After a few weeks of teases, developer Rocksteady Games announced Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League during a panel at DC FanDome. The Lego Batman Movie actor Will Arnett hosted the reveal on Saturday which consisted of a pre-rendered trailer and a Suicide Squad “interview” with Arnett.
In the trailer, Rocksteady showed off a bunch of characters that’ll appear in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, including Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Boomerang, and King Shark. Also, evil Superman appears in the sky and blasts a pilot to bits. Of course, that’s because the Suicide Squad has to ... kill the Justice League. The trailer shows a decimated Metropolis, seemingly overtaken by a big bad Brainiac.
Publisher Warner Bros. Interactive calls Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad an “action-adventure shooter” with one- to four-player co-op. Sefton Hill, Rocksteady creative director, said players aren’t locked into their particular characters while playing, either — they’ll be able to take over AI-controlled squadmates whenever they’d like. Hill also said the game is a continuation of the Batman Arkham franchise universe.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is expected to arrive in 2022 on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
Rocksteady first teased Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League on Aug. 7, with a movie-style poster posted to Twitter that featured Superman in the crosshairs of the supervillain team. But rumors about Rocksteady working on a Suicide Squad game have been persistent, and were recently fueled by newly discovered domain names. A Eurogamer report seemingly confirmed the Suicide Squad game at the time, alongside a WB Montreal game based on Gotham Knights. WB Montreal’s Batman game, confirmed to be called Gotham Knights, was shown earlier on Saturday at DC FanDome. Coincidentally, Gotham Knights does not star Batman — rather, Red Hood, Batgirl, Nightwing, and Robin were shown.
Rocksteady is best known for its work on the Batman Arkham franchise. The studio’s most recent game in the series, Batman: Arkham Knight, was released in 2015.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’s announcement, however, is mired by accusations of “sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour” at Rocksteady. The Guardian published a report on Aug. 18, detailing accusations made in 2018 by 10 of the 16 women employed by the company during that time. A woman who shared the letter with The Guardian said “she felt people were still suffering from sexism, harassment and inappropriate behaviour at Rocksteady.” Later, former Rocksteady script writer Kim MacAskill, who had signed the letter, discussed the allegations made against the company in a video posted to YouTube. MacAskill publicly asked the developer to “take [her] name off the game,” despite working with Rocksteady for three years.
In response, Rocksteady published an “unsolicited letter” reportedly from seven of the 10 people that originally signed the 2018 letter. (Eight of the 10 people are still at Rocksteady, according to to Rocksteady.) In the letter, the anonymous employees said The Guardian story is not “a fair representation of us, the events at the time or since the letter was received.”
“Throughout all of this, a firm promise has been made that is always an open forum for us to speak out and that issues would be addressed with seriousness,” the anonymous employees wrote.
On Aug. 21, Rocksteady issued an official statement. “Since then, we have introduced new ways of ensuring we are making good on our commitment to inclusion, such as asking all female staff to provide feedback about the portrayal and behaviour of characters in the games we make,” Rocksteady posted to Twitter. “We are dedicated to listening and improving, and have employed specialists to help further enhance equity and representation at Rocksteady.”
