In a recent interview with Siliconera, Goicha Suda, more commonly known as Suda 51, spoke about the inspiration for Killer is Dead and its themes.
It's a much darker game than his previous console title, Lollipop Chainsaw, but he's not one to shy away from dark themes with games like Killer 7. He also speaks to why all of his games seem to feature assassins. After joking that he used to be an assassin (was he really joking?) Suda said, "When you defeat an enemy, that equals death. If defeat equals death and you’re thinking about the fine line between living and dying, to express that in an action-oriented game an assassin [as a character] makes it much easier to express that." Suda also spoke about the dark side of the moon with what may be one of my favorite quotes from the famed game designer:
"You know the latest Transformers movie? Nobody has seen the dark side of the moon. There could be a house there with somebody living in it and the main character needs to kill that person, but how do you get over there. That’s how I started creating this game."
For more on Killer is Dead, you can check out the latest batch of screens for the game, which is coming sometime later this year for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.