What REALLY Happened To WB's Cancelled Batman: Arkham Games?

5. Everything We Know About The Cancelled Suicide Squad Game

Back in December 2016, Jason Schreier reported for Kotaku that WB Montréal had cancelled their unannounced Suicide Squad game. There had been rumours before that the studio were working on a title about the Squad, but this was the first time it was ever confirmed outside of a comment here or there from DC writer Geoff Johns.

Schreier's report mentions that it was at this time that Montréal moved on to their Damian Wayne Batman title, but not before spilling the beans on what went on behind the scenes.

The game was said to have a co-op focus, but ostensibly "failed to impress" Warner Bros. management, which eventually resulted in its cancellation, and Montréal shifting their full attention to the Damian Wayne concept, which had started development earlier that year. Schreier also notes how this followed a "turbulent" few years at the studio, with multiple key members departing, including Arkham Origins creative director Eric Holmes, who swapped WB for DICE in 2015.

Story-wise, there isn't much to go off on what Suicide Squad would've been like. We can only assume from the hints in Origins and its handheld counterpart, Arkham Origins: Blackgate, that the team would've comprised Deathstroke, Bronze Tiger, Deadshot and Rick Flagg Jr. Amanda Waller would've also had a key role, while Harley Quinn features in multiple leaked images of the game's concept art, pictured here above and below.

Getting the timeline for Suicide Squad right is tricky, but if we take Johns' comments as fact, then it appears to have been in development at the time of Montréal's launch in 2010.

Montréal is and was a big studio, so they would've been developing Suicide Squad and Arkham Origins in tandem - hence all the links between the two - but that also raises an interesting problem. After Origins, the Arkham formula was well established; if Suicide Squad was meant to be a co-op shooter along the lines of Destiny or Borderlands, would fans have been as receptive as they would've been to one with a more linear focus? It's hard to tell. Rumours have even stated the project tried to pivot to Arkham-style gameplay before being cancelled.

Of course, without any concrete information, WB's cancelled Suicide Squad game will continue to be a mystery. Supposed marketing materials that advertised the title were leaked in April 2019, claiming that Gotham and Star City would be playable locations. The veracity of those leaks is questionable at best (especially when you consider the game was cancelled over two years prior), but with both WB and Rocksteady seemingly pivoting to games-as-a-service (more on that later), one has to ask if elements of Suicide Squad will be incorporated into one of the studios' upcoming DC titles.

For one reason or another, the project just wasn't to be. And with Rocksteady then primed to conclude their Batman series with Arkham Knight, WB needed another studio to carry the bat-shaped torch...