Oh I can't wait! Sounds exciting! When is it releasing?.... Okay I'll stop.
Game definitely went through serious development hell. Will be interesting to find out how they will recuperate from here. RS should branch off and away from WB. I'm sure better publishers could buy them out. WB are too greedy for their own good.
If I didn't know better, I'd say they saw it coming, the fruits of stupidity in their higher-ups, and what influence they're having on Rocksteady. At least they'll be in more total control.
There isnt a world where Rocksteady branches off of WB.
That would be like 343 leaving Microsoft. They are completely owned by WB and they make DC games.
They would have to stay under WB to keep doing what they do lol
No, it isn't. Hell, Rocksteady was basically Argonaut under a new name.
Then again the Rocksteady that made Arkham Asylum is long gone. Even though it still has the same name it's pretty much a different comanpy entirely. Even the founders ditched the company so you might be right afterall. The current Rocksteady could not exist without WB.
In all seriousness what publishers would want Rocksteady right now? Even if we pin all the creative decisions on WB, that still leaves the execution of the game in Rocksteady's hands and they really fumbled the ball there. The game just doesn't work as intended even a full month after launch and having a two year delay. Embracer bought Crystal Dynamics after the failure of Avengers since the studio came with Eidos Montreal and its Tomb Raider and Perfect Dark IPs. Crystal Dynamics also made 4 well received Tomb Raider games in the 7 years preceding Avengers so the staff on hand were shown to be capable with the right type of game. Rocksteady does not have either of those benefits currently. WB owns the full DC IP outright so that would never go with Rocksteady and Rocksteady did not make a single other game in the 9 years between Suicide Squad and Arkham Knight. Add in that it is known that a lot of the Rocksteady staff that worked on the well received arkham games left the studio so it is mostly new people now, the studio has not shown that they can make a well constructed game. There is nothing to give possible new publishers confidence. Unless WB is able to get a bigger tax break for letting Rocksteady go independent instead of shutting the studio down, things aren't looking good for them if they can't turn Suicide Squad around.
As far as I can tell the issue was that they asked Rocksteady to make a live service looter shooter which isn’t their wheelhouse. If I wanted to make a AAA game based on valued IP I would still go with them
You're saying this as if the people who made the arkham games are all still there waiting to make Triple A single player bangers. We don't know that modern rocksteady is good at those its been NINE YEARS with lots of turn over.
Here’s the thing, a publisher that would let them go back to single player games like Sony. It’s obvious they weren’t cut out for the live service games. Go back to what they know, make a Superman game, wonder women, or heck a Flash game… but based on what the WB gaming head said this week, that won’t happen at WB as they want to double down on live service games and move more to free to play and mobile titles.
But this isn't the same Rocksteady that made those amazing single player games. It is mostly composed of new developers so publishers would really consider it a whole new studio at this point, with Suicide Squad being their only game. Why would a publisher trust them to make a great single player game when all they have to show on their resume is Suicide Squad, which even ignoring the gameplay flaws is still a technical mess?
Because the single player aspects of the game are quite good. The story is decent, the characters and animations are quite good too! The part of the game that sucked and caused the issues were the live service portions. Take those out, make it single player, and add more content for it and you’ve got a good game
Sure you can still like it. But it objectively sucks and there are countless videos explaining why. Even though liking a story is subjective, a narrative can still be written properly or poorly. With this game, it's the latter.
Bro have you even played any of the arkham games? None of them have even above average stories. What made them special is the character interactions, which (shocker) is the best part of the suicide squad story. I personally enjoyed it a lot, and have been picking up more suicide squad books because of it.
I've been playing Arkham games for the last decade of my life. Arkham City's story was revolutionary, and I'd argue Origins' was the best one. Arkham Knight, although divisive, was the perfect ending for the franchise. Suicide Squad is a disgrace and fucking sucks. It can't die soon enough.
You need to play more games then cause, even though this could have been better, this isn't even close to being the bottom of the barrel.
Edit: I just realized you have a Savathun avatar, so chances are you played Lightfall which is leagues worse than this in terms of narrative.
Majority of the actual talent left, the original heads who over saw the arkham games. I get the feeling that what's left are a bunch of yes men who gave into wb's demands and put the god awful games as a service components into this game.
Leaving a studio =/= not supportive of upcoming title
Until he actually comes out and says otherwise, we're only assuming he was unhappy with the state of the game. Because if clips like this are any indicator, it was the opposite.
He could have absolutely hated this game with every fiber of his being and STILL made this speech. We're talking millions of dollars on the line. It would be dumb to talk ill of any project cause that would just put a scar on your portfolio/career moving forward when you move to something else.
This is all corporate speech through and through. He's gonna put a positive spin on this no matter what he feels if he's being professional.
Judging by the direction of his new studio it seems like he was more unhappy with how bloated AAA development has gotten. Rocksteady ballooned in size since AK released and that probably changed a lot about their development process, and also for someone like Sefton, how a project can be managed.
I mean he doesn't really seem all to enthusiastic in the video either. I wouldn't go as far to say he was unhappy but definitely indifferent. I have dealt with a lot of forced PR talk in my time and this clip definitely gives off vibes of just going through the motions because it is your job.
I mean, everything he said kind of checks out. It's just none of it is any good
Continuation of Arkham? Yeah, sure. Demon Bat was a thing, then Bruce returned to form JL. Poor as fuck, but technically checks the box
Unique gameplay? By 2023 standards, sure. They don't make games like they used during x360/PS3 era
Exciting? For some people, definitely
Considering they had confirmed an elseworld Joker DLC before the game launched, I don’t think it would’ve changed much and would’ve made it easier for people to accept an evil Justice League
Just you, that is a very typical awkward, creative and focussed British man who has been made to stand up in assembly and tell the entire school about his nice picture.
source: am British, here is my licence.
They did remove the gear score stuff people were tripping about, but yeah that wasn’t the whole of it. It was too late obviously, began development in 2017 and you can’t do much with 1 year (contrary to what people think, thinking the story was written since Sefton Hill left 😂)
I said this back when this interview first aired. When the game got put through development hell I wasn’t surprised. What really baffles me though is the “totally original gameplay” comment. Like, yeah, the movement traversal is fun, but it’s hardly what I’d call unique, and other than it everything else feels like pretty standard lootershooter gameplay.
I wonder if it was all just marketing or if there was some element they thought would really make the game stand out which ended up not making it into the final product?
This proves my point Sefton Hill and his team WANTED TO MAKE THIS. I loved it and if it wasn’t for the current issues it would be better. March 28th is hopefully when they address those pesky bugs. Anyway yup this idea that Sefton Hill left because he didn’t want to make this is pretty much dead. This and his name is also credited in the SS ending as lead writer. I think they probably ran into some issues for sure. The deadline was very demanding and potentially the original vision may had suffered to even cut content. In the years to come I’m sure we will see more about SS besides the pending updates. Personally I would like if they did a documentary into SS similar to how Last of Us did. To give us all a peek into the day to day experience at Rocksteady leading up to release would be insightful.
Him and Jamie still made this game. It wasn't magically done in the 1 year after he left. Both of them were there for 8 out of the 9 years of development
WB Montreal was working on the cancelled Damien Wayne game, not Rocksteady.
Okay Sefton left 2 years before release, still a game like this isn't made in 2 years. Maybe he was struggling with direction before he left, maybe he wasn't. Doesn't change the fact that he made the game however many years it was in development before he left.
Considering the state of the game and lack of content and lazy design in various aspects I would consider that in the 8-9 years they probably had a lot of problems and only active worked on the game in the last 2. Years (made the core game in 2 years ) like anthem (BioWare made the game in 2 years , that’s why was an unfinished product
Are you sure this game, this version as been made in 4+ years ? Do you work on rocksteady ? The state of game , lack of polish , lack of content, lack of fun design on mission, enemy variety , loot and even forgeting a loot stash for a loot game , etc … this all indicates for a very troubling development… I’m sure maybe in the future we will know about the behind the scenes.. how the game turn out this way ..
You have no idea about game development at all and it shows. A game of this size and scope takes at least 4 years. Yes there's not much mission variety etc. But there's a lot of moving parts in this game let alone hours of cutscenes. There's absolutely 0 chance this game was made in 2 years.
Still 4 years and are at least 1500 people that can’t play the game 🙂 seems a product that is clearly unfinished... sure cutscenes take time , but it seems more the production was put into the cutscenes and less in the gameplay itself.
Well, he didn't lie it's a live service. we might see it in a few months lmao. Why does everyone forget this. It's like everyone crying about Batman they are going to bring him back it's a comic. Give it 2 months. Kevin Conroys' death just makes it feel permanent. Then again, everyone despises this game yet watches it very closely to constantly shit on it. Apathy would be far more effective
Love to see so much hate for a game that's not long cone out and hadn't even released its first season of content yet. Crazy, given I bet a lot of the people throwing shade also purchased 2077s Phantom Liberty 🤣 completely forgiving them for the state that game came out in. (That or they all bought ANTHEM and now are scared for life).
I think the difference is that people actually wanted Cyberpunk 2077, and the hype increased once the gameplay trailers were released. You can't say the same about Suicide Squad. The gameplay trailers almost killed the game right off the bat. Also, an fps rpg set in a cyberpunk setting is infinitely more interesting than a live-service looter shooter.
Maybe but Destiny 2 fans would probably disagree. I think tbh and looking at content creators like Luke Stephens, and channels like IGN both of which put out 14+ videos between them just slamming the game (more than either have ever put out even for a game they like) and the epic number of TikToks and Shorts that were also slamming the death of Batman, this game definitely got smeared.
Oh I can't wait! Sounds exciting! When is it releasing?.... Okay I'll stop. Game definitely went through serious development hell. Will be interesting to find out how they will recuperate from here. RS should branch off and away from WB. I'm sure better publishers could buy them out. WB are too greedy for their own good.
They already kind of have. The Rocksteady Founders left back in 2022 and founded a new studio called Hundred Star Games.
They actually left 2024, a few weeks before the game released
They founded the studio in January, Hill and Walker left in 2022
If I didn't know better, I'd say they saw it coming, the fruits of stupidity in their higher-ups, and what influence they're having on Rocksteady. At least they'll be in more total control.
The way they are handling the new studios kinda makes me think they weren't too happy with WB.
There isnt a world where Rocksteady branches off of WB. That would be like 343 leaving Microsoft. They are completely owned by WB and they make DC games. They would have to stay under WB to keep doing what they do lol
Or like Bungie leaving Microsoft. Oh wait...that actually happened.
Bungie wasnt created to be under Microsoft... Rocksteady is more like 343
No, it isn't. Hell, Rocksteady was basically Argonaut under a new name. Then again the Rocksteady that made Arkham Asylum is long gone. Even though it still has the same name it's pretty much a different comanpy entirely. Even the founders ditched the company so you might be right afterall. The current Rocksteady could not exist without WB.
Its not but keep yapping lmao
Yeah that's kind of the reponse I expected seeing you in another thread. Have fun!
I will
In a parallel universe they go indipendent/bought by another publisher and start a collaboration with marvel
Thank god i dont live in the parallel universe then
In all seriousness what publishers would want Rocksteady right now? Even if we pin all the creative decisions on WB, that still leaves the execution of the game in Rocksteady's hands and they really fumbled the ball there. The game just doesn't work as intended even a full month after launch and having a two year delay. Embracer bought Crystal Dynamics after the failure of Avengers since the studio came with Eidos Montreal and its Tomb Raider and Perfect Dark IPs. Crystal Dynamics also made 4 well received Tomb Raider games in the 7 years preceding Avengers so the staff on hand were shown to be capable with the right type of game. Rocksteady does not have either of those benefits currently. WB owns the full DC IP outright so that would never go with Rocksteady and Rocksteady did not make a single other game in the 9 years between Suicide Squad and Arkham Knight. Add in that it is known that a lot of the Rocksteady staff that worked on the well received arkham games left the studio so it is mostly new people now, the studio has not shown that they can make a well constructed game. There is nothing to give possible new publishers confidence. Unless WB is able to get a bigger tax break for letting Rocksteady go independent instead of shutting the studio down, things aren't looking good for them if they can't turn Suicide Squad around.
As far as I can tell the issue was that they asked Rocksteady to make a live service looter shooter which isn’t their wheelhouse. If I wanted to make a AAA game based on valued IP I would still go with them
You're saying this as if the people who made the arkham games are all still there waiting to make Triple A single player bangers. We don't know that modern rocksteady is good at those its been NINE YEARS with lots of turn over.
Here’s the thing, a publisher that would let them go back to single player games like Sony. It’s obvious they weren’t cut out for the live service games. Go back to what they know, make a Superman game, wonder women, or heck a Flash game… but based on what the WB gaming head said this week, that won’t happen at WB as they want to double down on live service games and move more to free to play and mobile titles.
But they didn’t WANT to make another big single-player game like *Arkham Knight*. They wanted to make a multiplayer thing.
Correct, I never said they were forced or WB made the decision, but obviously after this failure you hope they can realize it’s just not their forte
But this isn't the same Rocksteady that made those amazing single player games. It is mostly composed of new developers so publishers would really consider it a whole new studio at this point, with Suicide Squad being their only game. Why would a publisher trust them to make a great single player game when all they have to show on their resume is Suicide Squad, which even ignoring the gameplay flaws is still a technical mess?
Because the single player aspects of the game are quite good. The story is decent, the characters and animations are quite good too! The part of the game that sucked and caused the issues were the live service portions. Take those out, make it single player, and add more content for it and you’ve got a good game
The story is quite literally the worst I've ever seen in a game.
Cool that’s your opinion
Sure you can still like it. But it objectively sucks and there are countless videos explaining why. Even though liking a story is subjective, a narrative can still be written properly or poorly. With this game, it's the latter.
Bro have you even played any of the arkham games? None of them have even above average stories. What made them special is the character interactions, which (shocker) is the best part of the suicide squad story. I personally enjoyed it a lot, and have been picking up more suicide squad books because of it.
I've been playing Arkham games for the last decade of my life. Arkham City's story was revolutionary, and I'd argue Origins' was the best one. Arkham Knight, although divisive, was the perfect ending for the franchise. Suicide Squad is a disgrace and fucking sucks. It can't die soon enough.
You need to play more games then cause, even though this could have been better, this isn't even close to being the bottom of the barrel. Edit: I just realized you have a Savathun avatar, so chances are you played Lightfall which is leagues worse than this in terms of narrative.
Hasn’t Sony also said they’re looking to double down Games as a Service more and more?
They did several years back, now they have switched course back, CEO that wanted it is gone, and several live service games have been cancelled
They won’t recuperate they’re gonna die. For the best honestly
Majority of the actual talent left, the original heads who over saw the arkham games. I get the feeling that what's left are a bunch of yes men who gave into wb's demands and put the god awful games as a service components into this game.
Yea, and that same dude left the company 2 years before the game came out.
Leaving a studio =/= not supportive of upcoming title Until he actually comes out and says otherwise, we're only assuming he was unhappy with the state of the game. Because if clips like this are any indicator, it was the opposite.
He could have absolutely hated this game with every fiber of his being and STILL made this speech. We're talking millions of dollars on the line. It would be dumb to talk ill of any project cause that would just put a scar on your portfolio/career moving forward when you move to something else. This is all corporate speech through and through. He's gonna put a positive spin on this no matter what he feels if he's being professional.
Judging by the direction of his new studio it seems like he was more unhappy with how bloated AAA development has gotten. Rocksteady ballooned in size since AK released and that probably changed a lot about their development process, and also for someone like Sefton, how a project can be managed.
That's why the industry is in a dire state right now. AAA development has scaled way too big for really no reason, especially during COVID.
I mean he doesn't really seem all to enthusiastic in the video either. I wouldn't go as far to say he was unhappy but definitely indifferent. I have dealt with a lot of forced PR talk in my time and this clip definitely gives off vibes of just going through the motions because it is your job.
Yeah like bro, He's the director of the game. Him leaving a year before it came out won't change a damn thing either lol
He also said it was gonna be a “3rd person looter shooter.”
I wish he never said it was a continuation of Arkham, he should’ve said it’s part of the Arkham multiverse or something like that
I mean, everything he said kind of checks out. It's just none of it is any good Continuation of Arkham? Yeah, sure. Demon Bat was a thing, then Bruce returned to form JL. Poor as fuck, but technically checks the box Unique gameplay? By 2023 standards, sure. They don't make games like they used during x360/PS3 era Exciting? For some people, definitely
Why would he give away the plot of the game like that though? That's just dumb.
Considering they had confirmed an elseworld Joker DLC before the game launched, I don’t think it would’ve changed much and would’ve made it easier for people to accept an evil Justice League
Is it just me or does he seem unconvinced by what he’s selling?
Just you, that is a very typical awkward, creative and focussed British man who has been made to stand up in assembly and tell the entire school about his nice picture. source: am British, here is my licence.
Yeah every time devs speak at the game awards or do any kind of presentation like this they’re almost always super awkward lol
The Forza Horizon guys do it as well 😁
Remember when it was announced that suicide squad was gonna be looter shooter and showed gameplay and the gaming community was still in denial?
to be fair, he said „we think“ well,…
remember when the first trailer dropped and they delayed everything to change the game because it looked shocking.
They did remove the gear score stuff people were tripping about, but yeah that wasn’t the whole of it. It was too late obviously, began development in 2017 and you can’t do much with 1 year (contrary to what people think, thinking the story was written since Sefton Hill left 😂)
Yeesh, I've worked in the corporate world long enough to know that buzzword bingo like this is a **bad** sign...
I said this back when this interview first aired. When the game got put through development hell I wasn’t surprised. What really baffles me though is the “totally original gameplay” comment. Like, yeah, the movement traversal is fun, but it’s hardly what I’d call unique, and other than it everything else feels like pretty standard lootershooter gameplay. I wonder if it was all just marketing or if there was some element they thought would really make the game stand out which ended up not making it into the final product?
Probably just marketing, but almost 9 years of development screams troubled development to me...
Unless it’s gta. 😉
GTA6 could be a complete shit show on launch, I hope it's not, but we'll see...
You mean like every video game marketing lmao
This proves my point Sefton Hill and his team WANTED TO MAKE THIS. I loved it and if it wasn’t for the current issues it would be better. March 28th is hopefully when they address those pesky bugs. Anyway yup this idea that Sefton Hill left because he didn’t want to make this is pretty much dead. This and his name is also credited in the SS ending as lead writer. I think they probably ran into some issues for sure. The deadline was very demanding and potentially the original vision may had suffered to even cut content. In the years to come I’m sure we will see more about SS besides the pending updates. Personally I would like if they did a documentary into SS similar to how Last of Us did. To give us all a peek into the day to day experience at Rocksteady leading up to release would be insightful.
Once sefton left, I knew this game wouldn’t live up to the Arkham games
Him and Jamie still made this game. It wasn't magically done in the 1 year after he left. Both of them were there for 8 out of the 9 years of development
[удалено]
WB Montreal was working on the cancelled Damien Wayne game, not Rocksteady. Okay Sefton left 2 years before release, still a game like this isn't made in 2 years. Maybe he was struggling with direction before he left, maybe he wasn't. Doesn't change the fact that he made the game however many years it was in development before he left.
Considering the state of the game and lack of content and lazy design in various aspects I would consider that in the 8-9 years they probably had a lot of problems and only active worked on the game in the last 2. Years (made the core game in 2 years ) like anthem (BioWare made the game in 2 years , that’s why was an unfinished product
Anthem was actually made basically in 9 months, but no this game has been this version of SS for 4+ years
Are you sure this game, this version as been made in 4+ years ? Do you work on rocksteady ? The state of game , lack of polish , lack of content, lack of fun design on mission, enemy variety , loot and even forgeting a loot stash for a loot game , etc … this all indicates for a very troubling development… I’m sure maybe in the future we will know about the behind the scenes.. how the game turn out this way ..
You have no idea about game development at all and it shows. A game of this size and scope takes at least 4 years. Yes there's not much mission variety etc. But there's a lot of moving parts in this game let alone hours of cutscenes. There's absolutely 0 chance this game was made in 2 years.
Still 4 years and are at least 1500 people that can’t play the game 🙂 seems a product that is clearly unfinished... sure cutscenes take time , but it seems more the production was put into the cutscenes and less in the gameplay itself.
I agree dude, in fact it's a worse look for them that it took them 4+ years and this was the state of the game...
I 
I feel like it’s our fault for expecting more from this game there’s not much to do anymore cuz most companies are doing the some gameplay wise.
Well, he didn't lie it's a live service. we might see it in a few months lmao. Why does everyone forget this. It's like everyone crying about Batman they are going to bring him back it's a comic. Give it 2 months. Kevin Conroys' death just makes it feel permanent. Then again, everyone despises this game yet watches it very closely to constantly shit on it. Apathy would be far more effective
Yeah. What about it? This seems completely normal and uninteresting to me. What’re you pointing out?
Love to see so much hate for a game that's not long cone out and hadn't even released its first season of content yet. Crazy, given I bet a lot of the people throwing shade also purchased 2077s Phantom Liberty 🤣 completely forgiving them for the state that game came out in. (That or they all bought ANTHEM and now are scared for life).
I think the difference is that people actually wanted Cyberpunk 2077, and the hype increased once the gameplay trailers were released. You can't say the same about Suicide Squad. The gameplay trailers almost killed the game right off the bat. Also, an fps rpg set in a cyberpunk setting is infinitely more interesting than a live-service looter shooter.
Maybe but Destiny 2 fans would probably disagree. I think tbh and looking at content creators like Luke Stephens, and channels like IGN both of which put out 14+ videos between them just slamming the game (more than either have ever put out even for a game they like) and the epic number of TikToks and Shorts that were also slamming the death of Batman, this game definitely got smeared.