Platinum Games’ Inaba And Kamiya On Approaching Bayonetta And Action Games

Platinum Games’ Atsushi Inaba and Hideki Kamiya and was present at ChinaJoy 2019 this year, and he gave a talk on the company’s history and action games, with the primary focus being Bayonetta. [Thanks, Bahamut!]

Here are the highlights:

• Platinum Games began with no money; only talent. The company didn’t have making action games in particular in mind, as all they wanted to do was make something completely different from other games. However, Kamiya was confident that they could make games never seen before with their own studio.

• Kamiya remembers originally proposing games for the Wii that would use its motion aiming in unique ways, but Inaba was opposed in terms of sales reasons. Inaba stated that while challenging themselves on new concepts was good, but he wanted Platinum Games to create an influential game that could represent the company.

• Enter Bayonetta. This action game wasn’t in the plans at all from their initial strategy, but Kamiya was inspired by a colleague who offhandedly mentioned he wanted to play another 3D game by Kamiya again. It had been 7 years since he’d worked on any 3D action games, so he felt nostalgic and thus proposed Bayonetta.

• Kamiya’s philosophy for action game design: No matter what game it is, he feels that action games need special actions that will make players feel good when using it. He also remembers to put in limitations on player actions, which is inspired by his history of playing retro games with these limitations (such as not being able to change direction mid-jump).

• That said, Kamiya doesn’t want Platinum Games to only be action games. While the Bayonetta series is still important, he wants players to reach a point where they’ll try other brand-new games by the company thanks to their reputation. Inaba echoes this, saying while Bayonetta 3 is still in development, he wants Platinum Games to stand on its own even without the series.

• Kamiya mentions that while he regrets he wasn’t able to work on Capcom games like the Devil May Cry series beyond the first game, it’s thanks to this he was able to make new games like Bayonetta. He hopes Bayonetta will be able to become a classic series with a well-established world that can continue on expanding forever.

Bayonetta 3 is in development for Nintendo Switch.