameplay loop and end-game is the profound sense of disappointment that comes with stepping out of Rocksteady's Gotham for the first time, only to have to destroy everything that came before. Yes, the "Killing the Justice League" premise is what makes Suicide Squad's narrative so irreverently fun, but, barring a post-game twist entailing the Squad rescuing the real League aboard Brainiac's ship (which players have already started to suspect), it also means that the Arkhamverse could be over before it ever really got going.
But it doesn't have to. Despite a middling critical reception and the poor track record of recent live-service titles surviving past their first year, the Arkhamverse still has plenty of life left to give. We wouldn't have waited so patiently for almost a decade if it didn't, and, Justice League or no Justice League, there is a path forward that could redeem the franchise, and recapture the magic that all made us fall in love with it when we first stepped into Arkham Asylum's Intensive Treatment ward all those years ago.
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A Fresh, Unique Take On Batman: Arkham
In the nine years that have passed since the release of Batman: Arkham Knight, several DC projects developed by Warner Bros. Games Montréal - the studio behind the criminally underrated Batman: Arkham Origins, as well as several of Arkham Knight's DLC add-ons - were cancelled. One of these was a Suicide Squad title (hence the post-credits Task Force X tease in Origins), but after that, the studio shifted development to a Batman game centred around Damian Wayne in a post-apocalyptic Gotham, as was first reported by Jason Schreier in December 2016.
Taking inspiration from Grant Morrison's genius run on Batman, players would have assumed the role of an adult Damian as he took to the Batcycle and fought a new rogues gallery, including an older Two-Face and Harley Quinn, a female Black Mask, and (a personal highlight) Gorilla Grodd. The project was shelved sometime in 2017, with concept art leaking shortly afterwards painting the picture of a unique title that would have challenged the notion of what Batman is to a new audience. It's always easy to covet what we didn't end up getting - and you can see some of the mechanics from that Damian game carried into WBGM's other Batman title, Gotham Knights - but it's a cancellation I've never really gotten over. Aside from it tapping into one of my favourite corners of the Batman mythos, a Damian game would've been the perfect way to follow up Arkham Knight, approaching the Dark Knight's legacy from a fresh perspective while also leaning into the visuals of another beloved pillar of the character's recent history: Batman Beyond.
Concept art for the Damian title showed a city that seamlessly blended the dystopian future setting of Morrison's Damian issues with the sleek, Neo-Gotham skylines seen in Beyond. Art also showed the son of Bruce Wayne in an armoured Batsuit adorned with a red symbol, in a seeming nod to the suit worn by Terry McGinnis. It wasn't Batman Beyond, but it also wasn't a one-to-one adaptation of Morrison's books either. This mix of formulas and inspirations had already served Rocksteady well when it crafted Batman: Arkham Asylum (which drafted in Batman: The Animated Series scribe Paul Dini to write the story), but this would've been something altogether more unexpected and, dare I say it, exciting. The world of the Caped Crusader is so well-trodden and familiar, but Montréal appeared to be breaking into new territory - enough that I still think it's an idea worth pursuing, even more so now in the wake of Suicide Squad, and the untimely passing of Kevin Conroy.
Unimaginative of me though it may be to pitch the future of Batman: Arkham as a rekindling of a project that has been long dead and buried, but apart from resurrection being built into the very DNA of the Dark Knight, the story of Suicide Squad and the loss of Conroy make a legacy-driven Batman game all the more essential. Gotham Knights excelled in this regard with its story of the Bat Family coming to terms with the death of Bruce Wayne, but it's a concept Rocksteady feels uniquely suited to, with the studio having an inextricable connection to not just Batman, but Conroy as well. Conroy's legacy as the voice of Batman looms large over the studio's games, and especially over Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, where he excelled in a new villainous portrayal before the character met a brutal and controversial end at the hands of Harley Quinn. Evidence currently points towards Bruce returning at a later point in the game's post-launch content, but even with a potential return on the horizon, Conroy's Bats deserves a more fitting venue for a send-off - a title dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the Dark Knight in a world where he's needed more than ever.
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Why A Batman Beyond Game Makes Perfect Sense After Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
Of all the controversies that have emerged in the wake of Suicide Squad's launch, the depiction and subsequent "death" of Batman has been the biggest. While the reaction to this moment in the game has been typical gamer rage ridiculousness, with a vocal contingent online posting themselves into a frothing, Joker-toxin-looking mess, I don't think anyone could call this a fitting send-off for the Arkham Batman. Even with a now-inevitable-seeming return in mind, that doesn't change the fact the main story of Suicide Squad quite mercilessly killed the same Caped Crusader that endeared themselves to fans over the preceding Arkham games - an attachment heightened further still by Conroy's character-defining portrayal going back to the early 1990s with Batman: The Animated Series.
To be clear, this isn't an attempt to justify the level of backlash that has been directed Rocksteady's way, but rather to acknowledge that the character's ending is unfortunate. A resurrection post-script will merely serve as a reminder of Suicide Squad's genre foibles, with the "true" conclusion arriving months after the launch following multiple seasons of Elseworlds-themed content. It can't be helped that this may be the last time we hear Conroy's Batman in a video game, but equally, that should provide added motivation to venerate the late actor's impact on the character and his indelible contributions to Rocksteady's mythos. Contrary to what Suicide Squad's universe-destroying story may suggest, that very premise might provide a compelling path forward to do just that. Hear me out.
Judging from in-game clues and leaked dialogue, the mind-controlled members of the Justice League will at some point return to their old selves in Suicide Squad's post-launch slate. It's unclear how this will happen (the main theory currently is that the Leaguers Task Force X killed were merely copies Brainiac made from the imprisoned members), but they will make a comeback and will also be forced to confront the actions their evil doppelgangers got up to while they were locked up. For Batman, this could be especially important. As the late, great Darwyn Cooke stated beautifully in the comic Batman: Ego, the Caped Crusader is a symbol of hope more than he is just a symbol of fear. For however long Brainiac's invasion lasted, Bruce Wayne's life mission has been dragged through the dirt. He killed and tortured innocents, and potentially even Tim Drake's Robin. These are devastating consequences that a Suicide Squad game feels ill-suited to actually tackle, but for a new Batman title set years in the future? It could be perfect.
I've been using "Batman Beyond" here for the purposes of convenience in describing a defined aesthetic and tone, but what I'm really arguing for is an amalgamation of different concepts along the lines of what Warner Bros. Games Montréal was planning with its Damian Wayne title. Both concepts hinged on an older Bruce Wayne guiding a successor through an unfamiliar Gotham, but Conroy's passing should make this a non-starter in a true Arkham sequel. Instead, a future Batman game could unpack the legacy of a now-deceased Bruce by having someone fight to reclaim the symbol of the Bat, and remind Gotham's citizens of what it was before Brainiac's atrocities.
Working from that premise, this new Batman game could - like Gotham Knights - examine the mythology of the character through his allies. Perhaps Dick Grayson attempted to take up the mantle too soon after Suicide Squad and failed; maybe Barbara Gordon joined the GCPD and is now commissioner in place of her father. Through these legacy figures, players could enter a Neo Gotham that has either forgotten Batman or fears his memory, assuming the role of Damian Wayne or Terry McGinnis as they carve a new legend, and restore what was once lost.
This isn't to say that Damian and Terry are interchangeable figures, of course. Each character would present a different kind of Batman story in the way in which they are connected to Bruce Wayne. However, it's easy to see how both lend themselves well to the concept, with Damian's Batman stories taking on a darker, more apocalyptic bent in Morrison's run, and Terry's being firmly rooted in a dark but youthful tech noir space. Damian's presence would propose a compelling arc of a man trapped between two legacies as a Wayne and an al Ghul, while Terry has long enshrined the concept that the Dark Knight was never about just one man. These are two diverging angles to take, but both ultimately lend themselves well to the idea of honouring and exploring Batman's legacy in a post-Suicide Squad world.
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If Live Service Has To Exist, Make It Make Sense As A Batman: Arkham Game
Undoubtedly the biggest cloud hanging over the future of the Arkhamverse - if it still has one - is Warner Bros.' push towards live service games. Now, "live service" isn't inherently bad - just look at the recent release of Helldivers 2 as an example of how games-as-a-service can excel - but it does need to make sense. By far the biggest problem with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is that the DC license felt contorted and stretched to accommodate live-service, looter-shooter gameplay. Why is Captain Boomerang (a fairly instructive supervillain name) a specialist with a shotgun, and why am I spending so much time shooting a minigun as King Shark when I'd much rather be biting dudes in half?
Throw in the fact it continues the story of the Arkhamverse and what you're left with isn't exactly a Green Arrow lip-ripper of a chili as far as recipes go. What you do have is a sequel with years of hype and speculation behind it, but one that shares little in common with the games that came before. Suicide Squad has its fans - and honestly, more power to them - but it has largely been met with a huge wave of negativity. With the above factors in mind, that shouldn't have been a surprise.
The concern going forward is that the lessons of Suicide Squad's critical failure are not learned, and that Warner Bros. presses ahead with its live service focus. The latest sorry chapter in the story of David Zaslav's stewardship of the company (who, not content with deleting films, has turned his attention to gaming), a February report from Variety claimed that Warner Bros. is making a concerted push towards live service titles and that DC - understandably - is a key focus. With that in mind, one would expect other studios under the Warner umbrella to be moved in that direction - developers who once excelled in the single-player, AAA space (like Rocksteady) having to shift priorities to accommodate a genre in which they have precious little experience.
This is still all speculative, of course. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor developer Monolith is currently working on a single-player Wonder Woman title, while Warner Bros. Games Montréal also has an as-of-yet untitled DC game in development as well. What shapes these titles take is still up in the air, but the hope is that - unlike Suicide Squad - whichever characters are spotlighted lend themselves well to the genre of game they're situated within.
The biggest problem with Suicide Squad and even Gotham Knights is that they feel like games caught between oscillating pressures. Gotham Knights couldn't just be a one-to-two-player story-driven Batman game - it had to also have a loot system and a post-launch raid-style update. Rocksteady couldn't just make a follow-up to Arkham Knight - it had to be a four-player looter-shooter title with a roadmap of seasonal content. Again, it's not that these genres are inherently bad or aren't conducive to making a good DC game, but they do need to feel organic. A looter-shooter based on Jim Lee's Wildstorm could work, given how many gun-toting characters there are in that corner of the DCU, but it doesn't fit Suicide Squad, and certainly not a Suicide Squad game meant to follow up arguably the greatest single-player superhero games of all time.
Ultimately, the difference between a good and bad future for Batman: Arkham and DC games as a whole lives and dies with that creative direction. If live service has to be the future, then it needs to be done in a way that feels organic. Part of that means not imposing those genre features on a historically single-player-focused series like Batman: Arkham, which can and should be concluded on a more fitting note than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was able to provide. Something like a Damian Wayne Batman or Batman Beyond game makes the most sense to me as something to honour the multiple legacies tied up in that series, but truthfully? Arkham we knew might be dead already. It's been a decade of terrible decisions from Warner Bros. pre-and-post the Great Zaslafification Of 2022, and nothing about the company's recent strategy has inspired any sort of confidence or optimism about its future.
Would Rocksteady be able to recapture the magic of its Arkham trilogy today? I still think the answer is yes. Suicide Squad, for all its creative faults, is a technical showcase layered with great character work and performances. Beneath the loot and the gameplay and the banal numberiness of it all, you can still see that old Rocksteady shine. The concern is that, under the current WB regime, that shine will only briefly shimmer, rather than gleam.