Sony Santa Monica’s cancelled IP might have been in the production phase for quite a while. It has been confirmed from former developer, Sony Santa Monica, that work on the game started right after God of War 3.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Sony Santa Monica suffered a ‘huge’ set of layoffs that resulted in the loss of about 50 people from the studio. Among them were several studio veterans who had worked at Sony Santa Monica for as long as 10+ years. Former lead level designer, Jonahthan Hawkins was one of them. In a new set of tweets, he has confirmed that work on this new IP started right after God of War 3 was finished. The project was led by Stig Asmussen, director of God of War 3. It was a brand new IP and was supposedly focused on science fiction. The concept of the game was open world and vehicles were also involved in some capacity.
Jonahthan Hawkins was asked if the game was third person or first person like most predicted. He declined answering this question, though it seems that it didn’t stop other people from leaking info about this IP. Twitter user, Shinobi602, dropped the info that this new IP was third person with a user interface similar to the one in Dead Space. Shinobi has been quite accurate with his leaks regarding this new IP so it won’t be a surprise to see this being the case. Rob Davis, who is Senior Designer at Sony Santa Monica, was also working on this new IP and seemed rather interested in Dragon’s Dogma. Keep in mind that Dragon’s Dogma is an open world action RPG with a dynamic combat system. It is also third person and not first person like Skyrim.
It is always sad to see projects getting canned after years of work. Hopefully, the people who lost their jobs can find new work soon. Sony hasn’t commented on any info about this new IP yet.
