NintendObs Thinks: Curiosities about the development of Bayonetta 3.
Two issues in particular have caught my eye and attention.
Can you believe they really didn’t tell us anything at all for a whole four years? They even made and released an entire brand-new title in the meantime, Astral Chain, exclusively on Nintendo Switch. (That’s where the mascot in the trailer, called Lappy, comes from.) And yet, Bayonetta 3 is indeed really happening, and the team at PlatinumGames has been effectively working in silence on it all this time. The fruit of their labor finally got revealed as the closer of this latest September Nintendo Direct, showing a snippet of how much PlatinumGames has done so far and how ready they are for a 2022 release.
But as much as I am excited to play the game, there are a few things both regarding Bayonetta 3 and PlatinumGames themselves when it comes to this title that I find a little concerning. To be fair, they’re not game-breaking at all, and they might as well be eventually insignificant, but they are poised to explain any downside from the game compared to its Nintendo exclusive prequel if such letdowns were to appear in the future. The first one is about the development cast of Bayonetta 3, as seen at the end of the trailer as is usually the case with PlatinumGames productions, and the second one is about Bayonetta’s new design as well as the choices it implies that were made.
This is not to suggest that the game might end up being lackluster or anything: I’m 100% positive that it will be a masterpiece, no worries there. Even since the success of Bayonetta 2, which is undeniably the Wii U title that put PlatinumGames on the map as a developer for the entire gaming world to respect, the Bayonetta series is now PlatinumGames’ baby, a franchise that for the reputation of their studio they shall never ever go wrong with and for which they will continuously aim to surpass expectations. Bayonetta 3 is executively produced by Atsushi Inaba and executively directed by Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya, two of the company’s top brass from the start, in collaboration with Nintendo, whose penchant for quality with the series has already been established. So coupled with their ability to work together on the game for four years undisturbed by external pressure, looking at the scope of the action provided in the trailer and knowing that’s it’s probably only the Prologue and some change, if you’ve completed Bayonetta 2 you can tell what we’ve seen so far is minuscule compared to the smorgasbord of action you can expect in the full game.