In more revealing witch goodness, Platinum Games demonstrated there are more wicked ways than a simple bullet storm, death hair slam, or leggy roundhouse kick to slay an enemy. Unleash your magical energy for a “torture attack”, dealing a myriad of successive moves to send the demons back from whence they came forth.

[Gametrailers via/ Joystiq]

TGS is gone but it left nice spoils like the overly dramatic FFXIII trailer. Well, it’s also left us a new Bayonetta trailer and boy is it a good one!

There’s so much going on in these 3 minutes of video that makes me believe this game will not only be hard but dense. First of all  we have Cereza, Bayonetta’s daughter, who’s come out of the blue but with that sweet face and addictively saccharine voice is sure to become a loved character in the game. Then there’s Bayonetta’s father who seems to be a power figure beyond good and evil whom you’ll no doubt have to kill at some point. And then there’s this blooming love affair going on with Luka. Oh god I think they are slipping us a family drama disguised as a hardcore action game.

Oh and did you catch Fly Me To The Moon used in the game’s soundtrack?

As a bonus here’s a couple of videos, first up 2 semi-live action tv ads for the game currently running in Japan. Gorgeous actress!

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At times many aspects of an original design are lost in the final product. Creating an enemy the player not only understands, but one that generates an emotional response is a lengthy process of trial and error. Through PlatinumGames development blog you begin to see the emotional attachment felt by the designers for their monsters and their efforts to get it “just right”.

One animator likens Bayonetta’s enemies as his children, secretly rooting for them during battles. However he still maintains the necessity for balance,

“As an enemy animator, I want everyone to be able to enjoy anxiety-packed, exhilarating battles; however, that doesn’t mean I can just go around making enemy attacks super-hard as a prank. If you have an enemy that has nothing going for it other than powerful attacks, all that enemy will do is cause stress.”

Going further back to the concept phase of an enemy, producer Yusuke Hashimoto speaks about his initial idea of having the enemy monsters as divine angels, wanting to incorporate two solid things in his designs: You should be able to visually see an enemy’s vitality. The internals of the enemy must make them seem to be incredibly strange beasts.

On the company development blog, Platinum allows individual team members to write their experience in designing the game. Even if you have no interest in the game, I encourage everyone to read at least one of their posts. It adds a personal element to Bayonetta, giving you insight into the overall process in creating the game.

After the jump I included a before and after of enemy concept art and a couple of “precursor” enemy animations.

[PlatinumGames]

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We dont get tired of Bayonetta around here and Platinum Games just released a new trailer a couple of days ago. In this new trailer, full of deliciously cheesy voice acting, we get more insight into the story of the game, even finally seeing one other witch in action. There’s also a lot of gameplay shown and so far it looks very fleshed out and deep. There’s even a few clips of Bayonetta turned into what looks like a feral black cat.

Hopefully this game will be easy to learn but hard as hell to master. The trailer closes with what appears to be a… doppelganger of Bayonetta? That’s too much dominatrix for one game!

It seems not all hope is lost for those of us who feel games have gotten terribly easy as the generations have passed. Hideki Kamiya, director of the upcoming PlatinumGames title Bayonetta, wrote on the company’s blog that Bayonetta will not be another nail in the coffin of challenging games.

On the contrary he hopes Bayonetta will be “a sadistically hard game”, and that’s a bold statement. But considering he’s the father of the Devil May Cry series, this shouldn’t come as a surprise and furthermore, it is a guarantee that when he says sadistically hard, he means it. Will Bayonetta make us cry in pain and then beg for more? We can only hope, and it really does make sense to have a dominatrix-looking witch as the lead, if that’s the case.

Let’s hear it, who’s ready for a really hard game?

[Platinum Games’ Blog]