#fu nmh3

[live-at-fortune-city]

do you want oddly specific (and threatening) valentines this year but your favorite account doesn't have it? well bud, i got the thing for you (hopefully maybe)

all suda fiddyone themed!

[sephtheroth]

YUP. things I forgot to upload on here (WHUPS) this one especially goes out to all the Tetsumio heads out there

[sheepb1t]

I will NOT stop NMH posting. Sorry chat (I am not sorry)

[taybrando]

Commission I got from my friend of my NMH self insert with Prince FU! (coloured by me)

[14106]

commi of fu from nmh3 for a dear friend!!

[inafieldofwhitelilies]

👽Fu piece I painted last year for #ALIEN623!✨It's the companion of the glittery Sonic Juice piece I did when I finished #NMH3.

Working on the anthology was one of the happiest experiences of my life! Hope another chance of working which such marvelous artists happens again☺️

[kannibalkaiii]

Lil Fu Puffball👽

Made the mouth/limbs/horns out of polymer clay with acrylics

Eyes are glass

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Some silly wips

[incorrect-no-more-heroes-quotes]

[pulzerizedpeaches]

when the pose was big,  i love my baby girl

[drsp00n]

Enough time has passed and everyone's wrote their thought pieces about it so I'm gonna chip in with a little bit of my own.

NMH3 is kind of ass in spite of its limitations, not because of them. The priorities are all over the place.

The gameplay loop becomes incredibly repetitive very quickly. I've seen people try to play word games about the semantics of a hallway of enemies across multiple screens being the exact same as a gauntlet in one room, but at least the fucking environment changes instead of being the exact maybe 8 rooms over the course of 100 possible battles.

There's little in the realm of unlocks. You can play the game start to finish without even touching the chip crafting system or the stats tree. No new moves, death glove chips or weapons. All you really need is to raise your attack to deal with the same enemies with just a larger health pool later in the game. Your kit doesn't change from start to finish.

The open world does fucking nothing for me. You could have made one map with less to explore but more to interact with, instead of five barren and flat maps with nothing to do. I know why this is, but I'll get to that in a bit.

The narrative is significantly weaker than TSA which is a huge shame. I'm imagining that they didn't want the characters to be so wordy in fully voice acted cutscenes like they were in TSA, but I would have loved to see more of the IBM style cutscenes if it meant getting to know more about the characters. Everyone just feels so underwritten so you have to fill in the blanks with your own preconceived notions and the stereotypes they're supposed to convey, something people give NMH2 shit for doing with its characters.

Fu and Damon are NOT compelling characters, one's a brat and the other one is a boring evil CEO archetype. They have zero depth, and for the time that they do give them on screen, all they do is bitch about Travis or everyone around them. Travis doesn't seem even interested in either of them beyond killing them for being annoying. Badman was just fridged to establish Fu as a threat, as if fucking killing every single civilian wasn't enough.

The stuff with Henry could have been interesting if the story had given it any kind of significance or time to breathe. I'm with Travis on that one, I really don't fucking care anymore. There's a giant space alien ship up there dude, that seems a little more important right now than our sad crybaby backstory that will go nowhere because NMH4 is never getting made.

And lastly, I think this game is the most suffocated by all the pop culture references. The premise of the game is a reference, the intro of the game is a reference, many of the bosses, side missions and characters are references, the final boss is a reference. All of this is cool in small bits, but it makes me feel like NMH3 has no real identity of it's own. Which leads me to this conclusion:

Suda should really have doubled down and made something weird and different again. Instead we got a game that is flanderizing No More Heroes itself. People like the open world of 1, boom, open world. People hated the combat of TSA, here's 100 fights. Look, it's the mowing grass minigame. Look, it's Destroyman. Look, it's Henry. Look it's a Marvel reference. Look, it's a Miike reference.

It just feels like the weakest of all the games to me. It tries to do a lot, and what it does is not very good. I don't hate it, I've beaten it a couple of times. I just feel like it wasted a lot of it's potential appealing to the loud majority instead of just being a smaller but better experience, but that's just me.

[live-at-fortune-city]

clean pics from the nmh3 site because idk if anyone else has posted em all together lol

[fantasyinvader]

I keep thinking about No More Heroes 3 lately.

For instance, DEATHMAN. It's this retro game that acts as the opening, and it's protagonist seemingly revives Travis later in the story. But for the life of me I can't figure out if it has a deeper meaning or not. I mean, it's right there at the beginning of the game for a reason, and a sidequest is finding and selling all the DEATHMAN cards, so it had to be important right?

So I started by looking at what little story it has. Aliens invade, begin branding humans with two scores for Beauty and Intelligence, and then killing those who don't meet their standards. Deathman appears to fight off ten bosses, much like how Travis is supposed to fight ten aliens, only to die after he kills the final boss. One more corpse at the top of a pile of them with the light of heaven shining on him.

At first, I thought it was a shot at video game reviewers and their scores. That they praise the game for graphics and story, but seem to care less about gameplay at times. The minigame doesn't really have any story sections, it's just a simple beat em up. But considering Suda51's known for his quirky stories, it didn't sit right.

But I did notice it used the black dog symbolism from TSA, representing imminent death. And the ending recalls what the original NMH defined as paradise. In a world where assassins enter into ranking fights, trying to reach the top while preventing others from taking their spot, paradise is simply a place to die. It's death, a releash from the hellish cycle they found themselves in. Kill or be kill, which actually tracks with the animal realm in Buddhism for an added bonus. The original game was supposed to end with Travis being gunned down by Silvia, Travis reaching paradise at the end of his bloodsoaked journey. This was changed to Travis fighting Henry, his long lost twin brother, in a duel to the death where the outcome is unknown, it was vaguely more optimistic, and led to NMH2 where it was revealed that Silvia stopped the fight.

In TSA and NMH3, Henry's mind snapped and he's intent on killing Travis. He even exploits the video game nature of their world where a “bug” freezes Travis on the toilet during a save, a callback to Henry saving Travis from an assassin while he taking a crap in the original game once the player had reached the #1 spot in the game's true ending (as the regular ending with the assassin busting in on Travis). In a way though, he's taking Travis that to paradise according to the first game that he denied him in order to fight his brother. I mean, Henry was trying to kill Travis in that battle at the end of the first game, even having an instant kill move, so for Henry it's all about sending Travis to paradise by his own hand. It also does away with how he was on more positive terms with his brother in NMH2.

But considering FU is meant to be what Travis could have been without his character growth, even makes a callback to the first game by saying he doesn't know what fear is like Travis did against Holly Summers, this return to the original game feels deliberate. It's all to show how far Travis has actually come. Deathman beats the aliens and then dies, the light representing his ascension to paradise. This is a callback to original game with it's the scrapped ending, normal ending, and the uncertainty of it's true ending. That game was about showing how unhealthy Travis's escapism was back then, him running away from a backstory he doesn't want to remember.

One of Suda51's most beloved running themes is “kill the past.” In NMH, killing the past meant Travis confronting his backstory and killing his half-sister. It feels Deathman, a childhood favorite game of Travis's, and NMH3 is continuing that theme.

Travis reached NMH's definition of paradise, the escape from the cycle, in NMH3 when he entered the world of Deathman. He said it looked like something from an 80's arcade game, drank blood wine, then paradise rejected him, sending him back to Santa Destroy. Death doesn't seem to be the paradise NMH made it out to be, just another world of kill or be killed if you consider the idea of reincarnation and how Travis would carry the karma of his life as an assassin into his next life. Hell, death is just a setback in the NMH games, just a game over screen and prompt to return to the fight. NMH3 even adds a spinner that can give the player an edge when they come back.

So, if Travis can't simply walk away from the cycle like he did between NMH and NMH2, because his past will keep dragging him back into that world, and death isn't the escape it was said to be in NMH (in part because of game mechanics even rewarding death), how does he break the cycle?

He never fully does, but he makes progress. He's not the same otaku he was at the beginning of the game, he now has more than one friend, he seemingly owns the crappy hotel from the first game complete with a secret base in the basement. He has renown and even respect as an assassin, scored with Silvia and has two kids and a grandson who go back in time to prevent his death at Henry's hands at the end of the game. Whereas the loved ones of those he has killed may come at him for revenge, his loved ones will attempt to save him. In the previous games, it was always about heading to the garden of madness, but NMH3 Silvia's pre-fight talks welcome him into the garden of insanity. Even her last lines in the series is her doing so, as Travis heads off to prevent his own death.

Travis may be trapped in a cycle, but that doesn't mean he should be embracing death. Instead, it's important to live especially with your friends, family, and ninja student.

Going back to the idea of kill the past, what better way to end the NMH franchise? Travis was created to be a loser despite his skill with knockoff lightsabers. In the first game it was clear he wasn't the escapist character you wanted it be as he was trying his own hand at escapism. But now? He's still a dork but he has become that escapist character he wasn't meant to be. In a way, he's become his own antithesis in the best way possible.

FU is who Travis could have been if not for his growth, Henry regresses because he's unable to kill the past who consumes him going from the cool, handsome foil to a dark reflection of NMH1 Travis (who, in a reversal of that game, Travis finds embarrassing), and Deathman is what NMH used to be. Hell, Henry is also shown recovering from his involvement in fratricide, so it's not like he's outside of the cycle as well. He dies, respawns and then returns to trying to return the favor and will continue doing so when Travis is a grandpa, even teaming up with aliens to do so just like Damien did. He's performing the same plot as the game we just finished and he's still a cosplaying dickhead, how's that for being unable to kill the past?

It may be a callback to the ambiguous ending to the first game, with us being left in the dark over the final outcome, but at this point the difference is that Travis Touchdown is no longer alone. And because he's not alone, he can keep on living. To die is to be consumed by loneliness, whereas to live is to make connections with the world around you.

Or maybe Suda51 just has a really good dealer.

[ghenry]

Was recently replaying some of the No More Heroes games on Switch, and remembered the hype leading up to No More Heroes III. Do you remember any speculation or theories about the game leading up to it's release? I remember the big one was a leaked screenshot from one of the visual novel segments showing what seemed to be Young Harman Smith.

WARNING: This post contains spoilers for No More Heroes 3 as well as Flower, Sun, and Rain.

I remember that! I don't blame folks for thinking that.

I recall thinking it might be Aramata from Moonlight Syndrome, not that it would make much sense if it was.

Anyway, I recall a few other theories. A lot of people--including myself--were expecting appearances by the likes of Kusabi or Kuroyanagi. This speculation came from the end of the first NMH3 trailer from E3 2019 when Sylvia was calling out codenames at the end.

"The Tiger has awakened . . . red, green, dark, black, blood."

In The 25th Ward remake, as well as a few other stories Suda has written recently, many characters were given color codenames to represent them. Midori Midorikawa, a boss in NMH3, went by Green. Kuroyanagi goes by Black, etc. Of course, perhaps people--including myself-- just jumped the gun because now this can basically be a way of describing the alien goons and the multi-colored blood they tend to spill out.

A lot of us were also giving credence to Travis Strikes Again and how so many characters appeared in the visual novel segments, thinking everything was going to merge even more-so in NMH3. Although, Suda has said that he originally was going to have more connections, before they got cut.

I like to think is mostly because Suda can't retain rights to NMH so he'd probably rather wait for an IP he actually owns to encompass what he's established before. Either way, not a lot of this world-merging stuff really makes sense, so these days I'll take it or leave it. Suda has also stated he considers TSA a 'commemorative' title to Grasshopper, hence having so many characters invited to make cameos and such.

Here's one possible example of a removed cameo, the fine folks at believeinthe.net data-mined NMH3 and found a lot of unused emails. Here's one of them;

People that played Flower, Sun, and Rain can think of one particular talking alligator!

Screenshot from AdrianVG's dual-playthrough of FSR

I recall another theory, while not directly related to games outside of NMH, that Travis was going to essentially make amends with past villains like Destroyman and Kimmy in order to form his own team to take on Fu and his cronies. And not only that, but every new friend he'd make would utilize the NMH motel as their home base. This came from early previews showing Bad Girl and Shinobu had their own rooms there as well.

We thought this because one of the taglines from an earlier trailer;

From the first NMH3 Nintendo Direct Trailer, October 2020

"The Hood" as in people from Santa Destroy. Travis' hood. Didn't really happen, as Travis primarily fought everyone by himself. There was no real team-up until the near-end of the game.

I just remembered one last theory, that Tokio Morishima was in the game. This came from the very first piece of gameplay we saw all the way back in 2019.

From the NMH3 trailer first shown at The Game Awards 2019

I understand why people thought this, the spiky hair did remind me of Tokio.

Of course, what people didn't know at the time was that it was Henry, who was redesigned by Takashi Miyamoto, lead artist for The Silver Case and The 25th Ward.

At the very least, we did get to see previously established characters appear in NMH3, such as Midori Midorikawa, who Suda first wrote about back in 2018. Although the first time she was visually depicted was in the manga adapting that original story he wrote about 3 years later, but several months before No More Heroes 3 released.

And Kamui! At least a version of him, that whole thing is kind of finnicky. Also Notorious, from the Fire Pro Wrestling World DLC on PS4/PC.

These were the only theories I could recall myself. There could be more, but these were the ones I was most privy to. Thanks for your question!

[taybrando]

[loborundas]

Raven Beak is a sure in, also NMH3 FU, and someone from NEO TWEWY HAS got to get in; please share cool videogame baddies/villains (don't gotta be main ones, and please if it's ultra spoilery do share it with warnings, thanks in advance!)

[kannibalkaiii]

Damon...I love you!

You ever see a character and think...I MUST DRAW THEM IMMEDIATELY?

Yup....GAYLIENS

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Yes there is exactly what you're thinking under that Boba

Also yes im aware of what happens at the end of the game