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Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m the head of the PlatinumGames Weapons Development Division (No. of Employees: 1), Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa here.

I’ve seen on the web lately that some fans have been creating Scarborough Fair and All 4 One models. As a member (and leader) of the PlatinumGames Weapons Development Division, I am quite pleased to see these efforts.
I decided to lend my little bit of support by preparing multi-direction and exploded views of the guns in question. Print them out, line them up, and get a taste of how much fun it must be to be Rodin himself. The charms are also included, so I suppose you may want to make these as accessories as well.

So please accept these as a token of my gratitude, and enjoy your lives as witches!

These images are also available on the PlatinumGames Flickr page.

Hi all. Producer Yusuke Hashimoto checking in again.

Happy New Year!

I decided to draw Bayonetta on a New Year’s Card. The more I drew, the more I was surprised by how detailed the design was becoming, and even though it was too late, ended up saying “Wow, this is how this turned out…”

Today also marks the start of Bayonetta’s worldwide release!

I am happy to see her spread her wings and fly overseas, and I really hope that everyone let’s go of time and has fun while playing the game.

So I hope that this year you all support Bayonetta, and continuing supporting us here at PlatinumGames.

Producer Yusuke Hashimoto here, now with a completely stuffed mail box since all the games I ordered online all showed up the other day. (Strangely enough, my package delivery box was empty though…)

So Bayonetta will be released on 1/5 in North American and 1/8 in Europe and Australia! I hope all of our fans overseas are looking forward to it. It’s been a quick two months since the release in Japan. When I think about the opportunity to expand the borders of the game and have even more people try it out, I can only get excited. So that is why I wanted to write a blog entry about some of the marketing efforts we are partaking in overseas. First up is the TV commercial we will be airing overseas.

The commercial features a soundtrack provided by La Roux, an incredibly popular band in Europe. Compared to the Japanese commercial, it is a much darker, but very cool! For me, this kind of dark commercial hits my personal sweetspot because it fits the game’s atmosphere quite nicely. Actually, for the Japanese MTV Special for Bayonetta, La Roux came in for a chat with MiChi. During filming, the director of the show, Sakuma-san, mentioned that he thought that La Roux were “insane.” We watched one of their music videos, and I had to admit it was pretty cool. What was funny was the we watched the same song that we ended up using in the commercial, “In for the kill (Skream’s Let’s Get Ravey Remix).” When I think about the track, I realized that Bayonetta really has been an incredibly collaborative project, from our cutscene action director Yuji Shimomura’s involvement and on down the line.

Continuing on, I have to mention the Scarborough Fair model that will come as a pre-order bonus for Bayonetta in Europe. At first, I wanted them to make a full set of the four guns, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, or if they could only make one, to include a set of the four dangling accessories to be attached; however, due to a variety of reasons, including cost, we could only make one gun… It is a shame that we couldn’t make four, but I am still happy to see one of the in-game items come to life. Check it out:

By the way, it seems Bioshock 2, coming out next year, is going to have a vinyl record as one of the items in its Western limited edition. (I wanted to do a gold disc or a vinyl LP for Bayonetta as well…) I’m really looking forward to the game, but I am also a huge fan of these sorts of limited editions, ones that are filled with the spirit of those making the game. I wanted to do all sorts of limited edition items for the Japanese release (Bayonetta/Jeanne glasses, Black cat earrings, lipstick, Bayonetta’s brooch clock, a Cheshire stuffed animal, or even a cellphone strap of the Bayonetta doll from the map screen), but as an original title, it is hard to get these sort of things actually made.

I’m always taking applications for manufacturers who want to make products out of things our users would enjoy, so if you think your company is up to the task, get ahold of us here at PlatinumGames. Also, we’d love to hear from our fans about what things they think would make great items, so make sure to get ahold of us and let us know!

That wraps up the PR related stuff, so I thought I would leave you with some of the character designs for the dance-battle-famed Joy.

There really aren’t that many chances to design female characters, especially in the enemy realm, so it was fun to design Joy. Her weapon changes shape in real time, and I tried adding something at its very tip, like something out of an ancient (?) civilization. However, when I designed her, I had no idea her torture attack would end up being anything like THAT…

We’ve seen quite a few users uploading some impressive gameplay videos, and I am looking forward to seeing what kind of videos users overseas come up with. Finally, we’ve got a really cool thing were planning for that may surprise you, so look forward to what’s coming soon!

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.

Hi everyone! I’m Yama-chan, a game designer here.

I was told to write about blog about the game design elements of Bayonetta, so here we go…

Even after we finished work, time passed as I got caught up in anticipation of this and that, but somehow, once I finish something, it seems like I have a disposition to forget what I’ve done. This time is no exception, and I feel my recollections may be rather dim…

That’s why I reintroduced myself to some of the old documents and such that I made. While I was looking at them, I would see things that would make me say, “Oh yeah, we had this!!” So I thought that I’d regret… I mean release these things and everyone could experience some of the trial and error that we went through at the beginning of Bayonetta.

The area around Vigrid Station is 50% larger than the original

The image above is the original size, and below is the same size as the shipping version, or 50% bigger than the upper image. The health bar is also an old version. At the beginning we decided that we wanted to make things real, which guided our decision making on size, but Bayonetta’s actions were much larger than we imagined, and that plan flew right out the window. Thus, we made the change towards bigger areas. Another reason was because we needed extra distance to compensate for Bayonetta’s fast movement and allow us time to load the stages into memory. The image quality differences are due to the implementation of graphical filters.

The Witch Time statues were originally Crystal Skulls

We had planned to let players carry the skull around like a normal weapon, and by pressing Punch and Kick simultaneously, Bayonetta would throw the skull to the ground and activate Witch Time.

We planned to allow Witch Walk in all areas of the game, instead of just limiting it to selected areas

Here is a peek at some of the Japanese design documents from Chapter 2.

The pages above are just pages 6 to 10 pulled from a 13 page design document. Unfortunately, I’m not able to share the full document for some “grown-up” reasons. The historic ruins of the Witch and Sage that appear in the full game was originally a church, and we had planned a stage around it where the player would use Witch Walk to move around the walls and proceed through the level. It was a stage with quite a few puzzles. Whenever we would try to include Witch Walk as a normal mechanic, things would almost certainly head for puzzle-laden territory, effectively bringing down the tempo of the game, or causing other side-effects like filling areas that have no connection to the action with Witch Walk. We kept getting further and further away from our original concept, so we decided to limit Witch Walk to specific situations. I think that Witch Walk, as a gameplay mechanic, would probably best be tried in a slower-paced 3D puzzle game. Oh, I forgot to mention that Shibata-san was in charge of the final Wind (Ancient Ruins) stage. I was in charge of the tutorial, and the opening of the game up until Fortitudo. I also had a hand in an area towards the end, but I can’t share much about it right now because it would be a spoiler.

The Torture Attacks originally went by names like Boredom Breaker, or the Fallen Angel Buster

What can I say, we were all raised on Kinnikuman.

The Witch Hearts were once Blue Orbs

Item names are, surprisingly, pretty all over the place until the very end of production. In-production enemy names usually end up being based on how they look or how we imagine them to be from their concepts, as during development enemies tend to change appearance and the like. When Don-san was writing his blog, he said something along the lines of “I don’t really know the enemy names.” Well, the truth is, I don’t know them either. (Yikes!)

Other than that, we even had ideas for an overworld map at the beginning of the game… But to share it now would definitely be a spoiler, so I will hold off. If they ever put out a Making-Of book, hopefully I will be able to share it with you all then.

I also wanted to share with you some full email conversations with myself and Kamiya-san that we shared while he was on a business trip overseas, but they all got cut out because they said that I was “going too far!” I guess there is such a thing as too long a blog…

So what do you think?

There are lots of ideas that are born and die over the course of a game development cycle, and some of these dead ideas had more significance than others. Spirits also rise and fall. Game development is filled with drama.

Hardware changes and so do the player bases… I suppose you could call it the passage of time. Game design is not just a simple issue of trial and error until you find something fun, as you get wrapped up in not only things like changes in hardware and players, but the many other tasks forced upon you that don’t have anything to do with finding fun. These are both production challenges as well as mental challenges…

But I think we got to this point by always going back to the starting point of “I want to make a fun game!” whenever we hit a wall and questioned whether we could honestly pull this off.

I don’t think that PlatinumGames will change it’s core principle – that of making fun games.

So did you enjoy Bayonetta? I hope you find it fun.

Until next time!

Hello all! I’m Ikumi Nakamura, concept designer on Bayonetta. It has been three weeks since Bayonetta was released in Japan… I bet there are many of you who have completed the game, and one of the things I’ve seen quite a bit of are comments referring to Bayonetta as “middle aged.” (LOL) Considering she is a witch who has been living for hundreds and hundreds of years, I think she has transcended middle age; however, these days I’m just happy that it seems people are into an attractive older woman like Bayonetta.

For this entry, I thought I’d bring you up to speed on some of the prop design in the game. First of all, in Bayonetta, there are certain treasure boxes that can show up at certain points in the game. However, one of Kamiya-san’s hallmarks is to make these treasure boxes engaging by giving them a sense of a bit more backstory and relevance… I think.

This treasure box was designed to actually have been a witch’s grave, but as they were persecuted by the Sages, the Sages placed a blessed counterweight on top of the grave to seal them. Over time, the remains of the witch inside actually became an item. By destroying the counterweight, Bayonetta is able to release the soul of witch within, and gain her strength in the form of the item. Pretty engaging, huh?

These small items get destroyed immediately, or are only on screen for a split-second, but they are still satisfying to design, and I get excited designing them.

This troop transport shows up in one of the cutscenes where Luka gets the scare of his life. It’s kind of a bold design, and I really like it, but I think it is only on screen for like less than 10 seconds. I also remember another part of the world that I was really particular about – the chapter start screen.

The idea here is that it is a certain child’s room, and the kid is playing with a board-game-piece-like Bayonetta doll on top of a map. As you clear each chapter, objects appear on the map. These are based on the same models that actually appear in the stages, but one of our cute, bespectacled background designers, Sata, turned the models into toys for me, so when they show up on the map, they have a really good feel to them. So the question then remains, whose hand is it playing with these toys!?

This is a “tumbler doll” designed to look like Bayonetta.

I really hope they make it into a real toy…

I think that, starting with the design of the map and extending to things like the background on the menus, designing with “old cartooon” style gives the World of Bayonetta an extra bit of depth. When I made these designs, it was towards the end of development and I didn’t really have much time, so I combined the various parts that I would busily draw by hand together in Photoshop. I also drew Rodin’s Trinity of Realities in the same manner.

I think that I removed the nipples in the one that actually appears in the game. One of the big wigs here told me to lose the nipples.

“It’s art!” I replied incoherently.

The whole sad affair came to be known as the “Nipple Rebellion.”

This about wraps it up, but there is still more Bayonetta news to report soon. There is some Bayonetta content for Xbox Live, wallpapers, and a comprehensive art book, etc. on their way to Japan that we are working hard on, so look forward to more news soon.

Now to answer a few questions that came in for me:

Storm! asks:

Is there a sexy, cute angel like the one in the ‘Team Little Angels’ logo within the game itself?

That would be Joy’s role in the game, wouldn’t it? Hehe.

When I saw the designs for the Moon of Mahaa-Kalaa, it was so cool I just couldn’t get enough.

When I see a gas mask, a balaclava, or an RPG-7, they are so cool I can’t get enough.

Osakajin asks:

There is a SWAT team in Bayonetta? LOL

They aren’t a SWAT team, but there are Ithavoll military forces in the game.

Mikami Fan asks:

Is there any way I can get that Little Angels T-Shirt?

If you can use a time machine back to San Diego Comic Con 2009 you should be able to get your hands on one.

Well, that it for now! Until next time!

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

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