Bayonetta 3 devs say you don’t have to take her clothes off to have a good time

The Bayonetta series is known equally for its white-knuckle character-based action as much as it is for its heroine getting nearly naked every time she summons a hirsute demon to theatrically feast on her foes. For players who are turned off by the latter, developer PlatinumGames is offering a new option in Bayonetta 3: Naive Angel Mode. That’s the cheeky way of saying you can keep Bayonetta’s clothes on for a more modest gameplay experience.

“We’ve added the revolutionary ‘Naive Angel Mode’ to Bayonetta 3 so more people can fully enjoy it,” PlatinumGames said on Twitter. “By turning it on, you can play right in the living room without having to worry about what’s on screen ... we think.”

The developer showed how Naive Angel Mode will work in practice in a video posted alongside that tweet. In one scene from the video, a nude Bayonetta whose private bits are obscured only by a magical hair vortex is shown fully clothed when Naive Angel Mode is set to “on.” In another, Bayonetta appears to fuse with the Infernal Demon Madama Butterfly, at which point she wears a very revealing costume. Naive Angel Mode provides more coverage for Bayonetta up top when enabled.

Nintendo has a recent track record of releasing more modest versions of Japanese games in North America, having modified character visuals and risqué dialogue in games like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, Fire Emblem Awakening, and Xenoblade Chronicles X. Similarly, PlatinumGames has made concessions in Bayonetta games in an attempt to broaden the series’ audience, offering simplified control inputs and difficulty adjustments. It famously included the “very easy automatic” mode for the original Bayonetta, which was sarcastically nicknamed “mommy mode” by series creator Hideki Kamiya.

Bayonetta 3 is coming to Nintendo Switch on Oct. 28, PlatinumGames and Nintendo confirmed on Wednesday. A physical version of the original Bayonetta will also be released for Switch ahead of that.