Bayonetta 3's lengthy delay may have been down to switching from an early "semi-open world" concept

Bayonetta 3 was once meant to be a "semi-open world game", and there are "a lot of vestiges of the semi-open world design in the final game", according to a industry source.

Journalist Imran Khan revealed the news to his Patreon followers, responding to questions about why "on earth [Bayonetta 3's development] took so long". 

"It was announced very early, there was a pandemic that really slowed things down, the initial director left fairly early on in the project, etc. But another reasons that most people don’t know is that, at one point in development, Bayonetta 3 was scoped as a semi-open world game," Khan said (thanks, NME).

"At one point in development, Bayonetta 3 was scoped as a semi-open world game. The design was going to draw more off Astral Chain than Nier Automata, but the idea was that a large hub world would send Bayonetta (or whoever else) to different worlds which would themselves be fairly open. Maybe Super Mario 64 would be a good reference point for this.

"There was a lot of work and experimentation on this idea, but it kept falling apart when it came to pacing, and eventually Nintendo wanted them to scale back. It was, I hear, also not particularly well-performing on the Switch hardware either."

"There’s still a lot of vestiges of the semi-open world design in the final game," Khan added. "The hub world, Thule, is broken up into smaller pieces that Bayonetta and Viola navigate to get into the next major world. The chests were redesigned a bit to be searched for in larger areas and provide a lot more variety to make use of the environment. Even the various weapon transformations were going to play into traversal a bit."

He ends on reminding players that "Platinum Games tends not to throw away old ideas", so it's possible some of Bayonetta 3's innovations and features will pop up in future games.

We gave the latest installment 3.5 stars out of 5 in our Bayonetta 3 review, saying:

"When taking charge of the action, Bayonetta is more fun to rip and tear with here than ever before, with some smart evolutions in how her role as a summoner can add to her combat without taking anything meaningful away. 

"But some of the same issues that plagued its predecessors are just as present here as well, if not more-so – just get out of Bayonetta's way, and let her do what she does best (which might not be very nice, but sure can be hella fun)."

Long-serving Bayonetta voice actor Hellena Taylor was alleged offered an "insulting" $4,000 to reprise her role in the upcoming Bayonetta 3, encouraging fans to boycott the game, and prompting an industry-wide conversation around the standards of pay. 

While Platinum Games had initially put Taylor’s absence from the game to “various overlapping circumstances”, the actor stated on Twitter that it was very much about pay. Jennifer Hale, the voice actor replacing Hellena Taylor in the title role for Bayonetta 3, issued a brief statement on the ongoing voice acting pay controversy, forcing Platinum to ask that players be respectful to both actors.

Head over to our upcoming Switch games guide for a full look at all the other games on the slate for Nintendo's console throughout the rest of this year.