DC has been on an upswing ever since it brought on James Gunn to write and direct its movies and TV shows. Gunn, whose prolific writing substantially improved the MCU with his Guardians of the Galaxy, is solo-carrying DC at the moment, but who's saving its games?
DC's film and television branches have been only going up lately. Gunn's transfer from Marvel to the competition surely did the job, with The Suicide Squad, Superman, and Peacemaker standing out with their overall quality, especially when it comes to writing.
Superhero movies have this great tendency of falling into unsubtle, exposition- and plot-driven scripting that ends up cringe and boring (see: MCU post-Infinity War). Political pandering, done merely to promote the current thing, was another issue of the broader superhero world, and Gunn brought much-needed depth and subtlety to political themes, which the genre is perfect for.
Characters have been significantly expanded upon, even if they aren't the biggest names from the comics; relations between said characters are incredible, realistic, and undeterred by the otherwise over-the-top comic book genre; the adaptations are a lot more faithful to the source material, and so on. Gunn brought a lot to the table, elevating DC's small and silver screens to a new degree, though not without the help of Matt Reeves' The Batman and The Penguin.
While Marvel is going down the drain in the same fields, it's substantially growing in the video game market, with titles dropping left and right, to greater or lesser success. Marvel Rivals in particular is proving quite the force, while Insomniac's games are downright masterpieces.
DC, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen. Following the massive flop of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, the franchise has been totally absent from the current video game zeitgeist. We have rumors and whispers here and there, but haven't really had a great DC hit since Rocksteady's Arkham series, the last of which dropped 10 years ago.
Rocksteady also developed KTJL, which reportedly lost Warner Bros. hundreds of millions of dollars, which is bound to deter further ventures into that part of its network, at least to some degree. A LEGO Batman game is on the way, but I consider that to be part of the LEGO franchise rather than DC, since it has its own versions of various series, characters, locations.
Even what we do have or are rumored to get from the DC gaming division is tied to popular heroes or close to them, like Batman or Superman, and rarely taps into a unique, unexplored part of the comic books. Hell, I'd say stick to the big ones but give us a different take on them, much like how Arkham did, or how the movies are now exploring Batman, the Suicide Squad, etc.
There is so much potential in there, but for whatever reason, it remains unused.
So, since the movies and shows have gotten Gunn and Reeves, someone really needs to step up and save DC's games. I'm certain many notable designers would love to work on a project in this franchise, especially if they were given the creative freedom to tackle new themes, worlds, and characters in it.
Otherwise, I fear Warner Bros. will run itself into the ground, blaming eventually the gamers or the unseen hand of the market instead of its upper echelon who keeps, for no reason, making poor decisions regarding DC's gaming branch.
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The post DC films are flying high with James Gunn, while its games still need rescuing appeared first on Destructoid.
