November 20, 2024

Lily Bergamo is the title of an unreleased video game project directed by Suda51 and produced by his game studio, Grasshopper Manufacture. The story of its development (and unceremonious cancellation) stands at an interesting crossroads of unabashed creative liberties and the realities of corporate necessity. Let’s dive into what we know about the project, what it turned into, and Lily Bergamo‘s fan response!

Introducing Suda51

Before we dive into Lily Bergamo specifically, let’s introduce the creative mind at the center of this project: Suda51. Goichi Suda, usually referred to by the pseudonym Suda51, is an eccentric developer, director, writer, and producer. His most notable projects include Killer7 and the No More Heroes series.

Since Suda51’s directorial debut with Super Fire Pro Wrestling 3 Final Bout, Suda has had a prolific career directing and writing for video games, comics, and visual novels. His works are notable for their esoteric and dark themes, over-the-top violence, and off-kilter sense of humor. As a huge Suda51 fan myself, I can succinctly describe Suda’s projects with two words: genuinely unhinged. His works are so unique, philosophical, and extreme that the reactions people have to them tend to be pretty polarizing. There’s really nothing like a Suda51 project, which is why he’s built such a niche community of diehard fans.

Context Around Lily Bergamo’s Announcement

Lily Bergamo was announced officially in 2013, which was an interesting time for Suda51’s studio Grasshopper Manufacture. 2010’s No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle saw Suda move away from being the head creative behind games at Grasshopper Manufacture – a streak he held basically since Grasshopper’s inception. In fact, he wouldn’t return to fully direct and helm a project until 2019’s Travis Strike Again: No More Heroes.

If you are curious about this interesting period of time for Suda and Grasshopper, I highly recommend checking out YouTuber GhenryPerez’s series on Grasshopper Manufacture games. In the 2010s, Suda51 was taking a more hands-off approach to games at his studio and many games were shooting for a wider audience. Not only did the studio tap more outside creatives (even partnering with James Gunn for the title Lolipop Chainsaw), they returned to licensed anime games, which Grasshopper had stayed away from for a significant period of time (they notably developed a Evangelion rhythm game for the PSP in the 2010s).

So with all that being said, Lily Bergamo‘s announcement dropped at an interesting time for the studio. And its announcement was soon met with an official trailer.

The Lily Bergamo Trailer

Lily Bergamo‘s trailer released in the Fall of 2013. This trailer is gameplay-free, showing a short battle between a bandage-wrapped woman fighting a large, Minotaur-styled monster. It really doesn’t reveal much, but it’s very well animated and the character designs were interesting. The trailer ends with a working logo. And after that there was… not much more.

Some additional materials were released, most notably a character key art poster which features text reading “What are you looking at commoner?” This art was of the game’s protagonist, Tae Ioroi. Tae Ioroi (and the other art that was released for this project) was designed by Yusuke Kozaki. Kozaki is a prominent artist in the realm of Japanese games, most notably working on Fire Emblem Awakening and the original No More Heroes character designs. And as with Koazaki’s other artwork, the artwork released for Lily Bergamo is really great!

So, What Was Lily Bergamo?

Well, trying to figure what Lily Bergamo is a bit tricky. The best information we have on details about Lily Bergamo comes from a Siliconera Interview with Suda51 and GungHo Online’s CEO Kazuki Morishita, as this game was made under GungHo’s management. Working under GungHo likely had some major effects on the game’s eventual fate, but that is ultimately speculation.

In this interview, Suda and Morishita were asked if the game was to be a traditional hack n’ slash like No More Heroes or Lollipop Chainsaw. And to this, the duo responds… with a lot of vagueness. Morishita said “Hack ‘n slash games can be unwelcoming, the games don’t always explain well what you’re supposed to do with the gameplay. Unlike hack ‘n slash, RPGs have players take one level at a time and the game actually guides you through… I want to combine the RPG elements and hack ‘n slash elements to come up with a new gameplay system.”

Suda and Morishita are later asked about why they chose to go with a female protagonist, and Suda’s response was interesting: “We had experience working with a female protagonist with Lollipop Chainsaw. It was fun to work with that character and that translated into sales. Because of this I wanted to take on the challenge of making a game with another female lead.”

What can we take from all of this? The way I look at all of this, I think Lily Bergamo was originally intended to be a pretty crowd pleasing action title. Suda and Morishita both stress making the game welcoming to play and fun. I’m not sure exactly how Suda meant this before it was translating, but I also thought it was interesting that he specifically mentioned sales when talking about creating a female protagonist. Maybe I’m a little cynical, but this does all sound like it was intended to be more of the status quo from this time period for Grasshopper.

Ultimately, we would never know what this game would shape up to be… in a traditional sense. Something interesting to note is that this game’s skeleton was used as the backbone for a completely different project that would release a few years later.

Let It Die

Let It Die is a free-to-play game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and Published by GungHo Online that was released in 2016. This game is basically what Lily Bergamo became. Really, the only thing these two games have in common, though, are the fact that they are action titles developed by Grasshopper under GungHo. The character of Tae, the simple/luck based gameplay, and Kozaki’s art were all gone in place of a SoulsBorne style of gameplay set in a post-apocalyptic world.

We really don’t know too much about why this change came about. The best details we have are from this Gematsu report: “The transition to the game in its current form commenced around the end of last year as a result of the previously mentioned creative soul searching that Suda and company underwent” [Note: this report doesn’t seem to be available anymore, but some of the text from it is saved in the linked Destructoid article].

We can really only speculate what happened. Maybe GungHo wanted the game to change to support a free-to-play model or maybe Suda51 and the team really did want to change up what they were working on. But, Lily Bergamo as we know it is dead. Suda51 really… let it die……….. anyways.

What to Make of Lily Bergamo?

So, that’s the full saga of Lily Bergamo. Today, it’s still fondly remembered by fans and you’ll still see a stray request for it to return or for Tae to appear in a future Suda project (which I think is really just down to her design, as she is a traditionally attractive female character illustrated by a great artist). But besides that, there isn’t much else. It was announced, there was a little bit of fanfare for it, and then it got quietly cancelled.

I think this story is interesting for a few reasons, mainly because of the mindset Suda had and the decisions he was forced to make during this time. After Let It Die‘s release, Grasshopper would no longer work with GungHo and Suda would step back into directing, and I think it’s interesting that this situation is what sparked that. Suda has always been an incredibly creative person but due to the financial situations and trends in popularity during this time period, Suda and his team were really forced into a series of decisions that I don’t think would have been made under different circumstances.

Maybe if Suda didn’t partner with GungHo, we would have seen Lily Bergamo today. Maybe one day we will see Tae or Lily Bergamo return. But, for now we can just appreciate the short trailer and think about what could have been.