We now have some surprisingly graphic descriptions of the level of violence that you can expect in the upcoming Rocksteady Studios’ action game Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.
This description comes from Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), the part of the Singaporean government that gives ratings for movies and video games.
The IMDA classified Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League as M18 for strong violence.
We will quote the said description of violence from the IMDA website below. Of course, content warnings for violence and spoilers follow.
“Some of the areas in the city are strewn with corpses, some of which have missing limbs. These corpses cannot be interacted with. Splatters of purple fluid are frequently seen when enemies receive damage. Blood briefly stains the edges of the screen when the player character receives damage. The story scenes contain some depictions of violence which are tinged with dark humour, such as scenes implying a character’s finger being severed and subsequent jokes made about the severed finger. Other scenes contain stronger depictions, such as a character with a blade impaled in the neck, another’s heart being ripped out, and a man being decapitated with blood spurting out of the neck stump. Overall, these depictions would be more appropriate under a M18 rating where the Classification Guidelines allow “depictions of realistic violence, such as killing, maiming or causing other serious injury to humanoid characters.”
If you are wondering what this level of violence is doing in a video game starring Superman, well, 1979 was a long time ago.
Of course, a modern fighting game franchise, Injustice, has already explored the idea of Superman going rogue, but in general, the DC Universe has been opened up to depictions where the heroes face or themselves perpetrate scenes of graphic violence, or otherwise are placed in adult situations. To some degree, it can be traced to the editorial direction of DC Comics for more mature content all the way back in the 1980s, but in the last two decades, Warner Bros has given creators free reign to create more of these scenarios for DC characters, both in the comics, and also in the DC animated features, many of which base their storylines directly or are inspired by comic book stories. The Arkham video games themselves take inspiration from the 1989 graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.
But this seriously unwholesome direction is just in line with a franchise like the Suicide Squad. The Suicide Squad as we know it debuted in the comic book Legends from 1987, with the express purpose of giving writers carte blanche to use DC’s menagerie of villains in new stories, even allowing them to kill many of those villains off.
Gotham Knights may have been disappointing to many players, but that game’s message of camaraderie and staying together seems like it will be way more likable and relatable than what Rocksteady has waiting for us with this game.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League will be releasing on 2023 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
