10 Video Games You Didn't Realise Were Originally Open World

The beauty of the Bayonetta franchise is the contained intensity of each stage, hurling players down a largely linear path but filling it to the brim with enemies to waste.

But Bayonetta 3 very nearly took the series in a semi-open world direction, according to a report published by journalist Imran Khan shortly after the game's release.

As it turns out, this was the reason that Bayonetta 3 took the better part of five years to release following its announcement - PlatinumGames initially conceived the game inside of a large hub world which would send Bayonetta to a series of smaller, expansive worlds.

Khan compared it to both Astral Chain and Super Mario 64, yet despite the developer spending a long time working on the idea, pacing problems led Nintendo to ask the team to scale their vision back.

And so, PlatinumGames reverted to developing Bayonetta 3 in a more conventional style akin to its two predecessors, though it's worth noting that many of the game's stages were considerably larger this time around - likely a carry-over from the original design intent.