An interview with PlatinumGames’ core creators explains why the newly launched Bayonetta 3 took so long to build. While the game was first revealed in 2017, no more information would be released until 2021, with the following trailers revealing a 2022 release date. Despite the game’s lengthy production cycle, which caused some fans to be anxious about its delivery, Bayonetta 3 was a critical success.
This development was highlighted in a recent interview with Famitsu and PlatinumGames, which included major individuals including supervisor Hideki Kamiya, producer Yuji Nakao, director Yusuke Miyata, and even Nintendo producer Makoto Okazaki. According to the interview, the plans for Bayonetta 3 did not go as planned, not because the creators were stuck, but because of the quantity of material the team intended to incorporate.
Nakao backs up this claim, saying that the team was never stopped because they couldn’t figure out what the gameplay should be like, but rather because they wanted to keep building on what was already there. This involves incorporating new gameplay elements, with many of them contributing to Bayonetta 3’s delay. Miyata also said that Kamiya and other staff members had wondered whether they were adding too much at the time, but the team had dismissed these worries, even joking about it in retrospect.
One of the particular features they sought to improve was Bayonetta 3’s demon slave powers, with Kamiya stating that they only required five for basic gameplay, whilst Miyao desired at least 10 that the player could call. Miyao went on to explain that the number of summonable demons became unreasonable, and they wanted to strike a balance between introducing new and ancient demons from past games. Kamiya said that the ones he wanted to include in Bayonetta 3 were all from the original game but did not make the cut.
According to a recent rumour, one of the probable reasons why the game took so long to build was because Bayonetta 3 was considered to have an open-world scenario. It would have been similar to Astral Chain, in which Bayonetta and other characters could access several portals to worlds, however experimenting with this allegedly led it to break apart in terms of pace. According to this Famitsu interview, there was no open-world consideration at the time, but the quantity of material that the devs intended to incorporate caused the most delays.
