It's been known for a while that God of War III Director Stig Asmussen joined Respawn Entertainment a while ago, after leaving Sony Santa Monica due to the cancellation of its unannounced PS4 game. What not many know, though, is that Titanfall's studio hides a very sizable community of ex Sony Santa Monica developers.
The latest to join Vince Zampella's team is Jung Park, who previously worked as Lead Concept Designer on Sony Santa Monica's unannounced game currently in development (we featured his art a while ago, and we even interviewed him). According to his linkedin profile, he joined Respawn this November, retaining his role as Lead Concept Designer.
As you can see from the gallery we featured, Park has an extreme talent for sci-fi, and if Respawn will put him at work on the rumored Titanfall sequel, he'd probably fit in perfectly.
Roughly at the same time as Park, former Sony Santa Monica Technical Artist Sean Bae joined Titanfall's studio in the role of Senior Technical Animator.
But that's not all. According to Respawn Entertainment's staff page, Sony Santa Monica veterans form a sizable percentage of the development force. Here's a full list.
- Environment Artist Andrew Hackathorn
- Senior Software Engineer Fabrice Odero
- Senior Programmer Glenn Fiedler
- Senior Game Designer Jason de Heras
- Senior Game Designer Jeff Magers
- QA Tester Jesse Blake McCann
- Senior Environment Artist Jose Zavala
- Lead Concept Artist Jung Park
- Design Lead Justin Hendry
- Artist Ken Feldman
- Artist Kevin Anderson
- QA Tester Kyle Fujita
- Senior Environment Artist Lewis Walden
- Senior Environment Artist Michael Altamirano
- Senior Environment Artist Robert Taube
- Sr Technical Animator Sean Bae
- Game Director Stig Asmussen
- Senior Environment Artist Timo Pihlajamaki
It's relevant to mention that not all the developers mentioned joined at the same time, or close to the round of layoffs following the cancellation of Stig Asmussen's project, but there are eighteen God of War veterans working at Respawn now, summing up to 20% of the listed workforce.
It's unknown whether they're all in the same team or working under Asmussen's direction, but we can definitely say that there will be a bit of God of War in Respawn's upcoming games.