IGN Story Here

I know it had been rumoured to be a Superman game for sometime but it seems like its a hunt Superman (or Bizarro) with a potential picking of the fleet of characters that have been a part of the Suicide Squad over the years. I guess Superman makes for a better antagonist than protagonist in video games - too OP.

I'm kind of confused, why did Suicide Squad get popular in the last decade? Feels like a weird concept that's been very hit or miss.

Boy, what a massively disappointing announcement. I was really hoping we would get an interesting return to form from Rocksteady after the bummer that was Arkham Knight. Could not be less interested in this game.

WB turning down Rocksteady's Superman pitch is infuriating. Screw this game on the general principle. WB is so clueless about what folks want from DC, and this is just carried over hope people actually liked that turd of a Suicide Squad movie while Ayer can maybe salvage it with a directors cut and James Gunn with his sequel. Kinda hope they do sell off their games division to Microsoft, maybe then ol' Kal El will finally get the respect he deserves.

I think it just kinda came along with Harley Quinn being popular, and in recent history she is what Batman is too the Justice League (IE always there, because Batman sells). It probably also helps that the studios/publishers are less afraid to take a chance on weird characters now and Suicide Squad is one of DC's bigger "lets throw a bunch of a characters at the wall and see if it sticks" properties.

Disappointing subject matter for the game. I hope the "reveal" will be nothing less than mindblowing. Nothing else can excuse the insanely long amount of silence there have been from Rocksteady.

At this point they need to show a long gameplay slice. A CG trailer, or even a gameplay trailer by itself, won't be enough.

I know Rocksteady might have in some ways been "forced" to work on this project by WB, but nevertheless they have a lot to prove to win me over.

wet fart noise

I wonder if they'll get James Gunn to work on the game too. You know, what with him having worked on the Grasshopper Manufacture classic, Lollipop Chainsaw.

They've been working on it long enough maybe it'll be mindblowing regardless of the subject matter, i'm always up to play a good game, but i super don't care about Suicide Squad.
Just seems like a bunch of misfits with narrative invincibility.

@cikame: I haven't read any of the comics, but you pretty much hit the nail on the head for me in regards to my biggest issue with Suicide Squad the movie. It has zero interest in being any different than like...standard tentpole superhero stuff. The idea of them being misfits can be fine if you actually lean into their faults in a way that is at least worth examining from a character standpoint. It's more frustrating because things like Doom Patrol and Umbrella Academy exist, proving you can totally do the misfits with powers things if your willing to actually provide some biting commentary on the genre itself, and not be afraid to rip your characters to the core a little.

But Suicide Squad got so lost in the marketing of "Villains are Cool aren't they?" and I very much fear a Rocksteady game might be in the same vein. Due to the rise of these fandoms we've kind of barreled past a lot of the reason some of these characters were popular in the first place. Characters like Joker and Harley Quinn were never beloved because "anarchy is cool bro". In the good works they are in there is a deeper exploration of the nature of manipulation, toxic relationships, and if I recall correctly some of the initial appeal of the Suicide Squad concept was exploring how in a normalized superhero world their are agencies of government that would seek low enough to do the whole "bomb in your neck work for us thing" with legitimately deranged psychopaths. The movie explores none of that stuff, it's just "here's some baddies here is why they are supposed to be cool here is a generic end of the world plot."

So here is hoping Rocksteady has plans to be way more than the film is, and this just isn't an attempt to keep churning out a game that would work well in their sort of system tied in with some property coming out in an effort to boost sales. Even if what is on the table winds up being some good action game, if it's just more of the same it's probably going to be a letdown. Who knows though, it's been a decent length since Knight came out and there is a good possibility with multiple characters (and hopefully it isn't afraid to dig from the weirder side of DC) it could have potential.

Just technically I don't really like games where you play as multiple characters that have very different ability sets. It is rarely done well and makes games typically feel like a jack-of-all-trades sort of thing instead of a single, focused effort.

Had zero interest in seeing the movie, and I have zero interest in playing this game.

People are saying suicide squad is popular all of a sudden, wasn’t that movie terrible?

the live action film wasn't great but Birds of Prey was great and the DC animated Suicide Squad films have been overall pretty good.

Eh. Sure I guess? I know they're doing this because SS is half batman villains and they can always add more characters as dlc but I don't think this will be as fine tuned as thier batman games. It's a shame DC is afraid to do anything with superman these days

I don’t know why people want a Superman game. Like the dude is more or less invincible and unstoppable. How do you make gameplay around that? He can fly. He can see through walls. He can hear distant conversations. He is impervious to virtually any weapon or attack. He can lift planet sized masses. He has no character defects. How do you make a game around that? If he was a villain then you could do a destruction sandbox type thing and rate the player on how much mayhem and damage they cause, but that doesn’t work for Superman.

And you could make a bunch of absurd story concessions to even the playing field, but then you aren’t playing a Superman game, you are playing a Batman game with a Superman character model. Games are about overcoming challenges and obstacles. Superman is able to go anywhere and survive in almost any condition. It makes gameplay pointless.

I will say that I am a person that had no particular love for Batman outside of the camp-fest that is the Adam West tv show, or comic books in general, and I still thought Arkham Asylum is one of the best games of it's generation. It is possible that Rocksteady just makes a real good game, and manages to do something interesting with Suicide Squad.

... At least I think it's possible. Maybe it isn't. I don't know anything about Suicide Squad. Saw that movie. Immediately forgot everything about it.

@raven10: Yeah I feel like the only logical way to make a Superman game in this day and age with any sort of weight would be some sort of adventure/detective style game. The decisions you make having overall consequences being more the mechanics, because trying to make a traditional action game around his abilities is pretty much pointless. The only real way to do that would be to randomly limit what he can or can't do at a given time, but even that is so limiting. Action games pride themselves on giving you a variety of tools to combat but you still have to pick a lane. Superman can just, do it all. It really is what he decides to do and when that gives any of his films tension, not whether or not he will succeed.

But more than that, I never really saw the path to game specifically for Rocksteady in regards to a Superman game. What about their work on the Batman franchise, other than it being in the same universe made people think it would translate well to Superman? A big part of Rocksteady's Batman approach was overwhelming you with groups of enemies, or bosses who could do shit you couldn't do. It focused entirely on Batman's ability to deduce the best course of combat action. They also are nearly half the time stealth sequences. Superman stealth, what?

One simple way they can make a Superman game is have his powers taken from him at the beginning for some reason, and Clark Kent spends the game getting his powers back. As far as the Suicide Squad, they only really became big because of Harley Quinn who also became very popular around the same time. Both are overrated in my opinion, and I'm not a fan of the rainbow colored hair version of the character. That version of Harley is even more annoying than the original blond version.

@raven10: Superman in space. Superman in the Phantom Zone. Superman vs. magical enemies. Superman, comatose fighting his way out a nightmarish dreamworld. Plenty of options.

I just hope it doesn’t have exclusive content like a certain character in a certain Marvel game. It probably won’t since DC isn’t owned by the big three but still...

Welp, consider me not hyped for the moment, as Suicide Squad isn't particularly interesting to me. That said, while I've always liked Batman, I wasn't exactly stoked about a new Batman game before finally giving Arkham a try...so hey, maybe I'll be surprised again!

If this does end up being some multiplayer focused, live service game though, then that's a good way to make my interest plummet down to the ground and through it.

Well I for one am excited! Fell in love with the Suicide Squad after watching Assault on Arkham, hope the game can catch that lightning in a bottle.

@ry_ry: that Birds of Prey film was equally bad just in a different way. I can only hope the game is going to take all it’s influence from the various comics and not the movie adaptations.

@shiftygism: Like I said, you can come up with a story reason to make Superman have limited powers. But if you are going to take most of his powers away then why make a Superman game? In the comics when his powers are limited in certain story arcs it works because 95% of the time those limitations don’t exist. If you are going to make a game about a super soldier fighting magic enemies then make a Constantine game. If you want one with a super soldier fighting aliens in space, that is called Green Lantern. A game where I play as Batman wearing a Superman skin is not a Superman game.

Movie tie-ins don't happen anymore.

@dudeglove: One of the Australian WB Studios is on the next Batman game, and seems more tied to a particular comic run than the new film. Seems like time investment to make a big game plus with volatile success rate the WB/DC films have WB might just see it as too risky an investment. I would think the Suicide Squad game will probably try keep at arms length from being linked to the movie until they know it isn't going to tank as much as the last one.

Regarding the game, I think Rocksteady are more than capable of making something great - even if it's a comic that I don't have any investment in, and I think defeating Superman (or similarly OP character) is a much more entertaining prospect than being them.

I might have pretty broken movie tastes so I'd rather watch Suicide Squad or Birds of Prey than Batman vs. Superman or Justice League (or even new Skywalker movies).

Snyder tainted DC movies pretty badly but we still got Joker so some WB bets do pay off.

Color me interested in the the possibilities for gameplay because Batman stealth power fantasy got a little dull after a while.

Is this the wrong link because it points to a Twitter "article" on Eurogamer?

@thesquarepear: Quite likely a wrong link, it was late and I tried to add an image twice (?) before even clicking the right button. I had both the Eurogamer tweet open and IGN one - always proof read.

IGN - for real this time

@raven10: they should make a game based on the Superman comic where he travels far away from Earth and goes on a planet infested with aliens from Alien-Ridley-Scott fame. So he can still do stuff but he’s weakened, it’s all sci and you’re just obliterating aliens with your fists. At the end of that comic a chest burster is about to pop out of him but he gets close enough to a yellow sun that he’s able to crush it using his stomach muscles.

Considering how versatile Superman can be having a game take place on Earth and you fighting, I dunno regular dudes with Kryptonite suits on seems like such a waste. But I know fans want to be able to fly around Metropolis.

@raven10: Remember when you were a kid playing PS1 games and you'd stick in an invincibility cheat code and have a blast? I think it's totally possible to make a great Superman game.
The marketing would be fun.
"We made an action game where you can't die".
"Imagine playing a game with all the cheat codes turned on".
What would annoy me is when they inevitably bring in the kryptonite and drag the whole thing down, or Superman has a temper tantrum which he seems to be doing every time i see him.

I think I'm very worried that this is going to be WB/Rocksteady's answer to Marvel/Square's Avengers game. If the whole Suicide Squad schtick just ends up being a way to make character classes and loot drops to face off against a pumped up Bizzaro clone during a big raid on a Cadmus lab then count me out.

@thesquarepear: I mean I agree, if only because I think Snyder is one of the worst directors around. he's so obsessed with iconic images and moments instead of characters and has never, not once in his entire filmography, managed to impart to a character anything other than a lust for violence or a lust for death.

And remember when he had Superman's dad tell him that a bus full of children should have died? Lol wtf is wrong with you, Snyder. Just a miserable, bleak, cynical, boring shitpile of a movie, that was. At least Suicide Squad had moments of characters actually talking and interacting like human beings, even if it was relegated to the scene in the bar which was the only Ayer-esque moment in that whole movie.

Nah, it gives them a narrative reason to have all the villians in one place. Although they need a narrative reason to have Metropolis completely locked down and then another narrative reason for Superman not to use his 'I have all the superpowers' powers.

Ewww

I'm not as down as some people in this thread seem to be on a game based on Suicide Squad. Never watched the movie, but I like the premise. And I've been told mostly positive things about the comics, from couple of friends that used to read those. My problems with Knight aside, Rocksteady still created two of my favorite games of all time. So I'm more than willing to give them a shot.

I'm open to it. There have been good comics and animated appearances of these characters so why the heck not? The main thing DC haven't been doing well lately are live action films, which is mainly why I haven't seen the live action Suicide Squad movies (on top of bad word of mouth and the high bar Assault on Arkham set). They're still pretty good at other stuff and the Arkham games have had diminishing returns in my opinion. I've honestly been sick of Batman stuff for several years with a few exceptions so I'm more than happy to see literally any other of their legacy characters in stuff.

I'll reserve judgment until we actually see something, but the idea of a Suicide Squad game on its own does nothing for me.

Well, I'm optimistic, I really love the Arkham games(even Knight, I have no issues with the batmobile, not a fan of some of the story stuff in that game though) and I'm a big DC fan so I'm excited to see what they do. As long as it's not another live service game, I've grown to really dislike that genre of game.

@cikame: See I would agree but Superman doesn’t kill. He tries to limit collateral damage. A game where you play as Bizzaro and go around busting up a helpless Metropolis would be fun. See Saint’s Row IV as an example of that premise working. But Superman wouldn’t go all out unless he had no choice.

@humanity: The thing is you need a baseline. You can’t make a game limiting his powers until you make one where he has them. That would be great three sequels later but game one needs to establish what Superman is normally before you start doing one shot adaptations.

@raven10: that’s why you have a cool little prologue where you’re busting through buildings and doing powerful Superman stuff for like 30-60 minutes before you get ejected into the “main game” where they strip away your powers a-la Metroid.

It's a shame because if this announcement preceded that awful movie then I would be really excited. I like the idea of the Suicide Squad and remember enjoying the New 52 comics, but now I have zero excitement for it, even though I would love to play a new Rocksteady game. It was the worst kept secret but I kept hoping the rumors were wrong and that the DC property that they were working on was Teen Titans but hey, maybe this will be good.