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Rumour Imran Khan: Bayonetta 3 was at one point "semi-open world"

Paxie

Paxie

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A question that got asked a lot since Bayonetta 3’s announcement was a fair one: what on Earth took so long? We’re accustomed to games coming out usually within a few years of their announcement, but Bayonetta 3 ended up sliding just under the five-year door.
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The answers are mostly not shocking — it was announced very early, there was a pandemic that really slowed things down, the initial director left fairly early on in the project, etc. But another reasons that most people don’t know is that, at one point in development, Bayonetta 3 was scoped as a semi-open world game.
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The design was going to draw more off Astral Chain than Nier Automata, but the idea was that a large hub world would send Bayonetta (or whoever else) to different worlds which would themselves be fairly open. Maybe Super Mario 64 would be a good reference point for this. There was a lot of work and experimentation on this idea, but it kept falling apart when it came to pacing, and eventually Nintendo wanted them to scale back. It was, I hear, also not particularly well-performing on the Switch hardware either.
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Wasn't seeing anyone else posting about this. The idea of a sandbox character action actually sounds cool tbh, hope someone can make that concept work one day
 
The problem with this is that you'd lose (at least to some degree) the big crazy set pieces that are part of every chapter. You can't have a spider chase through a city that is being actively erased if you need that open level to stick around for additional exploration.
 
Hm I do really want to see an open world type game with character action combat (I guess I should be keeping an eye on FF XVI, but everything else about the game doesn't really catch my eye). Though I don't think Bayo 3 lost anything from the switch at all, and it may have been too much of a departure for the series.

Hopefully Platinum returns to the concept for an Astral Chain 2, which already kinda toyed with the idea to some degree. Even if it is just a single hub world that branches off into the classic Platinum level format, I think that (hypothetical but probably real) game is ripe for more experimentation with the classic character action formula.
 
I’m enjoying Imran’s new column every week. It’s through Patreon, but the column is public.

Open world Bayonetta was definitely rumored prior, maybe through him maybe someone else I don’t remember, but it was a cool reminder with the final game out. You can definitely see how it could have worked with Thule and some of the larger environments in Egypt especially.
 
Skittzo said:
The problem with this is that you'd lose (at least to some degree) the big crazy set pieces that are part of every chapter. You can't have a spider chase through a city that is being actively erased if you need that open level to stick around for additional exploration.
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Yeah, this is my thought too. Could have in development realized losing moments like this wasn't worth it. Not everything needs to go open/semi open world :)
 
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I think a potential Astral Chain sequel would be the place to make something more open-world rather than Bayonetta.
 
Not sure (semi-)open world Bayonetta is something I'd want out of the series. I do think it works wonderfully for Astral Chain, but its pacing and general setup is very different from Bayonetta's, which makes it a better fit for this.
 
Xaltmas said:
I think a potential Astral Chain sequel would be the place to make something more open-world rather than Bayonetta.
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Imitatio said:
Not sure (semi-)open world Bayonetta is something I'd want out of the series. I do think it works wonderfully for Astral Chain, but its pacing and general setup is very different from Bayonetta's, which makes it a better fit for this.
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Couldn't agree more.

Like, I was glad that Bayo3 was able to give me something a bit more than DMC5's "tight corridors" for levels, but I wouldn't have wanted it to be open world. Save those ideas for Astral Chain 2.
 
I actually thought it was going to be like that when they mention the Island, a place where you explore at your place finding different portals.
 
The first chapter with the island and portals made me think it was going to be semi-open, so I'm not too surprised!
 
NabiscoFelt said:
This may come as a shock but the Switch can gasp support open world games

Several, even
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True but not at very good performance/resolution.

I rather devs not try to do anything ambitious on the hardware as clearly it ain’t doing them any favors.
 
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This all makes sense, especially after finishing the game not too long ago.

Despite how the Switch's hardware is aging now, I think the end result was the right call!
 
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I love when people skip reading
There was a lot of work and experimentation on this idea, but it kept falling apart when it came to pacing,
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Then jump straight to
I hear, also not particularly well-performing on the Switch hardware either.
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Like it was the real reason
 
From the footage I’ve seen it did seem like it had some spots that were more open than you would expect from this genre

While stylish action games are a well regarded genre (especially online) due to their focus on gameplay, they are still very stale. This especially applies to their structure, basically everything can be traced back to DMC1. The problem is that you basically need to engage with new game + and speedrunning in order to get the full experience, meaning getting max rank on every level. While this may be fulfilling for hardcore fans it basically hurts the first playthrough for anyone else: you can’t fully upgrade your character on one playthrough, the game keeps telling you that you suck after each level, the ranking system wants you to explore to get red orbs/rings/whatever but you’re rated on time as well. I understand that action games have arcade roots and stuff but you can’t stick too closely to them when you’re putting adventure game elements and cinematics in your game to break the pace. The levels are too long to have this arcade appeal to them.

What’s even more ironic is that DMC1 had this very blatant conflict in its design. It’s an action game where you’re rated on how good you are for each level, but at the same time you’ll be getting keys and exploring an interconnected world because the game used to be RE4 except that the game is level based now. Therefore you never truly engage with the interconnected world, it’s especially annoying how stuff like blue orbs are only available on a specific level but you revisit that same area on another mission except that the blue orb isn’t here. Therefore, they are content with thinking that this formula is a winning one, as DMC was very highly rated at the time, but sticking tl all this time is pretty narrow minded. Sure, you can keep the ranking system since it’s somewhat part of the core design, but you can do so much more by ditching the level based structure. You can still get rated on battle arenas or have certain set pieces at some times, it’s just that accessing them won’t be through same old missions. You can also make a roguelike mode, that would be interesting and a way better implementation of arcade-like game design sensibilities over the current structure. Point is that action games don’t have to follow the DMC template, they would be a lot better if they avoided it, especially when it’s rooted in troubled development
 
Dodged a bullet there, phew.
 
Skittzo said:
The problem with this is that you'd lose (at least to some degree) the big crazy set pieces that are part of every chapter. You can't have a spider chase through a city that is being actively erased if you need that open level to stick around for additional exploration.
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Which, presumably, is why it was described as 'semi' open world.
 
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Explains 2 things…
a)what kamiya meant when he said that b3 will be an evolution/revolution of the genre
(i feel like the kaiju battles are not enough there)
b)why nintendo was holding footage back. Kamiya was kinda anoyed that he cant show anything,
and said its nintendos decision. And with that backstory they probably wanted the game to be
at a place where they figure out the pacing problem befor showing it as an open world,
so that if it does not work out people are not pissed.

honestly, i feel like the ps360 generation was the last one where games get shown in a kompletly
different (gameplay) state to what gets released in the end.
 
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I can definitely see how Thule may have originally been a bit more interconnected. The more linear structure was probably for the best, though.
 
The game is better off the way it is.

Imagine the performance if it was open. It would have to be capped at 30 and would likely drop on top of that. The pacing would be worse off too and as @Skittzo pointed out, it would be hard to do set pieces.

Astral Chain exists and it’s sequel would be a fine place to explore this structure, especially if it can help itself with new hardware.
 
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Yeah, between the narrative, the weird sections in Thule, and the demon traversal abilities, I thought Bayonetta 3 felt like a game where things had been lost, removed or heavily changed over the course of development. Sure, that happens to many games, but it seems likely Thule was planned as the central hub for access to other universes.

Happy to see all the love for Astral Chain here. Platinum and Nintendo should definitely keep running with the semi open world idea and use it for Astral Chain 2.
 
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Maxrunner said:
It was not always shit, will PS5 hardware be shit in it's last years ? It's a product of it's time when it launched.
Still. I do agree Nintendo is taking too much time to release their next one.
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it was shit then too, just impressive shit

as in whoa how'd you get that shit hardware into such a tiny box? very cool, thank you Nintendo

edit: and, more pertinently/seriously, I don't think the ps4 qualifies as shit even now. it always had a bottleneck but it could still handle open world bayonetta today. switch probably could not
 
Raccoon said:
it was shit then too, just impressive shit

as in whoa how'd you get that shit hardware into such a tiny box? very cool, thank you Nintendo

edit: and, more pertinently/seriously, I don't think the ps4 qualifies as shit even now. it always had a bottleneck but it could still handle open world bayonetta today. switch probably could not
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Nah PS4/Xbone were also shit for their time, they infamously used CPUs meant for notebooks
 
Paxie said:
Nah PS4/Xbone were also shit for their time, they infamously used CPUs meant for notebooks
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yeah that was the bottleneck I tried to sidestep

as the current crossgen market and the scalability of modern software show though they're basically capable of playing most games for the foreseeable future. this isn't the case for switch
 
even with more capable hardware I don't think I would have wanted an even more open Bayonetta 3 which would have definitely dragged down the pace.
Nintendo was smart to cut back on PlatinumGames ambition, keep that stuff for a future game on Drake.
 
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The Switch can handle open world games. It's the context that matters.

A semi-open world Bayonetta sounds like it had far more key design concerns than just game performance.
 
Paxie said:
Nah PS4/Xbone were also shit for their time, they infamously used CPUs meant for notebooks
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I mean, PS5 and Series cpus are more akin to laptop cpus if I remember correctly. the difference is that those jaguars were meant for low powered laptops and tablets. like less than 20W
 
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Belinda Blumenthal said:
Which open world games are 60fps on Switch? That is a non negotiable target for the series… the PS3 port of the first game is infamous for this reason.
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Burnout Paradise. You don't get out of the car but it still is a PS3 era open world game that's stable 60 fps on Switch.
 
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