A new report indicates a potential reason as to whyBayonetta 3had a long and protracted development cycle was that it at one point considered becoming a semi-open world game.Bayonetta 3was first announced back in 2017, which was then followed by lengthy five-year development cycle that had left fans incredibly weary and worried about its release. While there were some bumps and controversies days up to its release,Bayonetta 3was a smash hit for PlatinumGames, getting rave reviews on the Nintendo Switch, proving that it was worth the wait.
RELATED:Bayonetta 3 Viola VA Raises a Ton of Money for Trans Lifeline Charity
WhileNier: Automatais an open-world game from PlatinumGames, this premise initially drew on another Switch exclusive action game by the developer,Astral Chain. Reportedly, this would involve a big hub world, similar toSuper Mario 64, that would see Bayonetta or potentially other characters going into different worlds that would also have some openness to them. This then resulted in quite a bit of experimentation for this idea, but also reportedly fell apart in terms of its pacing.
Nintendo itself intervened and asked the developers to scale things back, as the Switch was also buckling under the pressure in terms of performance. WhileBayonetta 3ended up being structured by Chapters, Khan notes there are still some remnants of this original idea in the game. For example, Thule was going to be the hub world, which has been broken up into smaller pieces for Bayonetta and Viola to access in the final release.
Other tidbits include how the chests were redesigned to fit in a larger area, and would have provided a lot of unique environments. The weapon transformations would have also played a role in how players would have moved around the game as well. Despite this idea being tossed, Khan speculates that sincePlatinumGames likes to reuse scrapped ideas, he posits that this semi-open world idea might be utilized in a completely different game down the line.
Bayonetta 3is available now on the Nintendo Switch.
MORE:The 4 Best Things About Bayonetta 3 (& The 3 Worst)
