In 2011, the idea of a game from No More Heroes developer Grasshopper Manufacture being published by EA felt like a total odd couple situation. For years before making Shadows of the Damned, director Suda51 had been talking about a survival horror project called Kurayami inspired by the works of Franz Kafka (it was mentioned in a 2006 issue of Edge magazine; that's how far back we're talking). Eventually God Hand (and Resident Evil, I guess) creator Shinji Mikami joined the Kurayami team, and the two embarked on an expansive pitching tour across the US. The game landed at EA, which—to its credit—then had a far more diverse publishing lineup than it does nowadays, but even then Grasshopper was a surprising collaboration.
The survival horror focus took a back seat in the time between signing with EA in 2008 and the release of Shadows of the Damned in 2011. The original concept for the game had the protagonist, Garcia Hotspur, 'basically naked with nothing but that torch as a lantern,' according to Shinji Mikami. The EA shoe would eventually drop.
"In the first online meeting with Mikami and EA they suddenly said 'Why doesn't he have a gun?'" Suda recounted in the recent Grasshopper Direct, later saying, "They told us we 'didn't understand the Western market.'"
Mikami has been far more critical of EA's approach to the game than Suda since 2011, saying in Archipel's documentary series, "We were driven by EA, who told us they liked the original project, but that was a lie." Mikami also said of Suda in an interview with PS Extreme after Shadows of the Damned launched, "I think his heart was broken. He's such a unique creator, so it seems to me that he was not quite comfortable with making this game."
Now, 13 years later, as we approach the release of Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered (without EA's involvement, I might add), I asked Suda51 if his heart is still broken over how the game turned out.
"Back at the time when it first came out, the version of SotD that we got was the sixth and final draft of the game that I'd written," he said. "When it was released, I was indeed somewhat heartbroken by having EA make me rewrite the scenarios I came up with several times."
That trauma has thankfully faded, and Suda still cares for the game; he even brought back Shadows of the Damned as a part of 2019's Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes before this week's release with the Hella Remastered edition. "I want everyone to understand that thinking back on it now, conversely, I actually have a lot of really fond memories of the experience," Suda said. "Thanks for worrying about me though."
Despite EA's publishing edicts transforming Shadows of the Damned from a surreal survival horror to an action game that uses dick jokes as much as it uses ammunition, the spirit of Kurayami did live on in other ways. In 2015, Suda 51 published the manga Kurayami Dance, which adapted some of the ideas he wasn't able to use for Shadows. However, even after that, the story still calls to him:
"There are a handful of ideas from Kurayami that didn't make it into SotD that I'd still like to explore… Hopefully someday I'll get the chance to," he said. Some of the ideas for Kurayami also ended up in Black Knight Sword, a 2012 platformer only playable on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. With its remaster, Shadows of the Damned has escaped the same fate.
Though it's not a remake, the Hella Remastered version of the game has allowed Grasshopper to fulfil a few longstanding ambitions. "We were finally able to do a few things that we had wanted to do with the original but were unable to due to budget, tech, and time constraints," Suda said. There's now a New Game+ mode and a set of new costumes for Garcia to don. Suda believes the game has a better shot this time around, so hopefully some of his wilder ambitions could arise in a Shadows of the Damned 2 or a future survival horror project. But for now, at least we finally have the game on PC.
