During production, new gameplay options were implemented to "keep up with fresh action games"; among these is the Devil Bringer's ability to bring enemies towards the characters. Unlike Dante's progress in "Devil May Cry 3", Nero was designed to become stronger by upgrading his Devil Bringer ability instead of receiving new weapons after defeating boss characters. During development the production team decided that Nero would be one of two main characters and that Dante was not going to be the only character from previous entries to appear in the series. Producer Hiroyuki Kobashi noted before the game's release they wanted to make Dante seem significantly more powerful than Nero. This was done to create an obvious difference between the strength of a "veteran" when compared to a "rookie". Unlike "Devil May Cry 3", the game's difficulty would be the same in both the Japanese and European versions as the version released in North America.