No More Heroes is not punk

No More Heroes is, on the surface, a game that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. But first impressions most certainly don’t do it justice. The more I’ve thought about the game and analyzed it, the more I’ve come to realize its genius. I’ve contemplated for weeks on how to discuss this topic. It was dark, humorous, and flat-out absurd. It was an experience that absolutely begged to be recounted, yet it was so ridiculous that I had no idea where to start.

I found some parts of the internet likening the game to the punk revolution in music – that No More Heroes took “the standards of the genre and threw them back in its face.” I definitely won’t argue with that statement. It’s clear that Suda51 was subverting something. The question that no one seemed to answer to an acceptable degree, however, is: “What is being subverted?” A lot of the praise I’ve seen focuses on the game’s vicious excess (the violence, the sexuality, the language) and its rebellious attitude, embodied by the impulsive, indulgent, and insatiable Travis Touchdown. If No More Heroes was anti-establishment, then the “establishment” must’ve been some mutant mashup of censorship, logic, and realism. The game explodes and offends, and unapologetically so, because, well, it can. And there’s no way in hell it’d let you stop it. Right?

I’m not so sure. This interpretation doesn’t sit well with me. No More Heroes was a “sensory overload” without a doubt – a no-holds-barred, run-and-gun (or run-and-slice in this case) experience. But No More Heroes is clearly taking a critical jab at Western games and Western gamers. How can people say that its gratuitous violence, over-the-top action, and narrative depth (or supposed lack thereof) is, in some way, the middle finger to the gaming industry? Have they ever heard of Soldier of Fortune – one of the games that popularized shooting different parts of the body so you can see your enemies squirm? Or how about Grand Theft Auto 2 – the game where you can hire a hooker and kill her to get your money back in the same minute? Or Gears of War, whose claim to fame is a rifle outfitted with a chainsaw that can be used to mutilate an opponent at close range? How about the recent hype for Dark Sector? Prototype? Such violence in Western culture is, quite frankly, commonplace – in both the game and television/film industries. And what about No More Heroes’ unassuming, “unpretentious” narrative? Any kind of narrative depth is already a rare occurrence in the industry – by tossing narrative pretense out the window, No More Heroes really is only a droplet in a vast ocean of braindead plots and shallow premises. Besides… a linear tromp from boss fight to boss fight has been around at least since the days of 8-bit gaming (Kung Fu, anyone?).

No… No More Heroes is not punk. Travis Touchdown is not the frontman of some videogame revolution looking to spill blood for the sake of indecency. No More Heroes is not the title to overturn genre conventions and raise its fist at the authorities. But it comes close. In fact, No More Heroes is an effigy. It is jest and parody. No More Heroes took those very things that our culture glorifies, exponentiated them, and made them into a freak show – one most clearly articulated every time Travis cuts another man down with his beam saber, blood and money gushing out and showering him with his grotesque misconceptions of glory. No More Heroes is the way it is – not necessarily because it wants to be, but because we want it to be. And it’s disturbing to read people reveling in the excesses of the game, when, upon closer inspection, it is that very kind of thoughtless entertainment that the game would indict.

Needless to say, stop reading here if you wish to avoid spoilers. In fact, the latter discussion references a lot of moments and elements found or experienced within the game, so I would highly recommend you complete the game at least once before continuing.

No More Heroes plays on the stereotypes of modern Americana. The setting is a fictional suburb by the name of Santa Destroy, unmistakably located somewhere in Southern California (yours truly having lived there for the majority of his life). Travis’… erm… colorful… dialogue, culturally accurate as it sounds, is surprisingly not a localization. However, the most glaring chunks of American homage are found in the characterization of the top ten assassins of the United Assassins Association. (Is it a coincidence that the UAA is one letter away from being the USA? Probably… but I’ll let you decide that for yourself.) Among them: Death Metal, the tattooed celebrity-type (and, I presume, a rock star), sipping wine and watching the ocean across from his beachside manor; Dr. Peace, the all-American, baseball-loving, sharp-shooting Southerner, equipped with dual six-shooters and a slight Texan drawl; Destroyman, the postman-by-day, comic-book-hero-by-night, decked out in the spandex, the cape, and all manner of superhero gadgets; Holly Summers, the grenade-tossing, rocket-launching, gun-legged soldier; Harvey Volodarskii, the death-defying magician that lives for the stage and the spotlight. It’s easy to mistake these characters as figures of authority and the objects of Travis’ defiance. After all, a variety of wealthy and influential elements are represented, from Hollywood (Death Metal and Destroyman) and Vegas (Volodarskii) to the military (Holly Summers) and the school system (Shinobu and Bad Girl). However, one key thing must be kept in mind: these people all fell victim to Sylvia’s same UAA scam that pit Travis against them in the first place. In other words, these are all figures of idiocy, lumped into the same boat as Travis himself. He isn’t so much a rebel fighting the system as much as he is just a monkey flinging poo at other monkeys. Whether it be school and gang violence (Shinobu), college-age depravity (Bad Girl), the elderly poor (Speed Buster), Southern gun rights (Dr. Peace), military spending (Summers), divisive upper-class affluence (Death Metal), the narcissistic pursuit of fame (Volodarskii), the exclusivity of underground club culture (Letz Shake), or even reclusive comic book geek culture (Destroyman) – nothing escapes the game’s critical eye. They are all cast as fools alike. No More Heroes cuts a wide swath across a littered landscape, and it cuts deep.

This leaves, of course, the so-called protagonist of the tale – Travis Touchdown. And in our cast of fools, he plays the one with which we are most familiar – the Western gamer. Though No More Heroes isn’t self-referential to the point of making Travis himself a character that plays videogames, the association between the player and Travis is strongly implied by the player’s control over him. Far from being any sort of hero, he is the very model of American adolescence – bold, brash, a bit stupid, and very horny. He’s got the anime figurines, the posters, and the pop-culture T-shirts. Yet while he remains just another animal in the zoo, the game presents a stark contrast between him and the rest of the UAA. Travis’ opponents, as you can deduce, have already tread the ground on which Travis is only beginning to walk. They weren’t ranked in the UAA arbitrarily – they had to kill their fair share of people to rise to their position. They fought, and when they realized they could go no further, they found contentment with their rank. Many of them probably realized the pointlessness of Sylvia’s game. They discovered for themselves the gravity of murder and death. They settled down. They found meaning for themselves. Unfortunately for them, Travis’ perspective extends no further than the tip of his blade. And while some of his opponents would try to expound their wisdom to him, Travis is straight-to-the-point: kill – and kill lavishly. That is his mantra. Travis’ veteran opponents are not so naive. They’ve accepted (and some have embraced) the reality of death. Their mangled, bleeding, and often-dismembered corpses at the end of each battle linger on the screen, their death very visual – very real. Compare this to Travis, who takes a beating from lasers, grenades, a baseball bat – all to no avail. He can even run his motorcycle into a wall at full speed. He walks away unscathed. The contrast between the reality of death and the unreality of Travis’ fantasy is comical – almost as if to say his ignorance is so thick, it protects him.

This contrast is just a single component of a more permeating dichotomic theme of triviality and meaning, the largest manifestation of which is actually not in the juxtaposition of Travis with the other assassins, but in the two storylines. On one hand, there’s the up-front, shallow UAA ladder plot. Do you remember what Travis said at the beginning? “I want to be number one. How’s that? Short and simple enough for you?” Well, he lied. Or, more accurately, he was completely oblivious to the reality of his situation – of Sylvia’s carefully constructed deception, the game as Travis knows it. Furthermore, Travis was so immersed in his quest that he completely suppressed a far more important and meaningful matter – the murder of his parents by his sister Jeane. The UAA mission is trivial escapism from the consequential and weighty death of his family. The two sides of triviality and meaning can also be observed in a variety of other places. Saving a game is done by sitting on a toilet. The third-rate jobs are prefaced by a speech about rebelling against a god (which is probably also a subtle allusion to the so-called “American dream”). Most of Travis’ powered-up “Dark Side modes” are ushered in with the names of desserts (“Strawberry on the Shortcake” and “Cranberry Chocolate Sundae”).

The presentation of the game is obviously skewed to linger on the trivial halves of these dichotomies. In fact, much of the game seems to exist for the sake of triviality. Collecting cards (something I’m admittedly fond of doing) ends up being a disappointing exercise in obsessive compulsion, as the cards end up doing nothing but presenting an unexciting luchador mask with the name of a fictional luchador. The job system consists of doing not-so-glamorous missions, like picking up trash, working a gas pump, mowing lawns, and cleaning graffiti off of walls. Kicking open dumpsters will uncover new shirts or money. New wrestling moves appear to be entirely for show. Free fight missions are practically impossible, and in the unlikely event of completing one, you’ll discover that nothing comes of it but a bit of cash that could’ve more easily been earned doing something else. It is almost as if Suda was pushing the limits of player tolerance. Would that pursuit of conquest – the need to be number one – be enough reason for players to kick open dumpsters, pick up litter, die over and over again against a wave of nigh unbeatable opposition, and even drive off of a friggin’ ramp into the ocean? The answer is “yes” – as long as Suda added enough bait. Like punctuating each boring job with another bloody, kill-happy mission. Or throwing in some pixelated visuals to add that flair of nostalgic fan-service. (Are you listening to that, Nintendo?) And why? Because that’s what gamers “want” – a “fun” game with lots of features: collectibles, an open world, high scores, medals, minigames, and boss fights. Players don’t want to think – they want to indulge. Their desires are Travis’ desires – meaningless bloodshed for sake of feeling good and feeling powerful. Games are supposed to stroke the player’s ego, right?

Yet there’s one poignant moment during Travis’ battle with Summers – number six – in which Travis’ superficiality steps aside for a minute, and he sees the weight of death as more than the game it has become. Summers, the symbol of the military, ironically reveres the gravity of death to a much greater extent than our anti-hero. She makes this clear during her short back-and-forth with Travis. Travis, as usual, would have none of it. He had to be number one, and he had no time for a triviality like truth. “That’s not a good thing, you know… seeking meaning in everything? Especially killing. That’s a bad habit among smart little girls these days.” But if Travis really believed those words, he would have had no hesitation in ending Summers’ life. Yet, as with Shinobu, he stayed his hand. His refusal to kill a woman revealed a small remnant of his maturity – his acknowledgment of death’s consequences – peeking out from behind his cold-blooded assassin pretense. But Summers, seeing Travis’ blind determination, probably realized that he was ultimately hopeless. Words would not change him. He would follow his quest to the top or die trying, regardless of the circumstances. So she quickly subdued his humane sentiment. “Pathetic. If you can’t kill a woman, you are less than a thug! You’ll never make it to the top… I will let you in on a secret. Assassins must die when they lose.” Summers ended her own life reinforcing Travis’ bloodlust – cementing the rules of the game and ensuring he would not hesitate to kill the likes of Bad Girl and Speed Buster. Travis could not walk both paths: if he were to survive the fight, he would have to discard his maturity – his humanity. Summers wanted Travis to live – even if it meant living a lie. But Summers’ final words were probably the most potent – “Academics like to fantasize too, you know.” Travis would continue his killing spree, but Summer made sure to leave one last impression – that he was really just pursuing a perverse fantasy. After all, she had done the same thing to become number six – and she ended her own life in the grotesque way that the fantasy dictated. And maybe, for just a short moment, Travis understood that his fantasy was not all it was cracked up to be.

In the end, Summers’ intuition was right – Travis would not stop until he fulfilled his meaningless goal, completely disregarding the strange interruption in the next (fifth) ranking match by the enigmatic Henry. Travis remained completely oblivious to Sylvia’s deception until the very end. And even after Sylvia’s mother revealed the trickery, Travis would continue to “play along” and defeat the first-ranked assassin. And it is only then that Jeane revealed herself – the personification of death and the reality contained therein. Suddenly, the entire UAA “game” unraveled, and Travis found himself confronting the very present and very real issues of his true life. The meaningful part, hidden in the back of his mind throughout the entire game, finally came forward, rendering the rest of the so-called plot meaningless. And with Jeane’s sword thrust into Travis’ body, just as he tasted the sting of death, Shinobu – the remnant of his maturity that had not been erased by his adolescent and indiscriminate desire to kill – rescued him.

This is already quite enough of a conclusion, and yet if the player opts to play through the “real ending,” we get one last, cryptic treat. Sir Henry – Letz Shake’s killer and a man entirely shrouded in mystery – interrupts in the most random manner, forcing Travis to fight one last, epic battle against him. At the end of the battle, we learn the peculiar fact that he is Travis’ brother and Sylvia’s wife. At this point, the “story” is already so convoluted that taking it at face value would only lead to the conclusion that the ending is, in fact, pointless. To be accurate, this is the reasonable conclusion when you look at it as one who played the game for the blood and guts. Narrative is disposable – the ending doesn’t need to make sense, as long as there is an ending – as long as there is something to signal the end of the self-indulgent game. But there is little doubt in my mind that Suda intended there to be subtext for those that searched for it. And so, looking at the ending in the light of No More Heroes as a critique of Western gaming, we can conclude that if Travis is a representation of Western games and all of their vices and shortcomings, then Henry, presented as Travis’ archnemesis, must be the other side of the coin – the representation of games as meaningful and artistic works. After all, Henry and Travis are “similar in many ways.” However, Henry is clearly in possession of the knowledge of the true nature of things. “You can’t be serious?” exclaims Henry to the bewildered Travis. “I would have thought you and the player would have at least expected a twist of fate of some kind.” The mockery makes me wonder whether it is, in fact, Henry and not Travis to which Suda more closely associates himself, lingering in the background and watching Travis – the player – grinding for cash and killing to his heart’s content, without cause, reason, or meaning.

But here’s the real eye-opener. Note what Henry mentions about Sylvia, his wife: “She knew my income wasn’t enough, so every now and then, she’d just disappear.” Sylvia, in this frame of mind, is the reality of game development as seen by Suda’s studio: Grasshopper Manufacture. Grasshopper Manufacture has been responsible for a lot of financially risky, off-the-wall titles, No More Heroes included. Also among them are quirky titles like Killer 7 and Contact – titles that clearly have a drive to communicate an artist’s vision. But these titles were critically panned in major media outlets, and it is fair to assume that they ended up being financial failures. However, you’ll also notice that their resume includes a couple of titles based on popular anime. Their Wikipedia entry mentions that Grasshopper Manufacture is known to offset the risk of its visionary titles with less risky consumer fodder. This is our dear Sylvia. She “loves to spend” – but she knows the income from those artistic games is not enough. So she went out and built another mindless game to rake in some cash. Travis is the unwitting victim – the gamer that was just looking for a good time. Sylvia is the link connecting Travis and Henry. No More Heroes – at least in its marketed form – is her game. But in reality, No More Heroes is a glimpse at the limbo between the two extremes of art and entertainment, and it is ultimately about the battle between them.

The final scene, without a doubt, reveals that Suda was appealing to more than just a Western thirst for blood. In the short time after the ending credits, we see Travis and Henry, still locked in the midst of their epic conflict. And as the camera pans out, we discover that the scene is all just a painting. The game is implicitly proclaimed a work of art, but the picture of Travis and Henry is a static spectacle – a far cry from the true interactive nature of the videogame medium. The motel’s flag lingers in its background, as if to proclaim the captivity of NMH’s faux-Western world – a captivity that represents the captivity of our games to adolescent fantasy, bloodshed, and the indulgences of our formulaic, tried-and-true mental stimuli. It is the captivity to which Travis alluded when he asked, “I want to bail, but where the hell’s the exit? There’s no way out, is there? No getting out…”

But alive in front of the exhibit are Sylvia and little Jeane – two embodiments of the deeper reality that existed behind Travis’ fantasy. “You like this painting, don’t you?” Sylvia asks little Jeane. The child – the immature of the two – is the one enamored by that particular picture.

Perhaps it’s all to say that videogames are a medium with an undeniable capacity for art – and yet at this moment in time, the majority of it is bound to the limits of existing, passive forms. And it is still only a spectacle admired by kids. It is still only adolescent fantasy and escapism. And it is stuck in a perpetual state of Travis Touchdown mentality. Travis Touchdown (and No More Heroes with him) is the indictment of a culture that has lost sight of the potential for that deeper meaning behind a thick wall of decadent and indulgent entertainment. And what is a visionary to do against such odds? In the words of Sir Henry, “all we can do is keep running.”

“Then let’s find that exit they call Paradise.” Do you remember Travis’ first fight against Death Metal? He asks, “You know what paradise is, right, old man? …This is paradise – the place where dreams are fulfilled,” he said as he pointed across the ocean. But Death Metal, his wisdom and calm composure a stark contrast to Travis’ presumptuous ignorance, responded, “This is no paradise.” When Travis asks, “All right, then what is it?” Death Metal simply answers, “A place to die.” The world of Santa Destroy is nothing but a facade – an excuse for Travis to go on his killing spree. By the end of the game, Travis has finally gotten it through his thick skull that Paradise lies somewhere beyond the killing fields – somewhere between the extremes of commercial success and artistry. And neither Travis nor Henry will know where that is until they’ve settled their differences.

Addendum: As I made final edits to this post, I stumbled upon this Destructoid article (posted just a few days before mine) that shares a lot of my general sentiments without going into the (jumbled and probably overzealous) attempts I have made to detail specific objects of symbolism. I definitely recommend that you give it a read. It’s an excellent write-up.

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