Development of Santa Monica Studios’ Next PS5 Game Appears to Be Going Swimmingly

Sony’s first-party Santa Monica Studio is currently working on a new PS5 game, that much is known, having wrapped development on God of War Ragnarok with the release of the essential Valhalla DLC. If we had to bet, it will be quite some time before we hear anything more concrete, but one thing’s for sure: whatever they are up to, creative director Cory Barlog seems incredibly excited about it.

So excited, in fact, that Barlog took to Twitter over the weekend to tease that “some early things” were beginning to come together. He praised his fellow devs and threw in a Freya gif for good measure.

Santa Monica Studio is “spread out on a lot of different things”, but so far, journalistic efforts to deduce what they are have come up short. The best we’ve got is information gleaned via LinkedIn from Fernando Secco, a senior staff programmer at the studio. Secco’s resume revealed that he’s part of a team working on an unannounced IP, “leading with a small group of programmers in all things progression (RPG systems, resource loading, spawning, save game, trophies, visual scripting and whatnot).”

Fans latched onto a potential factoid last June when writer Alanah Pearce let slip (thanks, PSLS) that she was working on an unannounced sci-fi game, something in which Barlog himself is thought to have a hand. Could this mystery project be Sony’s recently trademarked (and very sci-fi-sounding) Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet? Only time will tell.