What’s In Store for The Arkhamverse After Suicide Squad: KTJL?

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 17, 2025 9 Views 10 Min Read
What's In Store for The Arkhamverse After Suicide Squad: KTJL?



Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s live-service journey has come to an end a little less than a year after it began. The embattled looter shooter launched last year to underwhelming reviews and downright scorn from some longtime fans of the Arkham series for its apparent squandering of the universe’s Justice League and its treatment of Arkham Batman. Series diehards were upset to see their favorite version of the character, played in a final performance by the late great Kevin Conroy, seemingly gunned down on a park bench without much ceremony or reverence.

But when the finale of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s story arrived earlier this week, Rocksteady revealed (in a slightly underwhelming motion comic) that the game’s title wasn’t exactly honest from the get-go. The game ends with the revelation that the League is mostly alive and well, heading off with the squad members into an unknown horizon. And with this latest entry in the Arkhamverse officially in the books, there are a lot of directions that Warner Brothers can take its premier DC video game IP.

a-8

Related


The Aftermath of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Paints a Clear Portrait of Batman’s Arkhamverse

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s story has ended and with it Batman’s Arkhamverse future has a fairly blank canvas to work with.

Where Does the Arkhamverse Go After Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League?

How Did Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League End?

After players defeat the final Brainiac boss, there’s a short motion comic cutscene that closes out the game’s narrative. It’s unveiled here that the League members killed by the Squad during the story’s main campaign were never actually dead. The bosses were actually Brainiac clones of the original heroes, with Superman and Batman helping the squad neutralize the final Brainiac before reconvening with the Flash and Green Lantern.

Narration from Harley establishes that the squad was able to disable their neck bombs before escaping into various Elseworlds. While Wonder Woman was not cloned during Braniac’s invasion and therefore actually died during the game’s story, the rest of the Justice League sets out to use the skull ship’s technology to set right what Brainiac destroyed on all the earths he visited.

The dedicated, loyal few who’ve stuck with Suicide Squad over the last year will attest that this revelation of the League’s survival is not an out of left field plot twist. In fact, previous seasons have seen players rescuing the prime version of Flash and Green Lantern. It’s clear that Superman and Batman were supposed to have followed suit, but Suicide Squad‘s poor reception and subpar launch numbers most likely gave Rocksteady a very limited budget with which to execute its post-launch content, including this ending.

What’s Next For the Arkham Series?

This ending, underwhelming as it may be, leaves a number of doors open for the future of the Arkhamverse. There’s a lot of directions WB and Rocksteady can go after the failed experiment that was Suicide Squad. To address the least desirable outcome right off the bat, it is entirely possible that this is the end of the Arkham timeline and no further games will be produced moving forward. Suicide Squad was a big financial bust for WB, which planned for the game to be its own thriving live-service title in the same vein as Destiny or Warframe. The lackluster response to Suicide Squad could be interpreted as a lack of further interest in the series, with resources and funds being allocated elsewhere in the future.

However, there are plenty of more likely outcomes. Rather than shuttering the franchise for good, WB will almost certainly see fan demand for a return to what made the Arkham franchise so beloved in the first place. It wasn’t live service looter shooter gameplay with post-ironic quip-laden dialogue. It was a single-player action-adventure series that served as a faithful, earnest adaptation of one of the most beloved fictional characters of all time. And most importantly, from WB’s perspective at least, the Arkham games made money.

The Arkham series is a time-tested moneymaker for WB. Despite what happened with Arkham Batman in Suicide Squad, there’s still a lot of fan goodwill out there for the character and the original series. The overwhelming success of Arkham Shadow despite being on a more niche platform is proof that fans will still come out and support a Batman game that puts that character and his world at the forefront. WB obviously sees value in the Batman IP, and with the most popular version of the character now back from the dead, the stage is set for another adventure in Rocksteady’s Gotham.

a (2)-12

Related


Why a Harley Quinn Arkhamverse Game is Long Overdue

Batman’s Arkhamverse has pedestaled Harley Quinn in nearly every entry and she has long been deserving of her own single-player game.

Future Games Should Expand the Arkhamverse Further

The best thing Suicide Squad did for the Arkhamverse was expand upon the lore of the universe as a whole. Before release, there was precious little information about the world outside Gotham City. Lex Luthor had a small voice cameo in Arkham Knight and the game had a number of teasers confirming the existence of Metropolis, Superman, and the Flash. But beyond throwaway lines and visual easter eggs, nothing was set in stone.

Now, with the introduction of the Arkhamverse Justice League, the groundwork has been laid for a whole new series set in that original timeline. Despite the game’s negative reception, the characterizations of pre-Braniac Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Superman were all very much on-point in Suicide Squad. There is a lot of storytelling potential left with this version of the League, especially Superman, who’s been denied a AAA game of his own for far too long now.

Of course, each character can have their own standalone game, but a true Justice League game with all five League members playable in a co-op setting would go a long way in convincing fans to move past the disappointment they felt with Suicide Squad. Wonder Woman may be canonically dead, but her magical nature lends itself to a fairly easy resurrection within the narrative.

Much like the Metropolis seen in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, there’s been a lot of damage done to the Arkhamverse. Still, fans can only hope that WB, Rocksteady, and DC can build this beloved universe back up even better than it was before, as Kill The Justice League‘s ending has essentially wiped the slate clean.

Source link