Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League has dropped its gameplay launch trailer. I’ll embed it below, and then we can come back and talk about it.
If you didn’t know it was a four-player live-service multiplayer game, you’d have a really hard time telling, wouldn’t you? The trailer seems to go out of its way to avoid tipping the viewer off about what kind of game they’re actually in for here. The trailer even avoids instances of heroes actually landing hits, meaning none of the live-service damage numbers we’ve seen in other trailers and preview gameplay appear on-screen.
The only time the trailer comes close to admitting its multiplayer component is the tagline at the end: ‘Grab Your Squad. Do the impossible. Save the world.’ That’s what we call a bit of plausible deniability. If anyone gets upset, WB Games can point to that graphic and say, ‘Technically, we did tell the audience it was multiplayer. Right here.’
Even the language in the press release accompanying the trailer deftly weaves around the term ‘live service. ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is an original genre-defying third-person action-shooter developed by Rocksteady Studios.’ Genre-defying. You can’t put a label on it, gang, because it defies genres. Even though the press release then defines the game as a third-person action-shooter in the next four words.
It’s disheartening to see the marketing for this game still trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes. I get it — after the response to that first gameplay trailer, it appears WB Games realised it might have put its foot in it. Everything it produces around it now is in an effort to preserve preorders and get some sales on the board. But this trailer doesn’t tell people the complete truth about the product. It cherry-picks the bits you think they’ll like and leaves the rest to become an unpleasant surprise on launch day. You have got to be better than that.
Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League is out on PlayStation, Xbox and PC platforms in early February.
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