I know I’ve overused this line by now, but let’s face it—we all have. And so it is that I declare to you all: The time has come, my friends.

Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition is out in North America today in for PS4 , Xbox One , and PC . It’ll run you $24.99 for a ton of content and one of the finest action gaming experiences of all time.

In celebration, the game’s director Hideaki Itsuno has offered some more words of insight on Nero and Vergil’s designs. I also highly recommend you watch the archive of his E3 livestream appearance. It was wonderful.

Enjoy his text after the jump.

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Regarding Nero’s new “Prototype” costume:
I was originally planning to have him in the standard Order of the Sword uniform, but the producer felt I should include the costume that meant the most to me personally as the director, so I went with this. It’s one of the early designs that was nixed early on in the original game’s development. 

The costume is characterized by the double-button coat, a motif borrowed from old Japanese military uniforms, along with the scarf, which symbolizes his role as the hero. We strove perhaps a bit too hard for uniqueness, and in the end we felt it came off a bit too comic booky, so it wasn’t selected as his final design. But it does look considerably more “heroic” than his current design, wouldn’t you say? It’s pretty cool seeing his scarf flowing in the breeze during cutscenes when you select this costume, so be sure to try it out for yourself.

On Vergil:
Vergil was devised from the beginning as a character who uses a Japanese sword, but determining how he used it was a process of trial-and-error. We were still deliberating over it when I was in America hashing out motion capture details with our action director, Mr. Shimomura, and that’s when I witnessed the Japanese swordplay of one Dan Southworth (the voice and motion actor for Vergil). It was not exactly like that of a true Japanese warrior, but had its own Western flavor perfectly mixed in, and I said, “That’s it!” It showed a respect for authentic Japanese swordsmanship, but balanced with a slightly rough, wild style that perfectly fit Vergil’s profile of a Western man using a Japanese sword.

This image of the character was carried on to his rendition in DmC Devil May Cry, which we made in England, and his movement in DMC4 Special Edition is a definitive amalgam of his past renditions.

Thank you for reading, and before I leave, since it was not a feature on consoles when DMC4 first released in 2008, I would like to encourage all of you that are playing Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition to upload and share your own combo videos online. The entire dev team is really looking forward to watching these.

Thank you all so much for your ongoing support for DMC4 Special Edition and the DMC series.

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Happy demon hunting, everyone, and don’t forget to upload those combo videos! We’ll add ones we love to the DMC4SE Community Videos playlist , so be sure to check it periodically. Now get practicing for the next Style Tournament, beginning a little later this summer!