'The shadow remains cast.'

Played with BertKnot.

Like other projects such as Final Fantasy XV (2016) or The Last Guardian (2016), Bayonetta 3's chaotic development cycle could not put the savvy player at ease. Experience has often shown that these chronic delays were the result of a real inability to narrow down the vision and realise the envisioned project. In the case of Final Fantasy XV, the eventual storyline is a twisted reflection of the original Shakespearean narrative, while The Last Guardian suffered from a poor execution, owing to the departure of many key figures from the development team. Bayonetta 3's development cycle began at least in 2017, with numerous comparable titles released in the interim – NieR:Automata (2017), Astral Chain (2019) and obviously Devil May Cry 5 (2019), to name but a few – arguably accounting for the lack of discipline and identity the game exhibits during its thirteen-hour adventure.

The player once again assumes the role of Bayonetta in a multiverse plot, which will hardly make sense whether one knows the story of the previous games or not. The title already stands out in terms of presentation with an excessively long prologue, whose dramatic overtones are out of place for a Bayonetta game. The player is often confined to a passive posture, surprisingly so, and this carries on throughout the game. Across the board, the title spends its time changing moods, unable to establish a meaningful tone: the most absurd sequences in the franchise sit alongside maudlin scenes, with mixed effect at best. It is as if Bayonetta 3 was carried by an MCU-esque cinematic inspiration: there is a succession of action scenes, jokes that often fail and unjustified pathos draped in a very grey colour scheme, but always outside the gameplay sequences.

     Disjointed gameplay, distorted references

These are always characterised by a disjointed execution. The various gameplay components are split up and fail to establish an elegant flow in battle. The Demon Slave mechanic feels very clumsy at first, as the player has to wait for their magic bar to refill, as normal attacks are just too weak. Moreover, the summoning of the various demons negates Bayonetta's ability to move, an unlucky choice for the franchise. In this respect, Astral Chain was much more elegant, pairing a joystick with Legion to maintain strong mobility. Bayonetta 3 seems to borrow ideas from different games, but fails to understand their essence. For example, Wartrain Gouon is an aberrant rehash of Cavaliere from Devil May Cry 5, while Viola feels like an empty facsimile of NieR:Automata's battle system. The combat pacing is also strangely reminiscent of Honkai Impact 3rd (2016), alternating between auto-attacks and bursts. The ultimate product is disappointing: some have considered it a compromise between the first two opuses, regarding the use of Witch Time, but the reality is mostly that it is always more enjoyable to avoid using Demons – except to weave Wink Slave moves – and try to play with the traditional gameplay. Unfortunately, Bayonetta 3 only offers two weapon sets and forces a skill tree, making the experience very gruelling, especially at the beginning of the game. A chronic lack of feedback is also noticeable, spoiling a lot of the combat adrenaline, especially when compared to Devil May Cry 5.

Some of the new features work better, like the Wink Slave, allowing the combos to remain fluid. As for some of the Kaiju Battle sequences, they sometimes succeed: the shmup section in Paris was very effective as an extension of the Demon attacks, while the rail shooter in China was satisfactory, if not completely successful. But these sequences underline the mishmash aspect of Bayonetta 3, which only manages to find harmony on a whim. The game piles up various references to please Hideki Kamiya's ego, but cannot synthesise them in a convincing way. The Side Missions with Jeanne are a hotchpotch of Elevator Action Returns (1994) with an aesthetic that overlaps with Cowboy Bebop (1998), Cutie Honey (1973), Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna (2012) and Metal Gear Solid 3 (2004). Despite their diversity, these missions fail to characterise Jeanne and blatantly lie about their content, as the fake opening presents pure infiltration gameplay. In the same spirit, the Kaiju Battles echo classic scenes from Japanese cinema, but the paucity of gameplay is prohibitive. Likewise, the China finale with Madama Butterfly takes up the Xī Yóu Jì (16th century) with a hypersexualised and unpleasant presentation.

Consistently off-topic, Bayonetta 3 stretches out its exploration phases with superfluous elements that are ill-suited to the title's gameplay. The platforming segments are obnoxious and feel like tasteless borrowings from the regular events of Genshin Impact (2020). Thule is built like a pseudo-open world, whose construction may remind of Dragon's Dogma (2012), but devoid of any substance; Ginnungagap borrows from both the disguised loading screens of God of War (2018) and the parallel dimensions of Astral Chain, albeit with a bland art direction. It is so hard not to compare the game with others, as it hides none of its inspirations and desperately tries to take mechanics that have worked elsewhere. These makeshift borrowings never hide the title's very weak technical execution, excessively reusing its level assets. Chapters 4 and 6 in China use exactly the same structure of lifts and chests to open, to the point where a disconcerting sense of déjà vu sets in.

     A fantasied and racist cultural representation

More aberrant is the cultural representation of the different worlds visited. Shinjuku is passable, but China and Egypt appear as racist parodies of the cultures depicted. The former draws on a Japanese interpretation of wuxia and offends by its lack of variety, while the latter is a medley of everything reminiscent of Middle Eastern cultures. The opening exploration of Cairo is an almost exact retread of the sequence from Uncharted 3 (2011), from the aerial drop to the desert hallucinations. Bayonetta 3 then has the ill taste to use a Western soundtrack, compounding its already despicable representation of Egypt. The temple scenes are marginally better, even though they borrow heavily from the Babylonian imagination, insofar as they mix in a rather effective Lovecraftian aesthetic. The notable exception is the depiction of Paris: one gets the impression that Kamiya has an inordinate love for France and its culture, so much so that numerous references abound in the streets. The spooky atmosphere around the Place de l'Étoile is in some ways reminiscent of the Gilets Jaunes protest movement, and the shops all have names that make sense – for example, Citron Télécom is perhaps a reference to Orange. This fondness for French culture is also supported by the Bayonetta-Arsène Lupin of this universe, very much on point, and with French dubbing for the NPCs. Nevertheless, the efforts on the Paris episode only underline the aberration of the other chapters, where not a word of Mandarin is spoken, as the mythical warriors of China all speak English.

     Bayonetta, drag queen aesthetics and heteronormative sexualisation

Certainly, this cultural representation is dependent on Kamiya's fantasised perspective, reflected in the way he describes the characters and their gender. Bayonetta 3, like many Japanese titles released in recent years, is perfectly embedded in the post-Abe philosophy, which encourages procreation in the name of saving Japan's demography. The emphasis on the nuclear family is very significant and highlights that the franchise has never been about queer representation. It has always been the product of Kamiya's thoroughly assumed fantasies. His conception of drag aesthetics fits into a patriarchal and sexist continuum. Jessica E. Tompkins et al. point out the deep connection between women depicted as strong and their sexualisation on screen, through their 'bodies as weapons'. Indeed, 'the female character's body is an object for use in voyeuristic pleasure and satisfying game combat. In a more empowering interpretation, the theme refers to depictions of women's bodies as the ultimate weapons, with an emphasis on physicality and violence as a means of overcoming obstacles' [1]. Bayonetta is always the target of Kamiya's male gaze, more or less subtly disguised, for whom drag queens are an object of desire, and which he transcribes onto a body considered 'purely female'.

Marsha A. Hewitt has rightly emphasised the importance of performativity in the behaviour of drag queens. They 'enact a "perpetual displacement" of traditional boundaries of anatomy and gender on a variety of levels, where identity is rendered fluid [...] in a continued hyperbolic and subversive process of "resignification and recontextualization", depriving "hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to essentialist accounts of gender identity"' [2]. The fundamental problem with Bayonetta 3 is that it leaves no room for the agentivity of its female figures: all the women characters share the same fate, which is that of a false independence, one that the game takes pleasure in destroying as it proceeds. Because these characters are represented as 'real women', there is no longer any subversion of gender norms, but rather a reaffirmation of traditional patriarchal values, fiercely defended by the ending. Similarly, Bayonetta's dances are vehicles for exposing the sexualised female body, while adhering to cultural standards attributed to women. Although it is not possible to completely deny the idea of female empowerment through dance activities, it is still a tightrope on which reclaiming one's body is very difficult for female dancers [3]. I would argue that Bayonetta's dancing in the first credits provides an elegant and interesting contrast when it comes to gender representation and expression of intimacy, but that the majority of the game – and of the franchise – glosses over these issues, settling for a conventional sexualisation of women.

It is difficult to find any redeeming qualities in Bayonetta 3, because every game design decision seems to be an uncertain half-measure, as if Kamiya's desires were constant objections to the development team's creative ideas. The game seems mired in archaisms. It can only be explained by a chaotic development process, disrupted by successive releases of innovative games. Bayonetta 3 lacks both identity and direction, whilst being overly ambitious. When all is said and done, there is little left enjoyable, nor anything positive. The few functional sequences remain gimmicky and are forgotten as soon as they are over. In the meantime, the game insists on what does not work and was never the focus of the franchise. There is obviously a boldness in renewing itself and wanting to move on, but when the end result struggles to please most people, Kamiya's thinly veiled arrogance comes across mostly as hollow hubris. According to him, the franchise should continue for a long time, but one can only be dubious, considering what is proposed at the moment.

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[1] Jessica E. Tompkins, Teresa Lynch, Irene I. Van Driel and Niki Fritz, ‘Kawaii Killers and Femme Fatales: A Textual Analysis of Female Characters Signifying Benevolent and Hostile Sexism in Video Games’, in Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 64-2, 2020, p. 7.
[2] Marsha A. Hewitt, ‘Cyborgs, drag queens, and goddesses: Emancipatory regressive paths in feminist theory’, in Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 5-1, 1993, p. 143.
[3] Lisa A. Sandlos, Shimmy, Shake or Shudder?: A Feminist Ethnographic Analysis of Sexualization and Hypersexualization in Competitive Dance, PhD thesis, York University, Toronto, 2020, pp. 73-80 and 121-125.

Reviewed on Jan 09, 2023


2 Comments


Holy shit. As someone currently writing a lot of papers on similar things for grad school, this write up was great and quite inspiring. Rock on.

1 year ago

Thank you for your kind words, I wish you the best for your academic pursuits!