Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered interview with Goichi ‘Suda 51’ Suda – origins, new features, sequel potential, and more
Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered will officially launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via Steam on October 31, and to celebrate the announcement, Gematsu sat down with Grasshopper Manufacture CEO and game executive director Goichi “Suda 51” Suda to discuss the remaster’s origins, the original game’s inspirations, new features, the potential for a sequel, Grasshopper Manufacture’s next game, and more.
Get the full interview.
Why Shadows of the Damned and why now? Did you know Dragami Games was doing a remastered version of Lollipop Chainsaw and thought, “why not release two of my PlayStation 3-era games as remasters in 2024″?
Goichi Suda, Executive Director: “Shadows of the Damned was our own intellectual property, and we spoke with Electronic Arts about doing a remastered version about seven or eight years ago. But Electronic Arts had the publishing rights at the time, and we were told that if we were to do a remastered version then it would have to be released on Origin. After joining the NetEase Group we spoke with Electronic Arts again, and since the Origin-exclusive thing was no longer an issue they told us we could go ahead and do it however we wanted. We’d been wanting to do the remastered version for a long time, and so now that we were finally able to, we went for it.
“As for the Lollipop Chainsaw remaster, we didn’t know anything about that—we found out about it at the same time everyone else did. We have nothing to do with that.”
Why do you think Shadows of the Damned still stands out today?
Suda: “It’s a game that I made together with Mikami and the staff at Electronic Arts, and we all put lots of passion and work into it. For better or worse, there was a lot of conflict during development, but I feel like that was part of the sort of a chemical reaction from which characters like Paula, etc. were created, and it ended up turning into a really ‘Grasshopper Manufacture-ish’ game.
What inspired your vision
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