Highlights
- Santa Monica Studio's recent job ad suggests the company is working on another action RPG.
- The listing pertains to "a new unannounced title," a wording that matches multiple other job ads from the company dating back as far as early 2022.
- Santa Monica Studio's development efforts have been exclusively focused on the God of War series since the early 2000s. While all GoW games featured RPG elements, the last two were full-fledged action RPGs.
Santa Monica Studio is working on an unannounced action role-playing game, as suggested by some newly emerged evidence. While many industry watchers expect the company's next project to be another entry in its most popular franchise, God of War, Santa Monica Studio has yet to officially announce anything of the sort.
The developer's last game was God of War Ragnarok, which released to critical acclaim in late 2022. A year later, Santa Monica Studio treated God of War Ragnarok to free Valhalla DLC, expanding the base experience with a highly replayable roguelike mode. But as far as its next game is concerned, the company continues to keep its cards close to the chest.
What to Expect From the God of War Franchise in 2024
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Santa Monica Studio's Next Game May Have Started Development In Early 2022
And while that radio silence continues, Santa Monica Studio may have just hinted at its upcoming game's genre of choice as part of a recently posted job ad. The listing, reviewed by Game ZXC, reveals that the group is currently looking for a senior technical user interface and experience designer that is ideally well-versed in developing in-engine UIs for action RPGs. The opening pertains to "a new unannounced title" from Santa Monica Studio, with that wording matching many of the company's other job ads dating as far back as February 2022.
Since its beginnings in the late '90s, the Sony subsidiary has always tackled one game at a time, not accounting for pre-production periods. That pattern has now repeated itself across seven development cycles spanning a quarter of a century in total. It is thus plausible that all mentions of an "unannounced title" in the last two years' worth of Santa Monica Studio's job ads refer to the same project.
Likewise, seeing how the company's in-house development efforts have been exclusively focused on God of War since the early 2000s, the chances of its next project being another entry in the long-running franchise seem fairly high. Ahead of last year's announcement of the Valhalla DLC for Ragnarok, one established leaker suggested that another God of War game could already be in the works, speculating that the project could arrive in the form of a "half-sequel."
Game ZXC's monitoring of the company's hiring activity has previously unveiled evidence of Santa Monica Studio's unannounced title being a third-person action game. Combined with this newly emerged mention of action RPGs, it is certainly starting to sound like the developer's next project will be mechanically similar to the recent God of War games.
God of War
God of War is an action game created by David Jaffe and Sony's Santa Monica Studio. The series is considered a flagship franchise for PlayStation consoles with nine mainline games, with the first launching in 2005 for the PlayStation 2. The series revolves around a Spartan warrior named Kratos, who was tricked into killing his family by Ares, the Greek God of War. Kratos follows a path of vengeance against the Gods, eventually attempting to settle down in ancient Norway, though he soon crosses paths with the many Norse Gods.
