Grasshopper Manufacture founder Goichi Suda (Suda 51) and GungHo president Kazuki Morishita have teased the development studio’s next project — which will follow the worldwide summer release of Killer is Dead — in a new Famitsu interview this week. Suda 51 did not reveal the name of the new project, however, the concept artwork that he provided to the magazine has led to speculation that it could be No More Heroes 3.
“Yusuke Kozaki, who’s been working with us ever since No More Heroes, drew these,” Suda 51 told Famitsu, via Polygon. “This is the new Grasshopper’s first title [since joining GungHo], so we’re having him really nail down the art-related stuff first here. I suppose it’s become darker and more strongly flavored as we’ve gone through concept meetings with it, to the point where I wondered if it was really okay to go forward with some of this stuff. Normally, by this point, I’d have someone saying to me ‘Hold on, don’t go that way, that’s not good marketing-wise.'”
“One of our goals here is to have a main character of the sort that hasn’t really appeared before in games, or in action games,” Suda 51 explained. “I think we’ve achieved that from a pretty early point. The base of the game will be centered around slashing action, which our company is good at, but I’d also like to take advantage of GungHo’s power and knowledge that we didn’t have before. We’re taking full consideration of online and offline aspects as we work on this.”
The images for Grasshopper’s next game consists of three pieces of concept artwork, two of which feature female characters with swords. While the character in the second picture does not look familiar, the first image (pictured above) appears to be Shinobu — who is a boss in No More Heroes, and a playable character during a portion of No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle. The similarity between the concept art and the Shinobu character has resulted in fan speculation that the unannounced game is No More Heroes 3.
Whatever the new game turns out to be, Suda 51 and Morishita did confirm that it is being developed for consoles, however, neither would state if they are looking at current or next-gen systems. According to Morishita, “We have a general idea of when we want to release it, but we aren’t putting anything in stone yet. We want to take the time to polish this game as much as possible,”.
Suda 51 added that they are planning to show more of the game sometime this Fall.
Check out all three pieces of concept artwork for Grasshopper Manufacture’s next project, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. Is this the first look at No More Heroes 3, a Shinobu spin-off, or something else?
