Dear Reader:
Now Suda says NA version of No More Heroes is closest to his original vision, and talks the future of Travis
A portion of a Next-Gen interview with Suda51
NG: In the action part of the game, the moment when Travis finishes his adversaries is quite bloody in the American version. Was that always OK with Nintendo?
S51: Indeed it was. But it’s an important point that the game is different in different territories. The Japanese and European versions have no blood and you simply kill those enemies. The US version is the closest to my initial vision of the game. The issue of having blood spilt is an interesting one. Today’s technology makes a very realistic visual experience possible, so does that mean blood has to be sprayed all around? I’m not sure. There is, in terms of videogames, almost a natural absence of blood: you kill an enemy and that’s all.
The opposite we’re now seeing, without going into too high a level of photorealism, is that you may feel the need to show blood on the screen to serve the action. Now, if you decide that action games as a whole can’t have blood on screen, from a user’s point of view that may make a particular game look quite unrealistic and actually harm the experience you are trying to deliver. It is still too early to see if the issues of graphic violence and blood are important because, in terms of fidelity, they are new – or if we’ll become accustomed to these sights as natural as technologies and minds move on. But I think that perhaps the bigger issue is shielding people from any form of violence.
NG: With all the talent involved in this project, do you feel Travis and his world will go on to other adventures in the future, or new horizons beyond videogames?
S51: We had tremendous support from [publisher] Marvelous when we first presented the idea. It is in part because of the talent of the artists we worked with who created very charismatic designs. I really would like Travis to exist beyond No More Heroes for the Wii. When I first imagined this world, I thought it could be expanded, and when you finish the game you’ll hopefully feel that too. So, if we have the chance, perhaps this might become Grasshopper’s first expanding IP.