FORMAT PS5 ETA 2 FEB (EARLY ACCESS FROM 30 JAN) PUB WARNER BROS GAMES DEV ROCKSTEADY STUDIOS PLAYERS 1-4
From the superheroic brawling in Batman: Arkham to assembling a gun-toting band of misfits in Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League – studio product director Darius Sadeghian talks getting the band together to retake Metropolis
There’s no denying the phenomenal success of the Arkham games. Since coming out of the gate strong with Batman: Arkham Asylum in 2009, they’ve all been critical and commercial hits, as well as massively influential on the wider industry. (How many of the games that followed aped Arkham’s rhythmic combat and detective vision?) Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League – described as a ‘third-person action shooter’ – is a direct successor, set in the same universe… but what’s making the bat computer beep, whirr, and spit out reams of dot-matrix paper is just how different a beast this new title is shaping up to be.
Gotham City doesn’t feature; instead the action is shifting to the brighter, retro-futuristic Metropolis. You can still smash the teeth out of bad guys, but you can also riddle them with bullets, darting at more of a distance thanks to arenas that encourage traversal rather than standing your ground. Oh, and – of course – you’re not merely playing as reformed supervillains (well, supervillains behaving lest the bombs implanted within them get detonated), you’re facing up to brainwashed superheroes. Everything’s been flipped.
“For us it was really inspiring to explore this universe from another perspective. To see how the villains view the world, and to put them in a position where they’re challenged, tested, and pushed way outside their comfort zones,” says Darius Sadeghian, studio product director. As the Arkham games explored just about every angle possible from Batman’s perspective, this shift feels immediately fresh. “When we pitched the idea to the team there was just so much excitement in the room and it fired everyone’s imagination,” Sadeghian continues. “At that point it became completely irresistible as a concept, and once we started exploring the ways we could extend the gameplay from that core of character and story, the game took on a life of its own.”
KILLER QUINN
The idea for tackling the Suicide Squad in particular came from the initial desire to explore multiplayer gaming within the world Rocksteady had created. “We knew we wanted to make a four-player co-op game, so we spent a lot of time iterating on
