Kill the Justice League Undid the Half About Killing the Justice League

One of many boldest strikes Rocksteady made when it unveiled its Suicide Squad game after years of rumors was its subtitle: this was going to be a sport about you, as gamers, preventing and being pressured to slaughter DC’s best heroes, earlier than Braniac may puppet them into being his personal lethal occupation drive. Then Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League really got here out, and just about nobody was glad. Now, weeks earlier than its first anniversary, the live-service sport goes out with… properly, not likely a bang, and barely even a whimper.

The bottom model of Kill the Justice League climaxed with the loss of life of Superman and Surprise Lady alike, because the titular staff braced themselves for Brainiac’s defeat and the conclusion that there have been dozens upon dozens of alternate realities with their very own Braniacs below risk for them to avoid wasting, establishing the sport’s live-service construction for months to come back. However then Kill the Justice League confronted a important drubbing and dire gross sales, leaving Rocksteady scrambling to supply fixes alongside its deliberate rollout of future content material—content material that got here to an finish this week with the sport’s eighth and last main replace, simply two weeks earlier than the sport would have fun its first anniversary. That will already be not-great if Kill the Justice League caught any form of touchdown, however as an alternative, its last story content material revealed that the entire thing had been form of a pointless hoodwink.

The story content material of this week’s eighth episode ends with the defeat of the ultimate Braniac variant within the multiverse at Taskforce X’s fingers… with a bit further assist from Superman and Batman, who it turned out hadn’t been killed in the course of the occasions of the principle sport. As a substitute, these deaths—which sparked a sea of controversy on the time, when it was believed that Kevin Conroy’s portrayal of Batman in Kill the Justice League can be his last posthumously launched efficiency because the Darkish Knight—had been that of clones.

On the one hand, gamers who really caught round shouldn’t be shocked—earlier updates had seen Harley, Captain Boomerang, King Shark, and Deadshot already liberate Inexperienced Lantern and Flash from Braniac’s clutches after their very own obvious deaths, touring to alternate worlds and placing them in stasis, so the revelation that Batman and Superman had been additionally clones shouldn’t be that shocking. And but, it implies that gamers who’ve stood by Kill the Justice League at its lowest factors have been rewarded with the conclusion that they by no means really acquired to, properly, kill the Justice League. The one casualty by the tip of all that is really Surprise Lady, who had averted Braniac’s thoughts management within the preliminary sport, solely to be killed by (the newly revealed as a clone) Superman.

And so, Suicide Squad ends with Taskforce X and the Justice League going their separate methods: the League staying behind to atone for “their” crimes by monitoring the multiverse to complete off any lingering Braniac threats, and the Suicide Squad, free of Amanda Waller’s embedded explosives, discovering their very own tiny pocket of the multiverse to go have fun and hand around in. However to finish all of it this fashion—an animated slideshow cutscene and an off-the-cuff, flippant rationalization from Harley Quinn by way of voice over that covers the clone reveal in half a line—speaks to simply what a depressing conclusion this all turned out to be, for what was meant to be the long-awaited way forward for the Batman Arkham universe.

At the least there’s some heroes alive now that they’ll all keep it up with, if that future ever arrives?

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