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Bayonetta’s “Climax Action”
If demos with Japanese developers seem a little terse, don’t just blame the translator. When it comes to games like Bayonetta, the answer tends to stare you in the face so much that, if you ask the question anyway, you’ll be slapped with it.
So when one of our European colleagues asks why the game’s Dante-in-heels heroine is – gasp! – a lady, the reply from director Hideki Kamiya comes and goes like a cracked whip. “Characters created to date have always been male, which brings with it a certain persona. I thought it would be interesting and challenging to implement a unique persona for female characters as well. Bayonetta’s very sexy, very smooth.”
Given the DMC creator’s own rock star persona, the answer might have been even more abrupt in the absence of Sega PR, and perhaps unprintable. Also, this on-message version is a bit misleading: Bayonetta isn’t the first game of this generation to marry bullets and a witch; nor was the masterfully titled Bullet Witch a game to be so casually ignored. Kamiya hasn’t played it and seems never to have thought that necessary, but his producer, Yusuke Hashimoto, has. “It wasn’t something you could get lost in and have hours of fun,” he believes.
Kamiya hasn’t played Devil May Cry 4, either, and gives the distinct impression of someone with deliberately little time for those other games. His latest has been gestating for years, he explains, ever since the prototype Resident Evil 4 became DMC.
‘Climax action’ is its concept yet – faster than our fastest Kenneth Williams impression – Kamiya downplays the innuendo. In this case, the climax has nothing to do with the character’s orgasmic approach to everything from dialogue to basic movement, or indeed a cutscene camera that likes nothing more than to dolly around her groin. It’s about action at its most intense, all of the time: arena battles, ornate set-pieces, combo chains, style-switches, end-level bosses, mid-level bosses and any other bosses that’ll fit.
Nothing we’re shown suggests even a wisp of backtracking, lever-pulling or problem solving. There might be some, Kamiya sighs, but only near the end of the project if there’s an opportunity.
Time, specifically the lack of it, is a recurring theme here, especially during The Vestibule, a level that literally revolves around a rapidly disintegrating earthbound clock tower. In this arena, enemies swarm about the stratosphere before swooping in to fight, the tower itself changing constantly as it crumbles. Before long, the sky is replaced by mountains that shear off whole chunks off masonry, the actual climax being a fight with a demon angel – what else? – armed with two giant serpents.
It’s so frenetic that taking notes requires our own style-switch, first to shorthand and then to memory. Between the notable and the remarkable, there simply isn’t time to take your eyes off the screen.
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Subscribe To Edge Magazine / Corrections / Terms & Conditions / Privacy Policy
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court 30 Monmouth Street Bath, UK BA1 2BW
England and Wales company registration number 2008885
I hope that the game maintains a level of authenticity. The first DMC introduced us to a playable world that the player felt immersed into. DMC3, albeit good, implemented too much Rock n' Roll. Dante literally had a guitar that you could "fight" with. That was rather silly.
I hope Bayonetta does not provide any disconnects between the game world and the creator's game world. I'd like it to stay ture to form. Other than that stipulation, I'm really excited for the game. DMC was my favorite series last generation and I was rather disappointed with 4.