A few days ago, Aaron Linde, lead narrative designer on Halo Infinite, announced over Twitter that he was leaving 343 Industries to pursue a new opportunity. Turns out his new role is at Riot Games, where he will be working as a narrative writer.
Linde once again made the announcement over Twitter, although it was initially via his own edit of a clip from the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime series, where he replaced the subtitles with his own. This was a deliberate call back to when he did the exact same thing to make a similar announcement in 2019. He later followed it up with a short and simple confirmation, jokingly adding his edited clip cost him $30 for forgetting to cancel his Adobe Premiere trial.
It’s not explicitly clear what Linde’s first project will be, whether it will involve an upcoming League of Legends project, Valorant, or something else entirely. Regardless, Linde has expressed his excitement for his new role in the Twitter replies, where he was also publicly welcomed onboard by Riot Games’ Scott Hawkes, the creative lead for Project L, the League of Legends fighting game spin-off.
Before joining Riot Games, Linde was a writer and narrative designer at Microsoft, where he worked on Gears of War 3. After leaving in 2011, he would later join Gearbox Software as the lead writer for Battleborn, the 2016 free-to-play hero shooter that wound up being overshadowed by the release of Overwatch just a few weeks after it launched.
After nearly three years at Gearbox, he joined ArenaNet and served as narrative lead on Guild Wars 2, followed by a short stint at, funnily enough, Bungie, the former developer of the Halo series. He was only there for five months, contributing mission scripts, lore, and dialogue for Destiny 2.
Riot Games is certainly enjoying a boon at the moment thanks to the Netflix series Arcane. Set within the universe of League of Legends, it centers around sisters Vi and Jinx, acting as an origin story of sorts for the two and explaining how they found themselves on opposing sides in a war. The series became a near instant success with fans of the game and even non-fans, with it now getting a second season.
However, the company is still dealing with the fallout of the gender discrimination lawsuit filed against it in 2018. Riot Games has recently agreed to pay $100 million to the victims of the suit, 10 times more than what it offered in 2019.