After over five years of waiting Bayonetta 3 is finally almost upon us... The game looks great but recent controversy puts the sales and future in a bit of uncertainty.

I kinda got my Platinum fix from Nier Automata this month, but this is shaping up to be a solid entry in the series. It's also doing well in preorders, so I'd say the Bayo team will be fine.

This whole controversy thing is insane to me. Like, this is the hill that people want to die on? In a world with so much corruption and unfairness and tragedy?

I always feel dumber/dirtier for watching people "argue" on the internet/social media.

But it's so luridly fascinating!

Anyway, the latest trailer was kind of amazing. I was kind of concerned about this game, given the delays, but it looks awesome. Mario & Rabbids is guaranteed to be a banger, as well. Everything's comin' up Switch!

I didn't watch the latest trailer for story concerns. I want to go in blind. I've been watching Deebee Geek playing through the first one but I won't be able to watch him go through both games in time.. thus I will maybe need to find a story refresher online.

As for the controversy, I totally understand how Hellena feels. Though we don't know the specific reasoning behind it and I'm with you as far as the world putting so much thought and care into it. I've heard of others crying over this. I can't get that emotional about it. I just hope Jennifer did a good job and also wasn't paid so little for the role. I also hope it's a good game and I wish Hellena success in the future.

As someone who refuses to know about things, I'm annoyed I even know what you guys are talking about!

Hype. Can't wait to pick up my copy on launch day.

@DrFinkelstein I feel like there's a lot more than we know. I have no doubt Jennifer Hale will do great with the role (she's my favorite video game voice actress), thought it will be jarring not to hear Hellena's voice as Bayonetta at first. Union rates are standard ($250 an hour (union rate) for approximately 16 hours of work on the first game - $4,000). Do VAs deserve more, plus royalties? I think so. But we also don't know Platinum's side of the story yet.

@Secret_Tunnel
I've always aspired to blissful ignorance. But it's so hard...

@ludist210

I appreciate the info and insight into the standard rate for a VA. GameXplain reports that she was offered perhaps $15,000+ for the role in total, of which Hellena is saying that's a bullshit lie. So who knows.



Video shared for posterity. Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to the game still. I think it'll be weird not to hear Hellena's voice, sure, but I am hopeful it'll sound good indeed.

I remember hearing years ago when voice actor's were raising awareness that they're not getting any residuals, and better pay that they can make about 800 dollars a day, which is pretty good money, except that since it's it's not a super stable occupation, it's all contract work, like any acting gig, they're not working every day so they're not going home with $200 000 at the end of the year, (800 x 250 working days in a year) unless of course they're big sought-after talents. Some actors might only get a single gig in a month, and $800 in a month is not enough to live on. Looks like her only voice acting gig recently has been Bayonetta in Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS, and that was 8 years ago now. Ultimate reused the lines from the Wii U/3DS games, and she wouldn't have gotten payment/royalties/residuals for that. Obviously she might have been getting other work in theatre or elsewhere that isn't listed on IMDb, but still it sounds like she's struggling.



Since $800 per day at five days (sessions) would equal $4000 I wonder if that is what she thought she was being offered if she indeed mistakenly made an error, when really they meant $4000 per day, and it would be five days of recording. Even still her agent would probably clear that up with her.

I'd be way more sympathetic to Taylor if she hadn't tried to incite a boycott and hadn't thrown Jennifer Hale under the bus. Those actions are deliberately attempting to sabotage a bunch of people (like, everyone who worked on the game for the past several years) who had nothing to do with her situation.

@Brick Lots of jobs are not able to be measured strictly hourly because they also include a lot of unpaid work in self-promotion, finding / retaining clients, etc.

Like I used to be shocked at how much the web dev consultants who came in to help us out at my web dev job got paid. It was a lot more than me! But then you talk to some of them and realize that they're spending a lot of money on marketing, spending a lot of time finding clients, etc. so it's not quite the ideal situation I thought it was. I'm sure some people do really well with it, but others probably not so much.

It's reviewing very well!

Metacritic: 89
Opencritic: 89

Very well indeed. NintendoLife's review was glowing! 10/10!!!

Did anyone else actually play this game?

For me, it felt like a real step down from other games. The basic Bayonetta combat is fun, but there's so much in the way of enjoying that. A big culprit is the over-reliance on the giant summoning mechanic. There are times where it feels cool, but most of the time it felt like a overcentralized, simple mechanic. You kind of have to use it for the bigger, bulkier enemies, but it's just spamming the same few moves. Long cutscenes where not much happens, tons of dull gameplay setpieces, and too much exploration. Every once in a while something fun will happen in a cutscene or you'll get a good setpiece, or a cleverly hidden item. But the hit rate for these things is way too low for how much space they take up. It really feels like the magic's been lost here. Like they lost touch with what's special about Bayonetta.

And the story is just abysmal. I don't want to give it the deep dive. But it's like they forgot what made Bayonetta such a fun character. And that ending....

@Hero_Of_Hyrule

I started it, but I want to play through Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope before I keep going.

I'm enjoying it so far but I haven't gotten much through it yet. One or two chapters past the initial epilogue.

I saw your word 'abysmal' and I'll leave it at that for now. I don't want to taint my perception further by reading anyone's opinions on the game as a whole or any specifics. I did watch a couple of reviews before launch and I saw the story was one of the greatest points of contention.

I guess we'll see how I feel when the time comes. I'm usually more forgiving in things like that. Reel One's 'romantic film' trailers are usually the only things where story makes me want to puke. Those are horrendously edited and also show the entire film (not that I'm interested in those kind of romance films anyway; I just see them because I follow a movie trailers channel on YouTube). But I digress...

That's totally valid! It'll be interesting to hear what you think. I hope you have fun :)

Hero_Of_Hyrule said:

Did anyone else actually play this game?

Me! Even though I was kinda lukewarm on the first two games, for some reason B3 got me inspired to subscribe to GameFly and give it a try. As well as Sonic Frontiers, which, uhh, we'll see how that goes when it gets here...

I just finished Chapter 9 and yeah, I feel largely the way you do. The core combat is easily the best part of the game, but it feels like I'm only doing it about 40% of the time. The rest of the time is exploration (better than I'd expect but not amazing) or cutscenes (awful) or set-piece minigames (some hits, more misses) or Jeanne's stealth sidescrollers (janky). The cutscenes and minigames were definitely most prevalent at the start, too, and I'm happier now that I'm in the middle and there's less of it. I dread that the late-game will ramp up the story and minigames again, though.

One thing I've never liked about this series is, it's just so hard to look at. Everything's so monochrome and overly detailed, it's just impossible to discern things at a glance, especially when combat gets hectic with lots of different kinds of enemies and witch time effects and junk going on. Every different kind of enemy is just some assortment of white blades and neon-green goop. And the cutscenes, hoo boy. It's like watching a Transformers movie, just a tumbling mess in shaky cam with two cuts every second.

And yes, I'm not crazy about all the new giant stuff in this game, friends and foes alike. The giant enemy hitboxes are massive and either invisible or don't match the animation well. And the camera often misses parts of their animation because they're so big. The camera gets even less cooperative when you summon your own giant, who should be the new focus of the action instead of stationary dancing Bayo. Also, any time a game asks you to hold multiple shoulder buttons down at once, especially on the same side, it's a mistake. Having to hold a button to summon a giant, and another to hold stance for some of their moves, feels like it's giving me finger pretzels. Why can't I just toggle the summon on and off?!

On a similar note, I want to like the new playable character Viola, but it kills me that you can't fully remap the controls, and can only choose from four shoulder button options. I want ZL to be my Witch Time button (bayo-dodge, viola-block) but then they have different buttons for giant summoning, and I get confused going back and forth in the story.

And for as much as I like the core combat, it has the same problem every Platinum game does, where there's intricate systems for the player to take advantage of, and the game is terrible at teaching you how those systems work. I'm more than halfway through the game and I'm still fuzzy on how stunning enemies works, or the special finishing moves, or when to summon my giant (is the answer just, always?). I have to watch this guy's videos to learn how to play Platinum's games. And unfortunately for me it looks like he hasn't made any Bayo3 videos yet.

I know I'm complaining a lot, but I like the game overall! I'm just frustrated that a great core game is surrounded with not great stuff. Even when I'm enjoying the game, I can't help but wish I were just playing Devil May Cry instead, because it's just less encumbered by the problems Bayo has, even when it shares them.