The civil war over Bayonetta wearing glasses or not... Check out some details about the game!

Bayonetta is a classic created by the genius Hideki Kamiya, and certainly had its challenges in the development of each game in the franchise. Of course, all of this becomes curious after a few years, which makes things even more special.

Details such as the production of the game, from Bayonetta's hair to her movements, are important parts that made each game even more intense. This remembering the character's design, which was revised several times until reaching the perfect look for the Witch to exterminate angels!

I want to talk about these details and about how Platinum Games was at a standstill regarding the character's glasses, and even provocations that came after that!

The hair!

Creating a stylish character was certainly not easy, especially because everything would become 3D and more profound, which led to the character design being revised several times.

Hideki wanted a mysterious and sensual witch, with this in mind, he handed the character over to the illustrator Mari Shimazaki, who needed to create a female character with a palette of colors almost entirely black.

From there, the illustrator developed several conceptual arts, but none seemed to "fit" with what they wanted for the character. She even thought about making the character blonde or red-haired, when Kamiya realized that those designs were straying too far from the original ideas, so he suggested that the illustrator go back to her first attempt at Bayonetta's conceptual art and work from there.

As a result, the art that would eventually become the Bayonetta we know finally emerged, but there was still a problem: the character's hair. They were made to resemble a pointed witch's hat and be vast as if they had a life of their own.

But because of that, they ended up being so big that they hindered the visualization of the character and even the scenario.

So Kamiya thought that if Bayonetta was a witch with various powers, maybe she wouldn't need to wear clothes, her hair would magically envelop her body becoming her garments. The idea was put to the test and it worked!

The glasses!

In addition to the hair, Kamiya had more ideas for the character, such as glasses for her face, however, it was not so simple.

The problem is that when the idea of putting glasses on the character's face came up, the business team at Platinum Games ended up going against the choice. This led to a kind of war within the development team, which ended up halting the game because of this decision.

Seeing this, obviously the business department would not complicate the development and ended up yielding to the creative team's decision.

With this victory, Kamiya went further and asked the artists to put glasses on all secondary characters in the game, each one customized according to their style!

One of these artists, the director of the game's cutscenes Yuji Shimomura, used the element of glasses as a resource to intensify the character's sensuality.

He made sure the character was never seen without them: every time in the game that she goes to take off the glasses, the camera changes perspective hiding her face, creating an effect of hidden nudity and curiosity with such a simple element as glasses!

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate

With the success of the Bayonetta series, the plot of its first game was adapted into an anime form, but not a series with several episodes, but a single animated feature film.

Bayonetta: Bloody Fate was released in 2009 and its production was entrusted to the animation studio Gonzo, while the western version was handled by Funimation.

A manga based on the film was released in two parts in the Japanese magazine Kodansha's Bessatsu Shōnen.

Devil May Cry x Bayonetta!

At the beginning of its activities, Platinum Games had a contract for the production of four games, and the idea for the first of them was that it would be a "stylish action game", and they had on their team Hideki Kamiya, the director and writer of Devil May Cry!

So the association was obvious, they assigned Kamiya to that project saying "we want another one of your 3D action games."

As director, he had the task of creating an action game based on what he had done previously in his career at Capcom, but at the same time, he had to innovate in relation to everything that had been done before, and the result had to be "stylish."

That's why he thought that, just like Devil May Cry, this new game would be a Hack and Slash; but it needed something that would differentiate it from other games of the genre.

The answer came when he noticed that in the vast majority of games of this type the protagonist was male, so the innovation would come through a female protagonist who was "stylish" in a way that would make the game itself stylish.

For that, he thought of a character full of sensuality, whose movements themselves were stylish and effective in the game, avoiding the game from being just another generic beat 'em up.

He wanted intricate gunplay and graceful movements forming a spectacle to the player's eyes, while still being a combat decided by their skill on the joystick!

The idea of how to make that work came precisely from Devil May Cry, but also from Viewtiful Joe, an action game whose production Kamiya had directed while working at Capcom.

In that game, he included Dante, the protagonist of Devil May Cry, as an unlockable character; and his fighting style involved hitting the enemy with his weapon and then, in the same attack, shooting.

That's where Kamiya took the basic idea for the four weapons on the four limbs of Bayonetta and how she would use them; and it was also from there that he took the name of the character and the series: bayonet is the name of a blade attached to the handle of a firearm, allowing for shots and melee attacks with the same weapon.

Influence of Bayonetta!

Since its release, Bayonetta has been widely praised by critics and players. With its intense gameplay and stunning visuals, the game quickly became a cult classic among action game fans. The influence of Bayonetta can be seen in many other titles of the genre, which have incorporated elements such as elaborate combos and cinematic action sequences. An example of the popularity of Bayonetta was the fact that the game even received a version for Pachinko - traditional adult gambling machines, very common in the East.

Franchise consolidation!

Due to the great success of the first game, a sequel entitled Bayonetta 2 was released in 2014 and, in 2022, it was the turn of its third edition. The most recent edition of the game was released exclusively for Nintendo Switch and repeated the acclaim for its quality and improvements over the previous game. With more than a million copies sold in less than a year, Bayonetta 3 further solidified the series' status as an action game icon.