CCRB RECORD No. 0005
Bayonetta
Determination: Explicit — Deicide 3, Blasphemy 3, Occult 2
You kill the being every angel prays to, after fighting your way up a hierarchy borrowed from Christian theology.
The previous record noted the deicide and stopped there, which missed how much of the surrounding structure is borrowed rather than invented. The enemies are the Hierarchy of Laguna, the angels of Paradiso, and their design draws directly on Judeo-Christian conceptions of angels as divine and monstrous. Rank is signalled by halo and labelled by sphere — First, Second and Third — which is the celestial hierarchy set out by Pseudo-Dionysius and carried into Aquinas. The four Auditio who serve as principal bosses are the cardinal virtues: Fortitudo, Temperantia, Iustitia and Sapientia. Above them is Jubileus, The Creator, to whom all of Paradiso prays, described as the total embodiment of Divine Will and possessed of a name humans cannot pronounce. Bayonetta kills her. The game's opening has Bayonetta in a nun's habit conducting a funeral service as bait for angels, then casting the habit…