Back in March, the “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” was delayed indefinitely. At the time, there was no a new release date. There was plenty of speculation as to why. A lackluster gameplay reveal trailer being the suspected cause. But now, we have a NEW release date, with continued speculation given the length of this delay.
If you were hoping you’d be able to get to play Rocksteady’s newest title this year, you’ll be disappointed.
“Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” is now slated for February 2nd, 2024. Even if you’re not super savvy about video games and development, eight full months is a heck of a delay for a ‘mostly finished’ title. One rumor claims the delay could be to fix the always online for play requirement, even when playing in single-player.
Whether this is true or not is very much up in the air and it has a lot to do with how long this game has been in development, and how the gaming zeitgeist has changed. Rocksteady hasn’t released a title since “Batman: Arkham Knight” in 2015. In 2020, they confirmed a Suicide Squad game was in the works, but it’s fair to speculate development began sometime before then. Especially considering the negotiations Rocksteady would have been making with WB Games to have the rights for the project and it taking place in the Arkham universe of games.
See, in December of 2014 though a title called “Destiny” changed the world. It featured single-player and co-operative multi-player gameplay with an always online connection, daily and weekly objectives to complete, and challenging scenarios that ultimately require a full team of players to handle. These types of “live-service” games are the envy of virtually every publisher, because it ensures a steady stream of revenue and pushes players to spend time with their game instead of others for fear of missing out on new equipment, items, or objectives.
This style of game was very much in-fashion for the time but has fallen out of favor over the years with many gamers and critics becoming fed-up with how manipulative these types of titles can be in terms of playing on people’s fears of missing out on things, over-emphasizing microtransactions, and being entirely unplayable if/when servers go offline. These are things that made the Square Enix, “Marvel’s The Avengers” title fail and that should have been a surefire hit by all accounts. To say that game left a bad taste in people’s mouths is underselling the situation considering it has poisoned the well of superhero games pretty heavily.
This all culminates in the gameplay trailer that was dropped in a Sony State of Play in late February of 2023. Many viewers and gaming journalists were quick to point out how many worrying signs their were about this game’s future, with a number of comparisons being made to the ill-fated Avengers title. The aforementioned always online component was there along with generic character abilities and gunplay, live service objectives and currency for cosmetics and the like, and character strength based on equipped loot and gear. In other words, the always online component is the least of the worries.
An eight month delay is not going to fix all these issues. And even if it is done to change the always online component, that doesn’t mean much when that element is possibly the least offensive to players. As a point of comparison, “Gotham Knights” doesn’t ALWAYS need to be online, but the repetitive, padded out gameplay with leveling up, gear stats, and horribly generic combat rendered the game as terribly mediocre. That’s what Suicide Squad is looking at right now.
The game also features the late Kevin Conroy in his very last performance as Batman.
Rocksteady is a strong developer, but the publisher who’s fronting the money will ultimately have more say over it than Rocksteady ever will. Maybe they didn’t want to put these components into the game but were forced to at WB Games request. Maybe WB Games will relent and let Rocksteady release the game they want to release. There’s no clear answer, and our only hope for it is to wait and see if WB says anything, or if Rocksteady provides further updates. U
