The story of Shining the Holy Ark was designed with a more mature audience in mind than earlier games in the Shining series were targeted towards. In a 2009 interview, producer Hiroyuki Takahashi commented: "Until [Shining] Wisdom, the idea had been simply to develop a story that would attract a broad range of users. From Holy Ark on, the story and game were redesigned to focus on the Saturn players of the time. Japanese Saturn owners were generally in their late-teens or early-twenties. The age group had shifted away from children, so... the concept was 'fantasy that can be enjoyed by adults'. This new approach led to a darker, deeper world than we had been creating for the 'all ages' category prior to Holy Ark. We started to work on the plot of a story that would be appropriate in such a world."