A witchy librarian with big guns — why’d it take so long for someone to think this up?

I took a little heat in our day four E3 podcast when I began to describe SEGA’s new third person action game, Bayonetta — so I decided to whip up some very quick sketches from memory to help those reading better visualize what I saw first hand in SEGA’s Platinum Games showcase room.

Bayonetta is currently being developed by Hideki Kamiya, the former director of DMC1, which makes perfect sense since everything about this game seemed to kick ass. From the moment the demo started, the room was captivated.

You play as Bayonetta, a very lean and mean witch decked out in what appears to be a skin tight leather suit. If that’s not enough to demand your attention, she is also equipped with guns in nearly every place imaginable. Bang bang!

Graphically, the look was a mix of DMC and Final Fantasy. Beautifully colored architecture and scenery complimented with breathtakingly detailed enemies. The enemies we got a look at consisted of a smaller crew of three to four and one larger boss. They all had a similar robotic look — halo adorned heads, pure white skin tone, covered with intricate gold colored armor. From what I could gather, the halo’s are collected and used as power ups which help your character advance.

The look is DMC meets FF. Not a bad combination if you ask me.

Mob enemies featured in demo. Boss looked similar only much bigger.

In terms of moves, they highlighted a few which involved the use of her many guns. The most memorable involved her doing a rotating hand stand with her legs split in different directions. From this position, she spun around, firing rounds from her high heel mounted guns. Yes, I said high heel mounted guns. In addition to the whirlwind of leg launching bullets, she can also suspend herself in mid air and fire successive rounds at a target in what appeared to be some sort of time slowing mode.

Dodging an enemy initiated a mode they referred to as “Witch Time”, which causes the area around her to dim a bit in color, freezing all nearby enemies, and allowing her to perform more powerful attacks. During this time, we witnessed a few “hair moves” that had everyone laughing in sheer amazement.

The first involved a portal opening and then launching a large boot made of her own twirled hair at several enemies. The presenter said that this move would mimic that of what you are doing with the character, meaning if you are kicking, it will launch a boot — and if you are punching, a giant fist would come flying out of the portal. Below is a sketch that I did to better illustrate what it looked like on screen.

Bayonetta gives bad guys the big hairy boot.

The second took place during what appeared to be some sort of boss or min boss fight. Bayonetta was hammering away at the gold plated creature, knocking away layers of armor with each series of hits she successfully landed. Suddenly, she switched from firing, and unleashed a giant dragon made from her own hair at the target. The dragon spun up from behind the enemy, taking it by surprise, and then dove head first into its mid section to finish it off. Again, I have tried my best to provide a sketch from memory of what it looked like.

Bayonetta’s hair switches to dragon form to finish off a boss.

To recap, Bayonetta comes equipped with guns and radically possessed hair, but that isn’t the extent of her witchy woman abilities — she can also summon “torture attacks” based on the direction she is facing. We witnessed one called Iron Maiden and another called Guillotine, which essentially was a gigantic smoke black colored guillotine that forced an ememy in to position for a swift head chopping. Very big crowd-pleaser.

You will be able to shoot in multiple directions simultaneously, however, when I asked how the targeting mechanics worked, they responded by saying that was something they were still in the process of fine tuning.

Overall, I was very impressed from what I saw on screen from both an asthetic and purely imaginative perspective, however much more will be revealed when we actually have a chance to play the game. This is definitly a title we will be looking to follow very closely here at Ripten.