Following Coller Entragian’s review of Romeo Is a Dead Man, Cubed3 sits down with Grasshopper Manufacture’s legendary Goichi Suda (Suda51) to delve deeper into the game’s wonderfully bizarre world. From the origins of Romeo and Juliet and the influence of Back to the Future, to aggressive combat, cut content and distinctive visual direction, Suda51 offers a fascinating look behind the curtain. There’s also an update on the possibility of a physical release and the previously discussed Nintendo Switch 2 version.
Coller Entragian, Reviewer at Cubed3: Romeo Is a Dead Man is a very surreal action game with a story that – in the broadest terms – can be described as to save all of humanity, Romeo must murder his ex-girlfriend until she stays dead… would you agree with this?
Goichi Suda (Suda51), Writer, Video Game Director and Chief Executive Officer of Grasshopper Manufacture: That’s about half-correct. At its core, Romeo Is a Dead Man is actually a love story about Romeo searching for the “original Juliet” among all the duplicates that spawned when space-time fractured.
That said, is the Juliet whom Romeo thinks is the original version actually the real one, or is she just another one of the countless Juliet out there? Also, what even is “Juliet”? Does Romeo ever actually manage to find her, and what ultimate conclusion does he arrive at? I’d love for players to ponder all these questions as they play through the game.
Coller Entragian: The game blends a missing-lover story with multiverse criminals and reality-breaking events. Was the Romeo/Juliet dynamic always meant to echo Shakespeare, or did it evolve into something more unhinged and personal?
Suda51: Actually, in the beginning we just had a main character named “Romeo”. I wasn’t thinking about Shakespeare or Juliet at all. But then, as we went through draft after draft of the script, the name “Juliet” started popping up as a kind of cameo, specifically just as the person on the other end of Romeo’s phone calls. Once we changed up that phone sequence, her presence in the game just kept expanding, and before we knew it, it had turned itself into a full-blown “Romeo and Juliet” story. I guess the dynamic of their relationship was just naturally easy to write.
Even once it became a “Romeo and Juliet” story, though, we still hadn’t landed on the ending we have now. Their ultimate fate was something that just sort of revealed itself as I continued writing the story.
Coller Entragian: Interestingly, this isn’t the only Grasshopper title with a “Juliet” in it. Was this intentional?
Suda51: Originally, in Lollipop Chainsaw, the protagonist Juliet’s boyfriend was actually supposed to be named “Romeo”. We ended up going with “Nick” instead because “Romeo” just felt a bit
too old-fashioned at the time.
So when I sat down to write the story for this game, it came to me that I wanted to give that lost name a purpose, and I decided to finally write a story with a character named “Romeo”. After that, as I mentioned earlier, “Juliet” emerged as his natural counterpart, and her role just kept growing and growing. It felt like things had come full circle. So while there is no connection between the two Juliet whatsoever, I deliberately gave her that name knowing full well it was a repeat.
Coller Entragian: The game’s premise starts with a time paradox that destroys the space-time continuum. How “connected” are the different universes or timelines Romeo visits? Do choices or events in one affect others, or are they more self-contained with their own rules and aesthetics?
Suda51: The setting for the story is a world where Romeo’s time and space have been completely shattered. Originally, the game was designed so that Romeo would travel back and forth
between these fragmented timelines, where his actions in one timeline would have direct impact on the other interconnected ones.
However, we hit a major turning point during development, and the structure was changed dramatically. Not just in terms of the story, but also our overall development style itself as well. As revealed in fragments throughout the story, that world is actually a space-time continuum shaped kind of like a single thread, wrapped round and round the surface of a sphere. Due to this, even a tiny shift in angle as you move forward can send you somewhere completely different, cause timelines to overlap or split, or loop you right back to where you began. But if that thread ever snaps completely somewhere, everything risks coming unravelled. That’s where the Space-Time Police come in; they go around patching up the rifts.
Coller Entragian: I’ve caught multiple references to Back to the Future. Some are pretty subtle. What is it about that film that ties it so closely to Romeo Is a Dead Man?
Suda51: Were any of them really that subtle? I felt like we were actually pretty on-the-nose about it. I’m sure it’s the same for people in the West as well, but probably about 98% of people in Japan love Back to the Future, so it’s really deeply ingrained in who we are. We’re basically influenced by it almost automatically, so the moment you say, “Let’s make a time-travel story,” there’s kind of no escaping that influence. As a matter of fact, this whole project actually started from the core concept of “what would happen if you combined the worlds of Back to the Future and Dawn of the Dead?”
Coller Entragian: How did you get Judd Nelson involved, and what kind of direction was given to him for his performance?
Suda51: The people with whom we always work for casting coordination and voice direction are really top-notch, so whenever we hold auditions, a lot of really great talent shows up. This time around – and I’m not sure if it was just a coincidence or what, but – Judd Nelson’s name came up as a potential candidate for either Magrus or the Director of the Space-Time Police. I was stoked. We were like, “Like, from The Breakfast Club?!”
We immediately decided that we definitely wanted him to play the Director, being a big, authoritative character, and that’s how that came to be. I wasn’t actually present at the recording sessions this time, so what I know about his voice direction I heard second-hand from Kitamura, who’s on our planning team. But from what I’ve been told, Judd dove deep into the script, learned about all the background lore, and worked closely with the voice director while still having the freedom to put his own spin on the role. As a result, he completely nailed the intent of the script, as you can see.
Coller Entragian: Romeo’s combat style lacks any kind of parrying or blocking. What drove this choice?
Suda51: Currently, players do have a dodging ability, but if we added defensive measures like parrying into the mix, the combat would turn into a “waiting game”. I really wanted to avoid that, since I feel it slightly changes the overall tempo. No More Heroes 3 did have parry-like mechanics like Perfect Dodges, but for this game, I wanted to provide a more aggressive, high-pressure style of action combat, like the kind of gameplay we’ve been building on ever since the original No More Heroes.
The core action was originally designed around the vision of our main programmer, Hironaka. But this time around, I intentionally asked him to remove parrying from his design.
Coller Entragian: What do you think makes Romeo Is a Dead Man so enjoyable for players?
Suda51: It’s hard to pinpoint just one specific element and say, “This part here is what makes it appealing,” but my main focus throughout the creation of the game was keeping players intrigued from the moment they start until they clear the whole thing, constantly asking themselves, “What kind of game even is this?”
It comes down to a deep respect for the players’ “time spent playing the game”. In the time it takes to play a game, think about how many movies you could watch, or how many seasons of a TV show you could binge, or how many books you could read, or whatever other activities you could be doing. Players are choosing to set aside those other precious alternatives to spend their time inside our game instead, so delivering an experience compelling enough to justify that time investment is an absolute must. My goal was to connect all those individual points into one captivating line, that “line” being the total time spent playing.
People have commented positively on various aspects of this title, like the action, the story, the visual variety, the surprises, etc., but all of those exist purely to make the players’ time spent in the game enjoyable. I believe game developers everywhere probably feel the same.
Coller Entragian: What changed in your approach to directing/writing compared to No More Heroes 3 or earlier titles?
Suda51: Every project takes on a unique shape depending on things like its scale and lots of other variables. Staffing changes, and naturally, our approach to directing and production changes as well. It’s not so much that I have some deliberate, grand plan. It’s more like the natural outcome of adapting to whatever happens to come up and how we end up handling it as we move through development.
So it’s a bit tricky to put into words, but… for this title, as with Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3, Yamazaki and I co-directed. Our dynamic is usually me making the big calls and Yamazaki catching whatever falls through the cracks. But partway through development, I got swamped with my executive duties as studio head under the NetEase Group, so I temporarily shifted into more of a producer-style role. But towards the tail end of production, I jumped back in with a slightly different setup to do more hands-on work that felt closer to directing again. As for the script, after plenty of twists and turns, Yamazaki and I ultimately split it up into parts and co-wrote it.
Coller Entragian: Is there anything you wish you could have pushed even further? Whether in violence, weirdness, or narrative experimentation?
Suda51: Near the end of development, heading toward the master submission was really a process of subtraction. It was about taking everything we’d brainstormed, weeding things out, and figuring out how to shape what remained into a tight, finished product. It’s not that the stuff that we ended up cutting was useless; we just trimmed the game down to the absolute essentials to make the game as sharp as possible.
So it’s not so much a matter of wanting to “push further”, but I do have some lingering regrets about the narrative content we had to trim, especially with regard to replayability. We still have New Game+ in the final build, but in our initial concept, we wanted to flesh out side missions across every time period to give players way more replay value. There were quite a few elements in this game we had planned to expand. Like the Bastards, for example. We had all these mechanics designed to give them a much bigger role in the game, but time constraints prevented us from going through with all of those plans. Being asked if there was anything I wish we could’ve pushed even further, these things are what immediately spring to mind.
When it comes down to it, whether it’s violence, weirdness, or experimental narrative, all of that stuff takes time. But then again, if you give developers endless time, they’ll just keep saying, “Let’s cram even more in” forever, so considering the timeline we had, I think we made the best game we possibly could.
Coller Entragian: Romeo gets two masks throughout the game. Which one did you prefer: the first or the second?
Suda51: Since we spent such a long chunk of development with only one mask, I think everyone on the dev team kind of naturally holds a special place in their hearts for that first one, the “DeadGear – L.E.D.”. On the other hand, the second mask – the “DeadGear – Luminous” – came directly from NetEase’s owner, who personally requested a “simpler mask”, which was literally the only top-down mandate in the entire project. Since we spent a ton of time iterating on and tweaking it, figuring out how to strip down the design while also maintaining its visual impact and giving it a distinct identity and creating it, the team is deeply attached to that one as well. So yeah, it’s not really as simple as picking one over the other.
Coller Entragian: Where does this game sit for you in terms of action gameplay compared to your previous work? Is it the most refined, the most experimental, or something else?
Suda51: We have years of built-up experience to lean on, so achieving a high level of polish was a main goal. For this game, we made sure to secure dedicated time at the end for final tuning, like chasing down that satisfying combat feel down to each individual frame. Even within the tight schedule we had, we did absolutely everything we could before release, so setting aside the narrative or art for a moment, I think the overall polish of the game as a complete package turned out really high. We really pushed it right up to the wire.
As for the experimental stuff, the simple fact is that we just didn’t have the breathing room time-wise to venture too far that way. As with any project, it all comes down to having to clear your targets, like deadlines, launch windows, budgets, and all. So while there might be experimental artistic expression in the way the game is presented, we weren’t really able to implement experimental gameplay mechanics. If we have a bit more breathing room on our next project, I’d like to try some more things out then.
Coller Entragian: In Romeo, you gave artists a lot of freedom, resulting in very distinct visual directions. How do you balance that creative freedom with keeping the overall game cohesive?
Suda51: Whether it’s movies or video games, there’s always an editing pass at the very end, and that’s where you tie the gameplay loop together with the story’s pacing, adjusting the overall rhythm with one core goal in mind: making it feel awesome for the player. That editing phase is what really dictates the final level of “completion” felt in the game. If we noticed something missing, we added it in. I feel that it’s precisely because of those adjustments that we are able to give artists a lot of stylistic freedom while still keeping the game feeling like a single, cohesive whole. Everyone’s sense of rhythm is different, so by stepping in at the end and editing everything to my own personal rhythm, it weaves all those distinct styles into one unified identity. That’s pretty much how I work.
To provide an example from just before that editing stage: the final subspace sequence is long, and if you’re doing nothing but fighting while moving forward, you start getting tired. But we didn’t have the time to build in entirely new gameplay mechanics. So we incorporated a text adventure-style section similar to what we did in TSA to break up the rhythm. I really wanted that change and contrast. I’m very deliberate about controlling the pacing like that. Even with the “eye-catches”, I was agonizing over where to slot them in right up until the last minute.
Coller Entragian: It’s become one of my favourite games, and I’d like to own a hard copy of it. Will there ever be a physical release of Romeo Is a Dead Man?
Suda51: Long before release, we actually had quite a few companies reaching out, and we had plans to finalize a physical edition pretty early on, but that deal fell through all of a sudden. But multiple publishers have continued to reach out to us since then, so I really want to make it happen somehow.
However, this isn’t something we can just decide on our own. It’s crucial to have the full backing and understanding of everyone involved, starting with the rights holders, so as we work on securing their cooperation and investment, we’re doing everything we can to make the physical release happen.
Coller Entragian: You have previously mentioned that the game is being tested on Nintendo Switch 2. How is the testing of this version going? Have you enjoyed working with Nintendo’s new hardware?
Suda51: This is another thing I really want to make happen, but… We actually had a studio step up and offer to take on the porting work, and as I announced directly at our launch event, things had progressed right up to the finish line. But just like with the physical release situation I mentioned earlier, those concrete plans have evaporated. To give everyone an honest update on the current situation, I have to admit that the hurdle has gotten pretty high, but we need to get that physical edition locked down first, and then we can start talking about what comes next.
