This Week In Retro: Bayonetta

October 29, 2009: The Witch Hunts are just getting started

by Diamond Feit

I've had The Prophecy on my mind lately, a 1995 motion picture that depicts angels as brutal creatures at war with one another for control of Heaven. After years of American television and movies about pure-hearted servants of God hanging out and helping people, my teenage self found it refreshing to see Christopher Walken as Gabriel menacing both the living and the dead on the big screen.

Growing up Jewish, I never thought much about angels or Heaven, not when I devoted just as much time to reading Greek mythology as I did stories from the Torah. I suspect this combination of competing folklore made it easier for me to question dogma as I matured, since I came to know not one but multiple "gods" and their various messengers. When you've got tales of Uranus, Cronus, Zeus, and Adonai kicking around your memory banks, the concept of a single deity serving as the almighty for all of recorded time seems especially far-fetched.

What has me contemplating the divine in this, the year of Luigi 2024? It all goes back to 2009 when I attended my very first Tokyo Game Show as a freelancer for WIRED Game|Life. As if making my professional writing debut wasn't exciting enough, I was also hyped to see the biggest game at the show, one that had already drawn tons of attention since its initial announcement in 2008. Somehow, barely a month before the game arrived on Japanese store shelves 15 years ago this week, I had the opportunity to play Bayonetta.

In order to attempt any explanation of Bayonetta the game, I must start by describing Bayonetta the character, as the plot, the entire supporting cast, and publisher Sega's marketing all revolve around her. From the neck up, Bayonetta looks like the strictest librarian of 1967 with her hair done up in a beehive and black-rimmed spectacles resting across her nose. The rest of her, however, screams "sexy 21st-century assassin" with a black bodysuit wrapped tightly around her torso. Convenient windows show off her cleavage and back, with the rear aperture tapering down to an angle as if to pointedly direct the viewer to her ass.

Bayonetta moves gracefully, swaying her hips and swinging her arms like she knows she's the star of her world. Her unnaturally long limbs only accentuate her posing and strutting; she doesn't tower over any of her cohorts but when viewed alone, you'd swear she must stand at least eight feet tall. She wields four identical custom handguns simultaneously, holding one pair in her hands and strapping the other onto her high heels. At no point does the game explain how she pulls the trigger on her shoe-guns, because it doesn't matter how; what's important is that she can fire in all directions and looks good the entire time.

All this would suffice to make Bayonetta stand out in a field of mostly bald white guy protagonists, but our leading lady has one more trick up her sleeve: She's not actually wearing clothes at all. Instead of leather or fabric, her impossibly long hair covers her modesty. Certain attacks redistribute her tresses into extensions of her fists and feet, dealing large blows to her foes but also leaving just enough locks behind to obscure her sensitive areas.

As one might expect given a heroine this strapped, Bayonetta the game doesn't pussyfoot around. When players first take control of the titular character, they're standing on debris from a clock tower that's falling through the sky while a horde of angels attack. While later scenes do offer more controlled tutorials, this prologue of pure chaos instead encourages players to just have fun and mash buttons to figure stuff out. There's no health bar on screen and I don't think you can fail; it's like getting the keys to a sports car on a closed track and discovering what you can accomplish while moving at 200kph.

Even when Bayonetta eases back on the throttle to allow for proper introductions and lay down the ground rules for this story, our superstar protagonist refuses to rein herself in. During cutscenes, she's striking and shooting baddies at impossible speeds, at one point suplexing an entire congregation of angels en masse. Players cannot perform moves of that magnitude, but through experimentation and gentle guidance from the game itself, they'll learn how to execute enemies both big and small.

Control-wise, Bayonetta seems simple enough at the outset. The face buttons let her punch, kick, fire her guns, and jump. The right bumper locks on to hostiles, a standard feature in 3D action games—although in this case, the game uses a red lips icon to indicate which monster has attracted Bayonetta's ire. The right trigger sends her into an invincible cartwheel so she can avoid attacks; evading with precise timing activates Witch Time, granting Bayonetta a boost of speed and power while slowing down all her adversaries.

The impressive depth of Bayonetta lies in how much players can achieve using these basic commands. Beyond simple strings of blows, Bayonetta can knock opponents skyward and juggle them mid-air. With guns on all four of her limbs, she can insert a few blasts into any combo or spin herself and fire in all directions. In its internal menus, the game displays a broad range of potential attack combinations and keeps track of which ones players have used—and how often—along with which ones they have not. It's an easy way to determine at a glance if you're making the most of Bayonetta's skills.

I'm shocked at how different I feel about Bayonetta today compared to when we first met. Just as my writing style has changed in the last 15 years, so has my approach to video games; back in 2009 I still heavily favored 2D action to third-person affairs, so I struggled to appraise Bayonetta after a single demo in a packed convention hall. Somehow my hurried impressions on WIRED which offer hardly any material insight remain cited on the game's Wikipedia page. I'm almost embarrassed to see my trivial comments about graphical issues and camera controls held aloft as an authoritative source.  

Weeks later, once the full release arrived, I remember trying a friend's copy and fumbling with Bayonetta's rhythm and perspective. Even at a lower difficulty setting I couldn't understand how to balance offense and defense; my button mashing felt random and desperate, so each death soured me on trying to continue. Multiple sequels and Bayonetta's appearance in Super Smash Bros only emboldened the original game's reputation as a classic. Eventually I bought a used copy which has sat on my shelf for at least a decade, a physical reminder of my shortcomings as a gamer.

For the 15th anniversary this week, I defiantly shoved that old disc in my Xbox One X, determined to make headway at long last. This time—playing on Normal—everything finally clicked. Sure, I still screwed up and received plenty of Bronze performance ratings, but I found a sweet spot of basic competency within the utter chaos of the action. I credit Witch Time for affording me periodic moments to slap angels around without fear of reprisal.

Getting a handle on the dynamic combat helped me embrace Bayonetta at long last—metaphorically speaking—but enjoying the game in the comfort of my home also helped me appreciate its unapologetic gusto. All the voice actors deliver their lines with a level of enthusiasm that fits the candor of the on-screen mayhem perfectly. Casting a posh British lady as Bayonetta adds to her bewitching mystique ten-fold.

If Bayonetta has a weakness, it's that 15 years of successors and imitators make it harder for young people to understand its impact. Developer Platinum Games has created so many high-octane action titles post-Bayonetta that the studio's name has become shorthand for such thrillers. While men have yet to concede their stranglehold on the lion's share of leading roles, far more films and video games today star women than ever before.

Even the concept of monstrous angels has become meme fodder as artists online herald freakish creatures with too many eyes or limbs as "biblically accurate angels." Obviously Bayonetta did not create the concept, but by this point if I hear a movie, a streaming series, or a video game features angels as recurring characters, I consider it a 50/50 chance that they're the bad guys.

Happily, Bayonetta does not care if you're a newcomer or an expert, nor if you love angels or tire of their antics. Its deep combo system and customization options invite experimentation and near-endless replayability. I doubt I'll ever master Bayonetta but I remain even more impressed by Bayonetta 15 years after her debut; I just hope a quote from this essay makes it onto her Wikipedia page one day.

Writer/podcaster/performer Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but xer work and opinions exist across the internet. Do not edit Wikipedia on xer behalf.