Highlights
- Rocksteady's Arkham game franchise has been crucial in expanding Batman's mythos and creating a rich world for the character.
- The supervillains in the Arkham games were often more captivating than Batman himself, with their development across multiple games adding depth to the story.
- While Rocksteady has the opportunity to continue shaping the Arkhamverse, it must follow through on the promise of allowing players to kill the Justice League in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
Batman was obviously an incredibly popular character in popular culture before Rocksteady’s Arkham game franchise, but that series has been an insurmountable piece of the character’s mythology since. Rocksteady achieved quite a feat of world-building in how it established characters in its original continuity, shaping Gotham City and its surrounding environs as an independent slice of the world that Rocksteady could hone and craft lore for. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will whisk players away from that environment to another, but that should only expand Rocksteady’s established lore, not diminish it.
Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad has seemingly been a long time coming since its initial tease at the end of Origins, and the idea of getting to see Deathstroke again in a playable capacity was thrilling at the time. That could still come to pass in post-launch DLC for Suicide Squad, but only time will tell how the base game itself will shape up following its latest delay into February. There is also the possibility that Rocksteady decides to shelf the Arkhamverse canon after Suicide Squad, but doing so would be arguably pointless at this point with everything it and WB Games Montreal have created for its future, with or without a Batman.
Rocksteady’s Arkham Games Have Created a Universe That Deserves to Be Preserved
Batman was always the leading protagonist of the Arkham games, but Bruce Wayne’s pillar of emotionless justice was hardly ever the most exciting or mesmeric element of Rocksteady's entries. Kevin Conroy portrayed Batman as wonderfully as ever, but his unwavering stoicism gave way for each supervillain he encountered to be much more animated and grandiose as a result, perhaps even purposefully. This is likely why supervillains throughout the Arkhamverse were so memorable, particularly given the fact that some appear frequently and their development from one installment to another was always interesting to dissect.
Seeing how the Riddler always rose to the infuriating challenge of outwitting Batman is enough reason to play through the franchise chronologically, for example, and seeing how Harley Quinn responds to the Joker’s death in City’s DLC and Knight is a great distinction for her character. Harley will now be a primary protagonist in Suicide Squad and that’s entirely exciting seeing as how she appeared in all three of Rocksteady’s Arkham games beforehand.
If Task Force X and its potential permutations are to be the new mascot of the franchise moving forward, it already has a fantastic foundation to build from whether Bat Family members appear as antagonists or not. That allows the Arkhamverse to flourish as long as Rocksteady continues to develop entertaining characters for it.
Rocksteady Still Can’t Be Afraid to Kill Its Justice League
That said, even though the Arkhamverse itself should be allowed to go on, Rocksteady has made its bed with the expectations of Suicide Squad’s subtitle. The premise of being able to kill the Justice League, whether it’s an action forced upon the player or not, is one of the four-player action-shooter’s most alluring concepts, and Rocksteady shouldn’t be able to walk it back. There are more than enough ways that Rocksteady could thwart their supposedly necessary deaths, such as having Task Force X defeat Brainiac first and consequently free the League of their mind control, but that would make its narrative fall flat unless something larger or more startling is at play.
The Arkham universe is overwhelmingly popular and there is no reason why Rocksteady couldn’t continue shaping it, but the Justice League isn’t a necessary part of that canon, especially if they hadn’t even been formally addressed or introduced in the Arkhamverse before its sudden appearance in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Either way, while a lot has changed since Knight, Rocksteady would be letting a lot slip through its fingers if it decided not to continue the Arkhamverse after Suicide Squad.
Batman: Arkham Trilogy will launch on Nintendo Switch in fall 2023.