God of War art director joins Naughty Dog after Netflix closes

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

Grassetti joined Sony Santa Monica in 2013 and rose 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 Halo Infinite creative director Joseph Staten. , former Overwatch executive producer Chacko Sonny and former Coalition CTO Jerry Edsall.

Unfortunately, this project turned out to be short-lived. Netflix announced it was ceasing development and disbanding the studio in October of this year, without revealing what the team had been working on over the previous 18 months.

Since then, Staten has been rumored to return to Halo Studios, given that the company closed its creative director position around the time of his departure from Netflix. And Grassetti has now announced his return to the old stomping grounds as part of a “new chapter”, although in this case he has swapped one renowned Sony studio for another.

As for what he’ll be working on at Naughty Dog, that remains under wraps. The studio has not released a single new game (excluding remasters) since the release of The Last of Us Part 2 in 2020. The last project announced was the standalone multiplayer game The Last of Us, but it was canceled last December.

At the time, Naughty Dog teased that it was working on “more than one ambitious, all-new single-player game,” and it’s likely that one of them will be The Last of Us Part 3, given the huge success of HBO’s The Last of U.S. TV adaptation and Naughty Dog boss Neil Druckmann’s recent suggestion that “there’s probably another chapter to this story.” There are also rumors that the studio is working on a fantasy game. As for where Raf Grassetti can currently focus his energy in his new role at Naughty Dog, that remains to be seen.