How is Bayonetta connected to Devil May Cry?
When Kamiya left Capcom in 2006 and co-founded PlatinumGames, he could not take Devil May Cry with him, so he evolved it instead. Bayonetta (2009, published by Sega) is his next stylish action game, and Kamiya has described it openly as Devil May Cry evolved, developed with Devil May Cry 4 as part of his research. The inheritance is structural: a cocky, gun-slinging hero graded on stylish combos, fighting the hosts of heaven this time instead of hell, in set pieces that treat excess as a design principle. His team even signed the lineage in the credits culture, naming themselves Team Little Angels after Devil May Cry's Team Little Devils.
The references run deeper than structure. Dante's alias in the novels, Tony Redgrave, the name inscribed on Ebony and Ivory, becomes in Bayonetta a real man: Antonio Redgrave, the journalist father of Luka, whose death opens the story. Sparda's pistols were named Luce and Ombra, light and shadow; Bayonetta's world is split between the Lumen Sages and the Umbra Witches. Jeanne serves as the mirror-image rival in Dante's red and white. A summonable demon spider, Phantasmaraneae, descends from the first game's Phantom. Even the jokes are genealogical: Luka's former girlfriends are named Claire, Trish, Silvia and Ammy, the heroines of Kamiya's earlier games.