“Here’s a secret about Bayonetta that isn’t listed in any strategy guide,” says director Hideki Kamiya in the developer diary. “Basically, if you play the game and pay close attention, you’ll notice that Bayonetta in the present day has a mole, but Bayonetta in the past doesn’t. My own personal explanation for this is that witches only get moles when they’ve undergone some kind of experience that’s very important to them.”
We certainly hope that Kamiya is correct because otherwise, Bayonetta would be wise to see a dermatologist and make sure it’s benign.
In addition to narrative inspiration taken from the classic film King Kong for one of the game’s bosses, PlatinumGames also took inspiration from a stranger piece of western pop-culture: The musical Chicago. Composer Hiroshi Yamaguchi said the musical, which was turned into a film starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renée Zellweger, helped inspire the song Let’s Dance Boys!
“In Chicago, the two lead characters, Roxie and Velma, go through most of the movie being completely incompatible,” Yamaguchi says. “But in the last scene, they take hands to sing and dance on stage together. I really like the song that plays in that scene called ‘Nowadays,’ and I was listening to it quite a bit while composing Let’s Dance Boys! to the point where I started to imagine Bayonetta and Jeanne as Roxie and Velma.”
Bayonetta‘s sequel, Bayonetta 2, was an exclusive for Wii U and builds upon the original’s formula with tighter combat and more varied environments. We’re crossing our fingers that it also comes to Nintendo Switch.
