Bayonetta - Her Complete Origin

MojoPlays Origins – Bayonetta If you thought Kingdom Heart & Mortal Kombat had confusing stories. Say hello to Bayonetta, where time travel, sparse details and mind-bending uncertainty reign supreme. Get a notepad, you’re gonna need it. These are many questions when it comes to the badass, gun-slinging hyper-sexualized beauty and her tale of memories regained and justice served. But, with a character this cool and gameplay this fun, who cares if everything makes sense!? Some video games tales are just easy to understand: bad guy steals princess; good guy saves princess; everyone is happy. Others are a bit more difficult and require a whole heaping of background and explanation. Bayonetta is among the latter and this is her origin. And she’s only had 2 games so far. The story begins 500 years ago in the holy European town of Vigrid where two rival factions work together to preserve the balance between light and darkness in the universe: The Lumen Sages control the light, and the Umbran Witches reign over darkness. Each group holds half of a powerful treasure known as “The Eyes of the World” with the Lumen Sages in possession of the Right Eye and the Umbran Witches of the Left. With harmony existing between the two groups, the world also knows harmony. Until a certain witch and sage from either side have a baby together. Enter Bayonetta. The lovechild of that sage and witch’s union that is deeply prohibited, her mere appearance ends the long-standing harmony between the clans, causing “The Great War.” Her father, Balder, is excommunicated from the Lumen Sages and her mother, Rosa, is imprisoned by the Umbran Witches. Seeing as the witches are victorious in the war, Bayonetta is raised a witch, but a fierce backlash soon escalates to a witch hunt, leading to all but two of their clan being killed: Bayonetta and her friend Jeanne. (Pronounced “Jean” with French Pronunciation so like: “zj-haun”) Each Umbra Witch has the ability to summon contracted demons to fight alongside them and give them great strength, Though seeing as Bayonetta has mixture of both sage and witch blood; her powers are thereby increased compared to others in her covenant. So, out of the fear of her powers falling into enemy hands, Jeanne casts Bayonetta into a deep sleep, wiping her memory clean, and locks her in a coffin at the bottom of a lake where she slumbers for 500 years. Some friend, huh?! Now-a-days she probably would just have “unfriended” her on Facebook. On to the events of the first Bayonetta game, where – 500 years later – our heroine is awoken from her slumber by a journalist who’s torn to pieces by angels for his efforts, but at least he gets the narrative started! Or at least his son Luka, who witnessed his death does. Bayonetta possesses a jewel that she believes to be the “Left Eye of the World,” and thinks the answers she seeks could be found if she obtains the Right Eye as well. With the help of an informant/Joe Pesci impersonator: Enzo, she tracks the Right Eye to her hometown of Vigrid, where she meets a young girl that looks shockingly similar to her known as Cereza. The young girl thinks that Bayonetta is her mother, which frustrates the witch, but she ultimately ends up bonding with and protecting Cereza. Bayonetta also meets Jeanne once more, but her friend has been brainwashed into believing that they are enemies, so Bayonetta must protect Cereza while keeping Jeanne at bay. Here’s where things get a bit tricky! Bayonetta soon finds her father and he lays an epic time travelling truth-bomb on his daughter: Cereza is Bayonetta as a child, and Balder brought the child to the present so that Bayonetta could somehow inspire herself into knowing that she’s in fact the Left Eye! Not her jewel! Yay, for time travel! Balder reveals himself to be the Right Eye, and so the “Eyes of the World” treasure is thus completed, which sparks the arrival of The Creator, Jubileus, who sets about creating a new world to replace and destroy the old one. (10:00) Luckily, however, Jeanne snaps to her senses and actually helps Bayonetta for once by rescuing her from Jubileus’ grip (essentially, removing the Left Eye), thus defeating The Creator and averting disaster. Balder eventually dies when Jubileus’s head comes crashing back down to Earth, but not before preventing a mysterious entity from attempting to escape from him, to which he holds at bay while he succumbs to his injuries. The second game picks up with Bayonetta doing some Christmas shopping, only to be interrupted when HOLY CRAP SHE JUST PUNT KICKED A FIGHTER JET! And now she is fighting angels on top of it while it’s still flying, Ya know? Typical holiday festivities. Anyways. During the battle Bayonetta summons the demon Gomorrah, but it breaks free from her control and steals Jeanne’s soul, taking it back to Inferno. The young witch then sets out to retrieve her friend’s soul, but she learns that the mission is next to impossible and, also, if she spends too much time in Inferno she’ll be trapped there forever. (0:38) On her way to the underworld, she meets Loki who claims that he can access the gate to Inferno. Angels are chasing him, so he strikes a deal with Bayonetta: protection for access into Inferno. Along the way, however, they run into a mysterious masked Lumen Sage who seems to have a vendetta to settle against the amnesiac Loki, which Bayonetta thwarts … twice. Later upon arriving at the gates of Inferno, Bayonetta and Loki run into him again along with another mysterious figure: Loptr. The Masked Lumen attacks Loki while Loptr shows Bayonetta a vision that suggests that her father wasn’t actually responsible for the witch hunts and her mother’s death, but it was her newfound partner Loki who instigated it all! Loki then opens the gates to Inferno and he and Bayonetta enter the underworld. Suddenly releasing she has limited time to save Jeanne, the young witch puts the Loki issue aside and instead rescues her friend. But, before being able to confront Loki, the masked Lumen Sage appears again and reveals himself to be none other than her father Balder – just much younger and somehow time-travelled from the long-ago past to the present! Yay, time travel again! A strange reaction then occurs with Loki, sending Bayonetta and Balder back in time 500 years to the witch hunts where our heroine fights alongside her mother and the Umbran Witches against the angels. Here, Bayonetta runs into child who looks and sounds just like Loki, but is instead revealed to be a younger version of Loptr, in turn she also learns that Loki is innocent from starting the witch hunts and killing her mother, with the guilty party is none other than Loptr. Having travelled back to the present once again (stay with us!) Bayonetta convinces the younger Balder that Loki is innocent and that Loptr is to blame. But, it’s not that simple, because you see Loptr and Loki are actually two halves of the same being: Aesir the former ruler of the Human World, who’s responsible for creating the “Eyes of the World.” Having split apart, Loptr represents Aesir’s evil side. Loptr tries to reabsorb Loki’s Sovereign Power, which would make him Aesir once more without Loki’s influence, but Loki resists and greatly weakens Loptr who is then defeated by the combined strength of Bayonetta and Balder and the world’s saved yet again! But not before Loptr’s spirit attempts to escape into the past where he would be born anew. To prevent this from happening; Balder merges with Loptr, knowing that doing so would eventually consume him with pure evil energy. With his last ounce of free will; he tells his daughter that she will have to be the one that stops him when the time comes. Which … if you’ve been keeping track … has already happened. Yes it turns out that Loptr was actually the real enemy of the first game, not Balder, as he was merely possessed by him; A revelation that leaves Bayonetta at her weakest emotionally. … Until the post Christmas sales start and she goes right back to shopping with Jeanne. While Bayonetta’s storyline is not all that long yet, it already has enough twists, turns and time travel to fill multiple Sci-Fi novels. With a fascinating backstory, and a lovable main character, the series draws endless amounts of adoring fan theories and there is already much speculation online about the storyline to the upcoming third game, despite it being very early in production. Hell at the rate the series keeps jumping through time we wouldn’t be surprised if we see Bayonetta face off against the older version of herself while protecting Jeanne as a child in the era of the Dinosaurs that has been taken over by cybernetic angels. Wouldn’t surprise us!