How Suicide Squad Could Use The Nemesis System

Warner Brother’s Interactive Entertainment has a recently patented it’s Nemesis System. A system used to in their Lord Of The Rings Series were orcs have somewhat complex strengths, weaknesses and personalities as they interact with the player. I wrote about how this system is likely to be incorporated in a Batman game sooner or later in the article below.

I focused a lot on how most of the changes would revolve around Batman’s combat being being non-lethal. However a game based on Suicide Squad would not need the same alterations. A Suicide Squad game is set to release in 2022 and so far there is no mention of the Nemesis System but it or a future game could definitely use aspects of the Nemesis System successfully.

Since Suicide Squad is inherently more gruesome than Batman its version of the Nemesis System can be driven by death more similarly to the system in Shadow Of War. Suicide Squad characters can be expendable in a way that members of the bat family are not. So essentially I think a Suicide Squad game featuring a Nemesis System could play out a few different ways depending on which characters the studio is willing to expend.

One option could make all members of the Suicide Squad playable and at risk of death. There could be a massive pool of playable characters from the DC Universe to play as or kill as part of missions. If players die in the game the player they control could be permanently dead. However, even if the ranks are filled out with generic Suicide Squad agents this risks players running out of characters with personality. With that in mind the game may be better off letting the player control a lead like Harley Quinn and her death would reload an earlier checkpoint instead of making it part of the story. However my favourite option would be to protect key playable characters through supernatural elements.

Most versions of the characters Solomon Grundy and Vandal Savage can be killed and reborn so they would fit well somewhere in this hypothetical Suicide Squad game. Yet these powers only heal them so a more practical way to make player deaths count in this hypothetical game is to use the Lazarus pits. Associated with Ras Al Ghul, the Lazarus pits can be used to resurrect the dead. So the game could construct a narrative where Amanda Waller has seized control of the Lazarus pits making her able to bring back her Suicide Squad members from the dead when necessary. This approach would let a small pool of player characters be well developed and interesting, while other villains typically in the Suicide Squad or DC Comics can be saved for enemies that will or could appear as enemies in the Nemesis System.

Within the system many enemies could be existing dc villains but it would likely need some randomly generated arms dealers and metahumans to ensure the system could keep providing the Suicide Squad with targets endlessly if necessary.

Elements from Suicide Squad would also make it easy to closely mimic domination in Shadow Of War’s Nemesis System. Through domination Talion uses supernatural powers to make orcs join him. This could be paralleled in a Suicide Squad game by using explosive collars usually associated with the team. In most versions of Suicide Squad, Waller’s team are mostly villains taking on dangerous mission to reduce their prison sentences and they must be obedient or Waller could kill them by detonating an explosive collar attached to their necks. This could easily be turned into a mechanic where the player character could use collars to recruit new members to the Suicide Squad instead of killing them when the story allows it.