Now that No More Heroes III has been out for a bit, fans are already asking if we’ll see more of Travis Touchdown. Game director Suda51 says No More Heroes is over, at least for now.
“For now the No More Heroes series has come to an end,” Suda said in an interview with Destructoid. “The reason for that is Grasshopper only owns part of the rights to the IP for No More Heroes. The majority of it is owned by Marvelous.”
He added, “For the past five years or so they’ve basically lent us the IP. They said ‘ok here you can make these games that you’ve been wanting to make, go ahead and do what you want. That’s how Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes III came about.”
In regards to the standard polarized reception the series is known for returning in No More Heroes III, Suda confirmed this decision was made even before they started development. Our own review noted while the game is excellent for fans, it has too much cut to make up for the Switch’s hardware.
“After five years of borrowing the IP and having the freedom to make the last two games how we wanted, it’s time to give it back. I felt that it would be a good cutoff point. I made the decision before actually starting up development,” he said.
Despite the story in No More Heroes jumping around quite a bit between the first two games, Travis Strikes Again, and now No More Heroes III, Suda is firm with this being the end of Travis’ story.
“Throughout development it was in the back of my head ‘this is going to be the end of No More Heroes. This is going to be the final installment in Travis’ story.’ So that’s something that kept pecking at me while I was writing the game.”
Suda left this subject with a slight tease as we never know what could happen in the future – perhaps we’ll get a new spinoff, another sequel, or something else.
“For now, I just felt that for now it’s time to put an end to the story, at least for the time being. Who knows what’ll happen in the future,” Suda said.
Lastly, the subject of Shadows of the Damned was brought up and if Grasshopper has the rights to the game, as well as numerous characters featured in their games.
“Pretty much all of the characters you mentioned. Shadows of the Damned, that’s our game, we own the rights to that,” Suda said.
He added, “As far as the possibility of those characters popping out in some game in the future? That’s definitely a possibility. I would definitely like to revisit some of them, maybe do a couple new things with some of them at some point in the future. Maybe a brand new IP, maybe a redo of an existing IP.”
What kind of new game would you like to see from Goichi Suda and his team at Grasshopper Manufacture next? A Shadows of the Damned sequel? Maybe some kind of mashup with characters from his various games? Sound off in the comments below!
