God of War Ragnarok art director Raf Grassetti has joined up with The Last of Us and Uncharted developer Naughty Dog.
In a post on social media platform X earlier today, Grassetti shared a picture of the Naughty Dog logo, together with the simple caption “new chapter” to announce that he’d signed up with the studio.
It’s likely that Grassetti will be working on Naughty Dog’s next project, which is almost certainly the same game Neil Druckmann said has been in development since 2020 last month, although we don’t know any more about the game than that yet, unfortunately.
As for Grassetti, he’s probably best known as the art director on 2022’s God of War Ragnarok, having served as an artist on the 2018 predecessor as well. If you loved the art direction of Kratos’ latest adventure, you’ve got Grassetti to thank, at least in part.
Of course, that’s not all the work Grassetti has done in the gaming industry. After leaving Sony in May 2023, Grassetti joined up with Netflix to create “a brand-new studio and AAA multiplatform game”, although it seems like he may have been one of the casualties when Netflix shut down “Team Blue” in October.
Prior to his time with Sony, Grassetti worked as a character artist on projects like BioWare’s Mass Effect 3, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Origins, and CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, among many others. Suffice it to say he’s an old industry hand.
Since Naughty Dog is a Sony subsidiary, Grassetti is effectively coming home to Sony, although he’ll technically be working under different management in this new position.
As for Naughty Dog itself, it’s currently working on at least one as-yet unannounced project.
Given that the studio moved towards focusing exclusively on single-player games back in December last year, it’s likely the new game won’t be a multiplayer live-service affair, which, given one of Sony’s more recent high-profile failures, is probably for the best.
