An indiscreet designer at Santa Monica Studios has confirmed that the developer is working on a new IP, likely by God Of War director Cory Barlog.
You don’t need us to tell you that Sony has started being very secretive about its upcoming games, with little clue as to what most of their internal studios are currently working on.
As the makers of God Of War, Santa Monica Studio is one of their most important but they haven’t announced anything new since 2022’s God Of War Ragnarök – although co-director Cory Barlog has made it clear that he won’t be directing the next God Of War.
Instead, he’s repeatedly hinted at wanting to make a sci-fi game and now the LinkedIn page for a Santa Monica Studio developer confirms that whatever they’re working on is a new IP.
The LinkedIn information has already been redacted but originally said: ‘Santa Monica Studios presented the opportunity of coming back as Character Supervisor, looking after the entire Character Development pipeline, on their new IP, so here I am, thrilled to be back, working again with the crew and pushing Characters in videogames together.’
The description doesn’t mention anything about being sci-fi (or otherwise) but being a new IP means it’s definitely not God Of War.
Despite their importance to Sony, Santa Monica Studio only has around 250 staff, which is relatively small nowadays, but that should still be big enough to work full-out on one game and prototype one or two others.
Whether it’s the new IP that’s in full production or the next God Of War is unclear but given how long Barlog has been hinting about a sci-fi game it may be the former.
Santa Monica Studio was known to be working on a sci-fi around 10 years ago, codenamed Darkside. It’s the project that was cancelled in favour of the God Of War reboot, and would’ve apparently involved ‘world exploration’ but it’s unclear if it’s related to this new title.
As acknowledged by this video it was cancelled due to layoffs, but since Balrog wasn’t involved with Darkside it’s thought that the new IP is something completely different.
It just so happens, that earlier in the year Sony were caught trademarking the name Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, which apart from being the most generic title ever certainly does sound sci-fi.
And then there’s Balrog’s current Twitter banner, which has him sitting on a rock on Mars, mimicking a scene from the Watchmen comic where the character Dr Manhattan is contemplating what to do with his life.
Since the LinkedIn information clearly wasn’t intended to be made public it’s impossible to guess when Sony might officially announce the new game, but work is clearly underway – so it could potentially happen at any time.
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