Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya has talked about Hideaki Itsuno taking over directing duties for the series, saying that without his DMC3 and 4, "there would have been no Bayonetta."
While Hideki Kamiya created the Devil May Cry series, it's safe to say that a ton of people associate the series with Dragon's Dogma creator Hideaki Itsuno, who joined the series during Devil May Cry 2 and directed each of the games from there (barring the edgelord reboot). While DMC2 was a total mess, Itsuno was brought on as director to try and salvage what was there (to which Kamiya says "I don’t think that’s what he really wanted to be doing, to be honest"), but then bounced back with arguably the best action game ever made with Devil May Cry 3.
