Why "No More Heroes 3" is Hot Garbage. FINALE

FINAL THOUGHTS:

The biggest problem of NMH3 is the plot. Like I referenced before, you can have a silly and crazy plot and still have it make sense. In NMH1 for example, you find out that the final boss is Travis' long-lost sister/ex lover, and she was the one who murdered Travis' parents. Travis kills her and then when you get the true ending of the game you find out that the Irish guy that's been stalking you from the entire game is your long lost twin brother, and is the ex-lover of Sylvia Crystal, the chick that Travis was trying to get with. Or how in NMH2 Travis can randomly turn into a tiger. Yeah, that's really silly and wacky but it doesn't really disturb anything in the games that was already established. In NMH3 they made a whole other plot line that just made it more confusing and didn't need to be included in the final game. 

If you played an NMH game, you may ask yourself this, "Well, the plot has been random/crazy to begin with. The plot in NMH didn't make sense so what's wrong with it not making sense now?" 

Well, I'll tell ya, in NMH an action of a character was driven by the plot of the story. Truly, NMH has never just been about the story, that is correct but they added silly and crazy elements that never hurt the plot (Shinobu coming back at the end and helping Travis out of nowhere in NMH1 and the Mimmy boss in NMH2) BUT, even with the Shinobu thing, it still followed up with NMH2 with her always helping Travis in any way she can as seen in TSA and even in NMH3. With the Henry thing in NMH3, it doesn't make sense because there is no follow-up. After all, it's the finale. And even if there was, it wouldn't make sense because it ruins parts of Travis' backstory it just DOESN'T. MAKE. SENSE.   There is NO reason for Henry to be a part of the plot, his plotline doesn't make sense, just "Henry now bad" 

The plot of No More Heroes 1 is just about getting to the top. Travis is a bad person in the old NMH game, he's rude, perverted, and has a pretty sad life. His only friend is a guy who runs a video store (who later gets killed in NMH2) and it seems all he wants to do is live out the most generic heroic fantasy of a videogame character, be #1, and get the girl (Sylvia Crystal). This seems to be the whole plot of the game until you get to Holly Summers, who mocks Travis for not being the "crazy badass killer everyone should fear" he seems to be because he hesitates by not immediately killing Holly after he beat her, it's where it's first shown that Travis has a bit of mortality, (it's also shown during Shinobu's boss fight and it's shown in Destroyman where he begged him not to kill him and Travis spared an inch of his life, and it's shown in Jeane the kitten, but it could just be a foreshadow of the twist in the end, or showing stereotypes of living in the "otaku" lifestyle, or all 3. I mention Holly because this is an iconic scene people point out.) showing a fear that he has: he can't kill women.  Holly then states that all assassins MUST die. Telling Travis to never forget her. This then leads to Holly killing herself, finishing a job that Travis couldn't do. Travis would then apologize to a half blown up Holly saying he "never meant to shame" her. This would then lead to Travis burying her body on the beach. His mortality shows at the end as well where the #1 ranking was his lost long sister and he feels upset having to kill his sibling, Jeane.  In NMH2, Bishop (the guy that ran the video store and Travis' only friend) gets killed and Travis kick-starts his role of being an assassin again. But the game isn't just about revenge, it's about the character arc that Travis has. Travis wants to kill the person who had ties to killing his friend, the CEO of Pizza Bat; Jasper Batt Jr. (Which by far, has to be the worst boss I've ever played in a video game in my life but I digress.) In NMH2 Travis got everything he dreamed of in NMH1. Respect, women, and riches. 

A statue monument made for Travis, to show how he was ranked #1 in the UAA, people even calling him the "Hero of Santa Destroy", and how the streets are safer because of him (as seen in the comic No More Heroes 1.5)  We got an assassin (Nathan Copeland) to be a ranking, a suicidal and depressed leader of a religious cult (which is just a front for the Mafia) who drawn his followers by preaching the word of God through rap music. His only wish? To be killed off by the "Crownless King" Travis Touchdown. A student who was inspired to train by her star, Travis Touchdown, but then wants to kill him to prove she could be better than him, a girl he spared the life of 2 years ago who now keeps calling him "master", the girl that he wanted to get with since NMH1 who he finally gets to have sex with, despite all this, it isn't as cracked up as it looks to be, his "badass otaku" persona is starting to crumble. He becomes sick of the killing and this lifestyle and has a mental breakdown near the end of NMH2, by Alice Twilight's boss fight where she states that assassins in the UAA are trapped, and when they die, they get discarded like nothing. Just to note, at the beginning of Alice's boss fight, she's burning photos, what photos you ask? Photos of family and one particular photo with her sister, Margaret Moonlight, an assassin you killed in previous rankings. The last line that Alice says before she dies is, "Remember, there was once an assassin named Alice." She didn't ask Travis to remember her as a mother or a sister but as an assassin. Not a human being, but an assassin, because that's all they're in the UAA. As said in this TSA quote: 

"People ask me, 'What is the meaning of killing if you're risking your own life?' It doesn't 'mean' shit. It's about instinct, not meaning. That spark lights up in your brain. And that sweet, sweet dopamine starts to flow. There's no 'meaning' to men fighting. Men are born to fight."

Killing is some sort of art form to Travis, a thing that brings you euphoria, more of a way of life to Travis. But people trapped in the UAA get stripped away of their lives and get disposed of if nothing happens. By the end of NMH2, Travis defeats Jasper Batt. Jr. Which brings the end to the UAA for good. Travis then rides off with Sylvia into the sunset, while a song called "No More No" (which is a beautiful song and very underrated in the NMH soundtrack) plays in the credits. A song about all the past killings he did has become memories to him and his desire to him to stop the cycle of violence and finally find paradise.   Why am I explaining all this? Well, it's to bring up the fact that the previous games' plot was more deep than  NMH3. But it's also to show that Travis doesn't have any personality in NMH3, either.  He does, but it's more what the "audience is thinking" and him saying it out loud. Granted, Travis heavily matured throughout the NMH games, in NMH3, he threw away most of his "Bizarre Jelly" memorabilia and lucha libre masks, and isn't a "huge" idiot, but for the most part, Travis is just there, now. He just does a bunch of 4th wall breaks,  and yeah you can bring up that scene with Henry Cooldown but I don't know.  Maybe this is the finale, the finale where Travis stops having a character arc and this is just what Travis is now. He's fully developed, but he's not Travis-ing enough for me (it's 2 am, I've been writing for 2 hours, and my brain is mush by this point) 

With this blog coming to a close, I wanna end it off with Goichi Suda, the man and the creator of the "Kill The Past" series. 

Within his Kill The Past titles, he never seemed to have fully finished his games. And that's normal, there are amazing games out there that had a bunch of cut content that didn't make the cut (i.e. "Bully" made by Rockstar) but it seems like NMH3 is what showed what could've been. The 100 bosses you were originally going to fight in the game, 3 hours of cutscenes, Travis originally dying then going to prison, and more weapons that were going to be added into the game were all cut due to money and time constraints. I feel like this happened a lot with Suda51, especially with another title he made, "Killer7" with 7 main characters, the focus is only on 1 in the sub story, Dan Smith (the guy in the intro of TSA) and originally the focus was going to be with all the characters. It would've been awesome to get highlights of KAEDE, Coyote, Con, Mask De, and Kevin Smith. But we didn't due to time constraints. And this is just deeply on a personal level but it's really sad to see how we never get to see Suda's full original vision in games and cool ideas always get cut out, and like I said before, it's normal for games to get cut content, but seeing Suda's vision and not playing what he originally imagined (an idea that was going to be much bigger and more explorative than the games we got) is heart breaking to me since he's like the Hirohiko Araki of video games. 

I dunno, that was just a little rant on Goichi Suda. But NOW ITS TIME TO END THE BLOG (that nobody is going to read but me T-T) 

(Cue "No More No"  for this section 😔✊🏾) 

No More Heroes will always hold a special place in my heart. In my opinion No More Heroes has to be the most bat shit insane story I've ever seen in a videogame trilogy and I love every second of it. I'm just... disappointed with NMH3, the writing of it, the cool potential of what we had of the villain (FU), the dumb twist villain we got instead...it's just...urgh...I wish there was more stuff to it. There will never be a game series like No More Heroes and it's sad to see how this ended on such a weird note of this 14 year old beloved game series (2007-2021). NMH3 should be renamed to Travis Strikes Again 2: No More Heroes, because thats basically what it is. I can't believe the absolute buffoonery that Suda pulled with this 3rd one but...I feel like Ive talked enough. 

Maybe I'm the joke. Maybe this is what Suda wanted, maybe NMH3 was just a huge troll and he just wanted people to get mad about this plot. Maybe he just wanted to create a fun game and we're all being to harsh on him. Maybe he wanted to have the final NMH game be as crazy and nonsensical as the first one. This is what we wanted right? The whole reason why we got into the game series was for the craziness and he delivered it, but at least have it make sense and don't shit on the plot of the previous games like it doesn't matter.  I'm probably looking to far into this but...

This was my rant on why No More Heroes 3 is absolutely Hot Garbage. 

I've been writing this for 2 days now 

I can finally sleep.

 We love you Daddy Touchdown

Goodbye.