Hey, everyone! Did anyone get a chance to see episode 8 of BayoTV on our Japanese site? I tried to watch it myself, but I was so messed up that I couldn’t make it to the end!

If you are wondering what that costume was about, it is the same costume as I use in my avatar here on the blog.

Last I heard from Hashimoto-san, we still don’t have firm plans for a western version of Bayo-TV, so if it doesn’t make it out there, check out Bayo-TV at http://bayonetta.jp/bayotv/

This was also a character I used when I was writing on the PlatinumGames corporate blog when we started the company. (Japanese)

http://platinumgames-blog.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/01/post_0bc9.html
http://platinumgames-blog.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2008/02/post_5856.html

I’d love to write on there again if I ever find some more free time.

So, have any of you had the chance to check out the higher difficulty levels in Bayonetta? Actually, I did some of the spot checking on the upper two levels of difficulty during the end of the development. The request was to make sure “a normal human being can get pure platinum if they try really hard.” As I am apparently “representative of normal human beings” I worked on balancing the game up until the last days before the deadline. In Bayonetta, accumulating points is a rather important element of the gameplay, and one of the ways this can be accomplished is via the various interactive action events. I tried to avoid really complicated inputs, and focused directly on pressing the buttons and rotating the analog stick during these sections…

Suffice it to say, in order to earn points, I would play from morning until night, pressing buttons and rotating the analog stick to the very limit over multiple play-throughs, and ending up with a fat right forearm in return. I think I hit on a new sort of exercise equipment. (That only works for your right forearm…)

Amongst all her moves, from the guns to the summons, there is one pillar that explores the more sadistic side of Bayonetta’s actions – the anti-Witch Hunt moves known as Torture Attacks.

Iron Maiden & Guillotine

The first one that I thought up was the Iron Maiden. It was the easiest one to think up, and very fast to nail down, thus becoming the basis for all the designs that came after. The main part of the design is the face design patterned off of real Iron Maidens used during the Middle Ages. However, just tossing something into the game like that wouldn’t be very interesting, so I gave it a little extra organic movement for kicks. That we went all the to making the Iron Maiden belch is kinda in line with what you see in the game.

The Guillotine is also a major torture attack, and I’d like to expand upon it here. However, simply using device based attacks tends to end up being “summon and done”style gameplay, so Kamiya-san and the animators would scheme up ideas that, when just hearing about, are almost unpalatable for public consumption.

For example:

“She’s just going to keep kicking him in the ass.”

“He’ll get split in two… But really, really slowly.”

“Japanese rope bondage.”

The basic color scheme was gold inlays over black, and to make people feel like this guillotine has long been in use, I attached some of it’s previous “spoils” to the side. By the way, enemies that can’t be stopped by this guillotine seem to grow their necks back. Must be angels or something…?

Gravestone & Chainsaw

The previous two torture attacks were designed to be used with frontal and rear attacks, so then I went to work on a “Dropping Tombstone” to be used when attacking a downed enemy. I drew plenty of ideas, but we ended up going with the first one on the right. The more you press the action button, the larger and more extravagant the tombstone becomes. We even occasionally dropped a Japanese style grave randomly; however, we changed this to an idea that Kamiya-san had of a 16 ton weight. Seriously, can that man love Fantasy Zone any more!? (For me it is more of the 16 ton weight from SEGA Game Library available on the Mega Drive [Genesis].)

Also, we had to include the weapon-du-jour, a chainsaw. I designed the non-moving parts to see very organic. Perhaps in Inferno, these things are swimming around in schools.

Stone Horse & Mysterious Fish (Rejected)

The stone horse is something that no sadistic witch could be without. Once you get a look at it in the game, you’ll realize that this one is alive, too. It has spikes on its back that look incredibly painful, and we also planned to include a rose whip as a set with this item. With all this going on, Joy must have gotten really tied up, so to speak. But I didn’t know how she would really get tied up, so I had to check some of “those” sites during work hours to get the production down just right…

The fish was a rejected idea. It was based off the fish from an old game that may have involved Balloons and Fighting, but we didn’t really have a place to put it in the game, so it got pushed to the back of the stack.

Vise, Blender (Rejected) & Bird Cage (Rejected)

The vise was actually designed by Shimako, who stepped in as a pinch hitter while I was busy with other work. The palms being jagged like a washboard is a relly nice touch. In the game, as you rotate the analog stick, Bayonetta methodically turns the crank on the vise. I think it is probably the best example of a point in the game where the player and Bayonetta are in complete synchronization.

We didn’t have anywhere to fit the Blender into the game, so it got cut. Although, I think if we would have put it in the game, things would have gotten messy in more ways than one.

The bird cage was actually a Middle Ages torture device, but there wasn’t really a way to turn it into an action oriented event, so it was cut. I would have loved to stick chains on it and spin it around, but anytime I explain why my idea was so cool, no one would understand. That sucked.

There are many more torture attacks in the game, and they all been imbued with a bit of a sadistic edge, so I think you will enjoy watching them carefully and trying to pick out all the details. There we also ideas I didn’t get to use that I’d love to use we ever get another crack at things. Maybe they will end up alongside weapon ideas in another game…

As the weapons chief of PlatinumGames, I want to continue designing incredible weapons like the ones in this post. My aim – to be a sort of video game DARPA. (The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)

Also, JP has an announcement he wanted me to pass along:

For our fans in Europe, check out the Eurogamer Bayonetta minisite, where you can enter competitions to wined signed copies of Bayonetta, pre-order the game, and try to beat Kamiya-san’s high score on the Xbox 360 demo.

http://www.eurogamer.net/bayonetta/

So with that, I hope you all have a great time being a real witch.

Hello all, Bayonetta weapon designer (all of them) and CG modeler Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa here.

It has been a long time since I last hit this blog, but I would like to share the story behind the star of the most recent trailer, Jeanne’s guns, as well as some of the other weapons that appear in the game.

These weapons, All 4 One, were designed with the concept that they would be given to Bayonetta’s rival, Jeanne. Of course, she wouldn’t be a good rival character unless her weapons weren’t greater than or equal to what the other one holds. However, keeping them two similar would be boring. I kept all that in mind while I designed.

Just as I mentioned previously, I start by thinking about real guns. Bayonetta’s guns are based on the simplest, semi-automatics possible since she uses them for melee attacks; however, her rival’s guns would have to be based off of the most complicated guns possible and then taken to their extreme limits of power!  With that in mind, I based Jeanne’s guns on a Parabellum Pistol, AKA a Luger.　(I just like them and…)

I gave the front end of the gun a quad shape, with that nice heavy sense of weight, while maintaining the delicate inch-worm style toggle and breach mechanism, and still making sure it had the heft for use as a melee weapon. Furthermore, even though a lot of guns say they are short recoil, when you actually fire them, they still kick back a little bit. This is something I preserved in my design, although it will not be something you really notice during the action of the game. (It’s a little thing that I was picky about.)
Just like Scarborough Fair, All 4 One has the same type of crystal in its center allowing it to magically summon bullets. The guns can also use their standard magazine/barrel mechanism to fire. Finally, I’ve added a high heel silhouette onto the knuckle guard.

While Bayonetta has her easy to identify long hair trailing from both arms to accentuate her action, Jeanne has short hair, so we added long feathers to her guns. Shimako wrote about this previously. I used the long ostrich feathers used during Carnival as reference and designed the accents. For me, the feathers are from angels that she has killed.

As for the coloring of the weapons, just as with Bayonetta, we needed to pick a color that would pop out from her limbs and be easy to recognize. Thus, we picked silver to contrast against her red clothing. However, normal silver would overlap with her head and the feathers attached to the guns, so I adjusted the colors to give the guns more of a stainless steel, blue tint.
To add a “clean” sense to the guns, I added ivory to the grips and gold accents to the inlays.
…Now that you mention it, I think I’ve seen guns like this before…

This design was pretty much OK’d on the first, from-scratch design. Like I mentioned last time, once you have a design in place, things are much easier to lock down. In Shimako’s second post, Designing Bayonetta 2 – Jeanne, she mentions the same thing. (Although, I think we might have been in a pretty pitched battle, comparatively speaking…)

Out of curiosity, have you checked out the Custom Shot Bar “The Gates of Hell” that you can visit on our Bayonetta.jp website? Bayonetta’s guns, Scarborough Fair (which I talked about last blog), and Jeanne’s All 4 One were both made by The Gates of Hell’s very own Umibozu, Rodin. All 4 One is taken from D’Artagnan’s tale of the Three Musketeers, and their famed phrase, “Tous pour un, un pour tous.”(All for one and one for all.) Even though Jeanne and the gun’s name are of French origin, the guns are based off a German design. This must be Rodin’s personal preference coming through.
Finally, Rodin tends to inscribe sentences on his weapons along with his maker’s mark and brand mark. I think it would be fun if you tried finding them once you get the full game.

Ultimately, for Rodin, making guns for both sides of a rivalry is really about seeing how they hold u on the battlefield. You will have to see how it unfolds in the game to find out the answer!

As for the other weapons, I have the sneaking suspicion that Rodin will be explaining them further from now on, and many of them should be added to the Action section of the Japanese website. With that in mind, I’d like to introduce a few of the other weapons in the game.

Shuraba

Put aside your idea of Shuraba being a homonym for the Japanese word meaning “site of a bloodbath,” and instead think of things this way – You definitely want a close combat weapon, and if Bayonetta is going to have a blade, it wouldn’t be a sword, it would be a katana. That why I designed this Japanese style sword for her. It isn’t even a normal katana. I tend to like things that are a bit underhanded, so while Shuraba may appear to be a normal katana, the tip of the blade actually has a notch in it. (It’s a little bit different than any katana you’d find in the real world…)
The enormous hand guard is actually the mark of the witches, while the grip has a special feature included in it that you only get to see during a combo.

Kulshedra

Bayonetta’s weapons, including Kulshedra, all have something sealed inside of them. Naturally, the whip Kulshedra ended up having a snake sealed inside. As you can see, it appears to be a cobra-esque demon, but in reality, it can change into numerous types of serpents depending on the situation. Maybe Kulshedra isn’t the only one of its kind. You know, there are tons of different types of whips, and Bayonetta is a bit of a sassy, mean girl…

Lt. Col. Kilgore

(Almost) Everyone loves tonfas. These were designed as rocket launchers that traded the ability to launch powerful attacks for a long period of vulnerability. You can, of course, equip these on your legs for a Tonfa Kick, or two.
We call this weapon a rocket or grenade launcher out of convenience; however, I did things like making it’s rear end an amalgamation of RPG-like recoilless artillery and a rocket launcher. Furthermore, if you are using this weapon, you can also attempt risky, long-range melee attacks. Finally, I wanted to make the front end stand out, so I added some rifling to the end of the barrel.

There are quite a few other weapons in Bayonetta; from the outrageous to the sublime, to some weapons that are borderline jokes. As Kamiya-san has previously written, we’ve made it so there are enough weapons that you won’t get bored with playing around even if it is your second, or even higher, run through the game. All you replayability hounds have something in store for you!

In my next blog, you can look forward to learning more about one of the highlights of Bayonetta – Torture Attacks!

Now to answer some questions from our global blog:

DancingRobot:
I think it is safe to say that the weapons in Bayonetta, especially Scarborough Fair and All 4 One for Bayonetta and Jeanne respectively, are part of their characters. (Especially Jeanne, whose silhouette would change drastically if she wasn’t holding her weapons.)
With these two weapons, I think it is better to show how they tie in with the character to make things look cool rather than just putting them out there by themselves. As for a model viewer… Look forward to the final game!

Black Chamber:
I took a look at the forum threads. The report you guys created from just looking at the trailer was incredibly detailed! I couldn’t believe you guys interpreted the trailer that much!
What you mentioned about the weapon naming and engravings is true. It does have that classic Hideki Kamiya sense, with JP and I coming up with the detailed ideas to flesh it out.
Scarborough Fair and Bayonetta’s past, Rodin in the Gates of Hell, or even that “famous poet,” are all places where Kamiya-san specifically chooses to leave his mark. Also, the way we placed the seal/engravings on Scarborough Fair and All 4 One are a little bit different.
Anyways, there are lots more of these little easter eggs in the game, so look forward to hunting them down!

MonkeyMagic:
Since I am such a gun nut, even when I get to work on a fictional gun, I start thinking about how it would actually work, and the design ends up becoming something a bit dull. Those are the times when I become envious of people who can put aside realism and design something purely for the fact that it looks cool.
You have to be picky about where you are picky, right. But even then, I will probably keep throwing in the little things you can’t see, like the short recoil on All 4 One.
Also, when you combine a gun and a sword, the idea of a gun blade is such an overpowering one, it is really hard to come up with some sort of original design! But I would love to take up the challenge and design that type of weapon in a way that doesn’t make you instantly think gun blade.

(NOTE: Higher resolution versions of the concept art in this post can be found on the PlatinumGames Inc. Flickr Page)

Hi, everyone. I’m Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa, and I am in charge of the design and modeling for all of the weapons in Bayonetta.

I was also involved in designing the weapons for Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. This is my first project with Kamiya-san since Devil May Cry.

I wanted to blog about Scarborough Fair, Bayonetta’s beloved handguns that you may have seen in our trailers and other advertisements.

First I want to cover how we approached design in general, not just limited to weapons. Kamiya-san’s direction for the character was pretty much;

1. A female lead character
2. A modern witch
3. Guns on hands and feet

I think that Shimako covered this in an earlier blog.

After going through an intense bit of back and forth between Shimako and Kamiya-san (I sit between them…) they came up with a color balance based around pitch-black clothing, white skin, gold ornamentations, and the red ribbon accent. It was then that it was decided that the guns in her hand should be red. While there is an element of color balancing to it, this game has intense action that hasn’t really been seen up until this point in gaming, so having the red guns makes it easier to pick up the position of Bayonetta’s limbs in combat. By the way, her gloves (palms), and soles are also red.

We also had to make this easy to pick up on because Bayonetta uses her guns in her primary for of attacking – via melee.

With all this in mind, I went to work to come up with some weapon designs based on real world guns. I do this because if I base something on gun parts that are familiar, it will remain convincing even if the final product is a complete work of the imagination. Movie prop guns like the blaster in Blade Runner, or Han Solo’s gun in Star Wars are examples of this style of design.

I suppose gun-lovers will be able to figure out which gun is based on what real world weapon. The strange base guns are the traces of trial and error included because I wanted to make something that no one had ever seen before. You could also say they reflect my personal taste as well.

The guns that aren’t red were actually created before we had locked down the final design specifications. I made them silver or gold to make sure they stood out to the eye.

After working on the various designs, Kamiya-san’s eyes stopped at a gun based on the Derringer. It must have been because great minds think alike, and he could see it would be a gun capable of rapid fire; a simple, rugged gun. Or so I thought. “This design would look hot in a girl’s hand.” Hmph.

1. The first image sees the design taking into account the gun’s use as a melee weapon, as well as making it giant to fit in with the action game requirements we talked about earlier. I also made the small parts gold to impart some elegance. The part underneath the grip is formed and inspired by a high-heel.

2. The second image is even more of a melee weapon, adding some spikes and other ornamentation, as well as a jewel on the side. This was all to give the gun an overall accent.

3. I was told to make the gun less spikey, so redesigned with something a bit more subdued, while thinking of the design elements once again. This is also where I added the final logo for Scarborough Fair.

4. Since the gun will be used for melee attacks, I wanted to add something akin to a knuckle guard onto the gun. I also shrunk things down to make the entire gun seem stronger.

5. I felt I may have gone too far, so I went back to some previous elements. The high-heel silhouette that was removed in design #4 makes a comeback.

6. Here we move even closer back towards the original Derringer silhouette. I added a rail onto the top of the guns so that they could be equipped on Bayonetta’s feet. They slide into the gap in her high heels. The knuckle guard is meant to remind you of an old pair of scissors, an idea that came from Kamiya-san. This is the design I used to make the final guns.

As a little addition, if you put two of the guns together, they will form the Witch’s mark. I used this design to begin production on the CG model.

But even then, I kept toying with the design as I created the model, doing retakes as I added ideas or the use of the weapon changed.

Scarborough Fair is an old English ballad that focuses on four herbs – Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. These herbs became the names of each individual gun. Witches and herbs are closely linked. (This even comes up a bit in the game’s story.) I also changed the color of the gem on each of the gun to match the flower of the herb, which Bayonetta then uses to summon/expel the bullets that allow her to fire limitless rounds of ammo. (You can’t really see it, but there is a bullet in the gem.) Underneath the grip, we also added a charm (designed by Shimako) that is also linked with the herbs.

The gun can also be opened at the breach to be loaded with different bullets and fired single-shot. You’ll just have to look forward to the game to figure out how we use this…

So that pretty much sums up how we went about the design and creation of Scarborough Fair. It took a long time to arrive at Bayonetta’s main weapon, but once we had that clear direction, the rest of the weapons were a smooth design process. The first time is always the hardest, right?

And of course, as you have seen in the trailers, this isn’t the only weapon that Bayonetta will wield. You can look forward to playing with weapons that range from the standard to the absolutely outrageous.

Next time I blog, I will give you a look into the design of some of the other weapons, as well as the guns used by the mysterious woman in red, Jeanne.

(NOTE: See high resolution versions of these pictures on PlatinumGames’s Flickr account.)