Former God of War and Star Wars devs team up to make new "single-player-focused action adventure"

rockpapershotgun.com:

Former Star Wars Jedi series director and God Of War developer Stig Asmussen has founded a new studio, Giant Skull, to work on "gameplay-driven, story immersed action-adventure games set in captivating worlds". Based in Los Angeles, Giant Skull are even now developing a new "AAA single-player-focused action adventure" that runs on Unreal Engine 5.

They've launched a website to celebrate, which currently consists of some Loki-esque conceptual teaser footage of dormant androids, excitably redacted CRT text, and imploding balls of VHS cassettes. It's a headache-inducing melange of signifiers that sort of suggests a development team who are harkening back to pre-internet media with boutique production values. There's a text box that lets you type in commands to unlock what I'm guessing will be a concept artwork of, like, a dude hefting a gun at some distant alien mountains. I've tried out a few commands myself, including "what is the Matrix", "can dogs look up" and "knock knock", but have so far unearthed no amazing development secrets. Let me know if you have more luck.

Joining Asmussen at Giant Skull are CTO Jonn Carr, who was previously Star Wars Jedi: Survivor technical director, art director Patrick Murphy, formerly art director on Fortnite and League Of Legends, and Lauren McLemore, who was Fortnite's lead producer. There's also design director Jeff Magers, who also worked on Jedi: Survivor and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, animation director Brian Campbell, who had the same job at Epic Games, and COO/CFO Anthony Scott, whose credits include Kuju, Unbroken Studios and Rocksteady Studios.

Asmussen has been talking about Giant Skull's launch to GamesIndustry.biz. Apparently, the idea for the new studio came to him while he was working on Jedi: Survivor. "I really enjoyed my time at Respawn, and the Jedi team is incredible," he said. "EA was a very supportive company. But this opportunity presented itself, and... there was this itch that as soon as I started