Hello, I am the producer of Bayonetta, Yusuke Hashimoto. I wanted to take this chance to give you a glimpse of some of the enemy designs in Bayonetta. While I may be filling the role of producer these days, I was previously a designer, and also in charge of special effects.

When we first started development, I got caught up in the idea that “the enemies are angels,” drawing some sketches of enemies that I showed to the game’s director. He seemed to take a liking to them, and I ended up designing around 70% of all the enemies in Bayonetta. I’d love to say, “And here are those sketches!” but the truth is they are gone. (I threw away all the sketches other than the ones that made the final cut…) So instead, I want to show you the final design for an enemy named “Affinity.”

Our initial concept was that of a “divine enemy,” so along with the main thematic color of white, I melded a bird with a human to facilitate a decent from the heavens. I paid extra attention to the fact that these characters had to be enemies in a game, so while they may be divine, they still must be monsters.

Which leads us to this:

This is a look at the guts of Affinity.

Kamiya-san asked for two things which I incorporated into my design. 1) You should be able to visually see an enemy’s vitality. 2) The internals of the enemy must make them seem to be incredibly strange beasts. When playing the game, as the enemies take damage, their “shells” fall off, no longer covering the exposed, gross internals of the enemy! Most of the enemies in Bayonetta have these sorts of internal views, so if you are into that sort of thing, I hope you look forward to seeing what the other enemies look like on the inside!

Finally, one last shot:

This is the design for “Fortitudo,” which was actually the first enemy that won the game director’s approval. It might be a bit hard to pick up in the illustration or in screenshots; however, Fortitudo is a gigantic boss character! When you see him in the game, he will really blow you away!

Next time, I won’t be talking about my role as a designer, but instead plan on telling you about my job as producer.

As an aside, E3 is coming up soon. Of course, you can expect to get brand new information about Bayonetta! Things are really going to ramp up towards the release of the game, so thanks for all your support!!

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