Rocksteady’s Batman games made it fairly easy to get to know villains due to how frequently they appeared. However, a lot of the antagonists players come across are simple-minded, at least from Batman’s perspective. Batman is condescending in how he speaks to and about Harley Quinn, for example, and that is probably the result of only truly getting to see anything from the perspective of the titular crime-fighter. Thankfully, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will now show a starkly opposite perspective that may be more interesting.
Batman: Arkham Knight needed to offer closure to a lot of characters since it was deemed the final Batman game from Rocksteady, and that may be why there is a lot to explain about the current circumstances that are occurring five years later in Kill the Justice League. This closure was brought to some antagonists through their incarceration in Bleake Island’s GCPD Lockup, which also created the game’s most immersive open-world feature and is something that Kill the Justice League would be right to imitate, either in Metropolis or Arkham Asylum.
Batman: Arkham Knight’s GCPD Lockup Makes Crime-Fighting an Immersive Experience
Batman: Arkham Knight’s GCPD Lockup is one of the best additions the franchise ever made. It allows players to apprehend villains in neat boss fights and literally drive them to the GCPD before walking them into their holding cell. These villains are all pooled together for the most part, with the exclusion of some antagonists who require more extreme incarceration parameters, and interact with one another or Batman when he comes to speak with them.
This made sense within the context of the game since Gotham City is finally represented as its own open-world location, as opposed to Arkham Asylum’s institution or Arkham City’s compound, and made completion exciting since players could see the antagonists they worked tirelessly to put behind bars. The fact that there was a progression board featuring how many antagonists were left to put away made that even more gratifying.
Kill the Justice League Should Be an Internal Commentary from the Villains’ Side
Having a GCPD Lockup feature in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League would be incredible for the same reasons as why it was popular in Batman: Arkham Knight. However, it would be even greater to see the dynamic of Task Force X putting these antagonists away.
Task Force X’s common Suicide Squad stories depict the team as ne’er-do-wells that think of themselves as hopeless, but typically seem to find it in themselves to become the good guys anyhow for the sake of the mission. It would be incredible, though, to see Task Force X putting enemies behind bars somewhere in Metropolis and remarking upon them because they are also criminals.
There could be a unique perspective here with how Task Force X is inclined to treat adversaries or villains who they know intimately well, for example, and whether they think of themselves as privileged to be part of ARGUS’ hit squad rather than being behind bars themselves. Harley Quinn has been in and out of Arkham Asylum a handful of times in the Arkhamverse, and that would be fun to see referenced.
Otherwise, it would be great to see an introductory sequence at Arkham Asylum where players can stroll through cell blocks and interact with iconic inmates before they are recruited and transported to Metropolis. This way, Rocksteady could firmly establish that fans are finally playing as the antagonists in the Arkhamverse for once, even if Task Force X's actions are noble or coerced in the narrative.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League releases on February 2, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
