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'

GamesActionShadows of the Damned13 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’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Grasshopper Manufacture, Goichi Suda)

Goichi Suda talking about Shadows of the Damned

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?'” Sudarecounted in the recent Grasshopper Direct, later saying, “They told us we ‘didn’t understand the Western market.'”

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.

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.”

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Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered - Release Date Announcement Trailer - YouTubeWatch On

Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered - Release Date Announcement Trailer - YouTube

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.

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