13 years after Shadows of the Damned's notoriously difficult development with EA, Suda51 has fully healed from the 'injury' of rewriting the game 6 times: 'I actually have a lot of really fond memories of the experience'
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
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