Who Is Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's Mystery Traversal Character?
As Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s playtest took place this weekend, a datamine leak from Miller Ross (who first broke the story that Marvel's Avengers would be shutting down) revealed that a character with a unique style of traversal would be added post-launch. The idea of a post-launch character for Suicide Squad feels risky, given its poor reception so far, and the general distaste for it latching onto a live-service design philosophy long after the bubble has burst, but let's take it with a pinch of salt and speculate about who it could be.
We already know that Killer Croc is coming later, but surely he will move in a similarly crunchy fashion to King Shark. It's also clear that, despite the game's verticality, it's about movement economy, so there's not much chance of it being a flying character. It should also be someone with a fairly recognisable name (Avengers adding two Hawkeyes back to back proved very unpopular), and given we have three dudes - four with Croc - and just Harley for the girls, it will probably be a female character. Add in this note about traversal, and there seems to be two clear contenders: Killer Frost or Poison Ivy.
Both have been part of the Suicide Squad before, but then, who hasn't? Ivy was a member in its first official comic book run that spanned 1987-1992, while Killer Frost was in the Interim editions that ran from 1992-2000 and 2004-2008, as well as the second official run in between these in 2001-2002. Killer Frost reappeared in the fifth run from 2016-2019, and is in the Squad in the DC Animated Movie Universe, along with the four main characters of Kill the Justice League, although not Killer Croc. Frost also featured alongside Harley in the Task Force XX run.
So Killer Frost is significantly more linked to Suicide Squad as a whole, but Ivy is more famous and, thanks in large parts to The Harley Quinn Show canonising it beyond the comics, has far stronger links to Harley Quinn, who is without a doubt Suicide Squad's box office character. It's unclear when these post-release decisions were made, and planning for content you intend to sell to loyal players after launch (or at the very least made ahead of time to entice continued battle pass grinding) while delaying the main game several times is not a tactic that endears players, so we'll likely never know.
According to Comic Vine, a total of 316 characters have appeared in Suicide Squad comics over the years, leaving a large roster to choose from.
In any case, it feels as though both characters would be very similar. We know height is very important to Kill the Justice League, and that so far all of the characters have some kind of tool that gives them the ability to traverse across large spaces and gaps. Taking all the wrong lessons from Batman: Arkham, Rocksteady have kept the height of those games, but with four characters with neither the means nor the need to utilise it. Some generic justification will be cooked up, but it will be backwards - the justification only exists to allow the game to be designed that way, rather than a crucial plot point forcing the devs into a design choice.
The scene of the gang getting various equipment from the Hall of Justice (clearly meant to be a surprise now spilled in a desperate attempt to drum up good press) is cool, but again, backwards - it exists to give Harley Quinn the ability to hang ten. Poison Ivy's ability to create climbable vines or cast twisting paths in front of her like Tarzan (and Killer Frost doing the same with icy spines and sheets) would give the game a sense of fluidity and wouldn't need a backwards justification to be cooked up after the fact. Aside from 'where were you at the start of the game?' it would make perfect sense for Killer Frost to cast icy rays to transport herself.
Whether Kill the Justice League survives long enough for post-launch characters to matter much looks unlikely right now, but I will admit that a game integrating Killer Frost and her movement is intriguing. It could turn out to be someone far more boring like Rick Flagg and that famous yellow tee of his, but Killer Frost would at least get me to dive back into a game that I assume I will long have grown bored of by the time she arrives.
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PostsSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
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