PlatinumGames' recently announced The Legend of Korra game may be missing the Wii U boat, but don't believe for a second that this means Platinum hasn't appreciated its partnership with Nintendo these past few years. Bayonetta 2 director Yusuke Hashimoto spoke to CVG at E3 2014, sharing among other things a desire to continue the Bayonetta series with Nintendo should the opportunity arise.
It's perhaps shocking to realize that Bayonetta 2 is Platinum's first sequel; though you may think this would make development easier versus working on a brand new IP, Hashimoto admits to feeling slightly pressured to meet and exceed sequel expectations. Still, it's a game he and his team really wanted to make, and Nintendo's own input proved quite valuable. According to Hashimoto:
I feel that it's important to let your creativity flow and Nintendo has been able to provide us with the freedom to do what we had originally envisioned. We were able to have a lot of back-and-forth between PlatinumGames and Nintendo and they were able to provide objective feedback; 'Maybe that's a little too much,' or, 'maybe you should try this.' I feel that was really good and helped push Bayonetta 2 to even higher quality.
We started out with a fundamental freedom, with Nintendo telling us to go and create the game as we saw fit. But as the game started to take shape and we were starting to put all the pieces together, they were able to point out some things that we didn't realise ourselves. That was really helpful for us.
This fluid relationship echoes Tomonobu Itagaki's experience working with Nintendo on Devil's Third. It would great to see more collabortations like these in the future.
Read on to learn about other development tidbits, like how original Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya was the one who decided that the Wii U port of the first game should include Nintendo costumes. Then sit back until October 2014, when Bayonetta 2 (along with a bundled copy of the original) arrives exclusively on Wii U.
