VisanidethDM said:
I'm a huge fan of the genre, and a great Kamiya fan, but Bayonetta's nongameplay elements are hideously bad. Yes, what it attempts is clear, but the game is still terrible at it and there's almost nothing salvageable about it.
DMC pulled off campy coolness perfectly. Bayonetta is a confused mishmash of absolute stupidity. I kept feeling sorry for Kamiya every time a cutscene started. Tbh, the entire art style was a big fluke - I can feel the team's pain in having to invent something from scratch cause they lost the right to work on their actual vision, but the end result is just so... not good.
Game's still absolutely amazing, tho.
The problem with the comparison to DMC, is that DMC was trying to be cool and funny for you, the player. To simplify, DMC jumps up and performs a freeze-frame brofist with the player.
Bayonetta is "stupid" instead of brofist-campy-cool, because the game and the character are smirking
at the player. Not with them.
FYI, the writer of Vanquish has in fact stated that yes, it is a parody and a tribute to tons of overused tropes. Given how Platinum's designers seem to be thinking, I don't think it's overanalysis to see Bayonetta on a few layers of laughing both with-and-at the player, and the assumption of the player's likely foibles and biases.
I can accept it as satire and girl-power-takeover extreme and also not feel "ashamed" about my tastes. Bayonetta the character, is damned cool. An extremely stylish, thoughtful design. Probably one of the most detailed and unique character designs of the generation.
Of course, part of what makes the character so cool, is the built-in parody factor. (Things can be legitimately cool on their own level, yet still have an element of parody. The two states are not mutually exclusive.)
I dunno, some people have said they hate the debate over it, yet here we are a year later still examining it. Bayonetta is definitely not forgettable in any way, and Platinum sure accomplished some mission or other with the full package.
