Batman's thesis stated as the game's organizing principle — the insistence on maintaining the restraints that distinguish the hero from the threat, even when those restraints make winning harder. The game keeps testing this. Brainiac is collecting worlds. Superman is offering a solution that requires breaking the code. The alternative is losing, just more slowly.

You lose slower is not defeatism. It is the recognition that the code is not separate from the winning — that winning by becoming the thing you fought is not winning, that the slowness of the principled path is part of its definition. Batman has spent the entire franchise losing slower, and the franchise keeps arguing that this is the only losing worth choosing.