God of War art director joins Naughty Dog after Netflix studio closes

Raf Grassetti, lead artist on 2018’s God of War and later art director of its acclaimed sequel God of War Ragnarök, has announced that he’s starting a “new chapter” at The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog. after the closure of Netflix’s “AAA.” “study in October.

Grassetti joined Sony Santa Monica in 2013, rising through the ranks to become the studio’s art director in 2022. However, he announced his departure last May, revealing that he had joined Netflix Games to work on a new AAA title alongside to the creative head of Halo Infinite, Joseph Staten. , former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny, and former Coalition head coach Jerry Edsall.

Unfortunately, that project turned out to be short-lived. Netflix announced it was canceling development and dissolving the studio in October, without revealing what the team had been working on for the previous 18 months.

There has since been speculation that Staten has rejoined Halo Studios, as the company closed its job opening for a creative director at the time of his departure from Netflix. And Grassetti has now revealed his own return to old haunts as part of a “new chapter”, albeit in this case swapping one renowned Sony studio for another.

“I am very excited to join the amazing team and project at Naughty Dog and to return to Playstation,” Grassetti wrote on social media. “I will join [Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann] and his team as art director, to help create the next big thing. A huge thank you to everyone who participated in making this happen and to all my friends from the sister studios. I’m excited and can’t wait to share more about this! Health!”

As for what Grassetti will be working on at Naughty Dog, it remains a secret. The studio hasn’t released a new game (discounting remasters) since 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2. Its most recently announced project was its standalone multiplayer game The Last of Us, but it was canceled in December of last year.

At the time, Naughty Dog teased that it was working on “more than one ambitious new single-player game,” and it seems likely that one of them will be The Last of Us Part 3, given the huge success of HBO’s The Last of. American television adaptation and Neil Druckmann’s recent suggestion that “there is probably one more chapter to this story.” There has also been speculation that the studio is working on a fantasy-themed title, but it remains to be seen where Raf Grassetti might currently be focusing his energies in his new Naughty Dog role.