Bayonetta 3 Demon Slave System Was Conceived Before the Game

PlatinumGames released the first of a new development diary series for Bayonetta 3. In this initial episode, Series Creator Hideki Kamiya, Director Yusuke Miyata, Producer Yuji Naoko and Animator Takaaki Yamaguchi reflected on the Demon Slave mechanic and the importance of dancing to Bayonetta’s character.

In the development diary, the team first discussed the Demon Slave mechanic. According to Kamiya, the mechanic was devised before Bayonetta 3. He felt it was a good match for Bayonetta and revised it for the new game. Miyata envisioned the concept like a dolphin show, with Bayonetta as the trainer. He also fought with Kamiya over how many demons they were going to be. Kamiya wanted to keep it at five, but Miyata kept revising the number upwards, and won in the end.

Miyata also talked about getting to the essence of who Bayonetta is when designing the game. After asking around the team, the keyword “dancing” came up a lot, and he decided to implement this heavily into her moveset. Both Miyata and Yamaguchi discussed the difficulties they faced trying to incorporate dance moves into combat. Initially Bayonetta felt too light and combat didn’t feel impactful enough, so they had to keep tweaking it.

This is the first of four Bayonetta 3 developer diaries. Each episode will release weekly on Platinum’s official YouTube channel. It’s the latest behind the scenes content released by Platinum since they previously released Bayonetta 3 concept art.

Bayonetta 3 is out now for the Nintendo Switch.