Overview
Dept. Heaven is a franchise developed by Sting Entertainment containing four episodes that are numbered in non-chronological order, so Episode IX is not the ninth game released in the series. Instead the games are numbered in terms of their "originality" with the goal being to make the titles with larger numbers more unique than the episodes that preceded them. Although series creator, Shinichi Ito, has also stated that the numbers represent the order in which the games in the series were first planned, so the missing episodes in between titles represent ideas for games that have yet to be created [2].
Every episode in the Dept. Heaven series features completely different game systems but the commonalities that connect them all are that every mainline title is designed by Shinichi Ito and that each entry is set in a different world within the same universe, sharing several characters and locations between games.
Episodes
Complementary Games
Trivia
- Riviera and Yggdra Union were never planned to be part of a series when they were first created. It wasn't until Knights in the Nightmare began development that Yoshihisa Tomita, a designer and marketing man at Sting, suggested to Shinichi Ito that his games should be unified under one franchise. This lead to Riviera and Yggdra Union being retconned into the Dept. Heaven series [1].
- In an interview with Dengeki Online, Shinichi Ito stated that he hoped to make Episode III in the Dept. Heaven series an MMO RPG for the PC. However nothing ever came of these plans [2].
Sources
- Interview with Shinichi Ito & Yoshihisa Tomita (October 10, 2008).
- Dengeki Online interview with Shinichi Ito (October 1, 2008).
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