It looks like one member of the dev team for Naughty Dog's upcoming The Last of Us 2 has recently made the move over from the Sony owned company to Microsoft's Obsidian Entertainment. Taking on the new position as an audio designer, Jordan Denton is making the transition after working as an associate sound designer at Naughty Dog.
This move comes on the heels of Naughty Dog reportedly wrapping up production on The Last of Us 2 and development shifting focus to early patches and the next project for the company. With the game having gone gold recently, it's likely that the break in development is what has uncentivized Denton to make the transition to Obsidian Entertainment as the Microsoft company wraps up on the upcoming title Grounded.
While only Denton and other employees at Naughty Dog can explain what an Associate Sound Designer does, the move to Audio Designer does imply a move up in the designer's career. Dropping the "associate" branding comes with the connotation that Denton will be taking a more active role in design on Obsidian's upcoming titles, as opposed to a supportive one. This is of course speculation about Denton's responsibilities at both companies, however, the this is the best guess at what the change in job title might mean for the designer.
With The Last of Us 2 releasing on June 19th, the reasoning for the transition may also come down to little more than a need to find steady work, especially in the field of game development that has been in a somewhat stagnated situation recently. Having both Obsidian's Grounded to work on, as well as other new projects currently being developed by the company, Denton may have made the transition for nothing more than needing to follow up on the next job opportunity. Whatever the reason for the move, from what players have seen of the work done on The Last of Us 2, the quality that any member of that dev team will bring to Obsidian will likely be a huge asset for the sake of experience if nothing else.
In the end, we can only hope that this move from Naughty Dog to Obsidian is a positive one for Denton's future career in game development. Although, considering that Obsidian already has a Grounded demo set for release, it's likely that the audio designer will be tasked with a different, possibly unannounced title. So for those looking to see more content for The Outer Worlds and other projects from Obsidian, this may be a sign that there are more, larger projects currently in the works at the studio.
Source: Gamespot