The director of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Shaun Escayg, has returned to Naughty Dog after spending years at Crystal Dynamics as the creative director on Marvel's Avengers. In addition to The Lost Legacy, Escayg helped ship three other Naughty Dog-developed titles, including 2013's The Last of Us, before joining Crystal Dynamics' Marvel's Avengers team in 2018.
An ambitious licensed project, the Avengers game stumbled out of the gate on several fronts. For one, the live-service model didn't suit the expectations of fans who wanted a more streamlined adventure in the vein of Batman: Arkham and Marvel's Spider-Man. Marvel's Avengers also lacked the compelling endgame content necessary for games as service titles to survive long-term. And the post-launch plans that Crystal Dynamics did have in place were delayed early on, a move that allowed the development team to focus on optimization and bug fixes. A recently released roadmap shows more exciting updates are on the horizon, however. Thus, with a firm Marvel's Avengers content plan on the docket for the remainder of 2021, it makes sense that the project can afford to lose one of its key creative leads.
Earlier today, former Marvel's Avengers creative director Shaun Escayg announced his return to Naughty Dog in a brief Twitter post. The developer's updated Twitter bio notes he now serves as a creative director and writer for the Uncharted studio. Naturally, this raised questions about the state of the Avengers title at Crystal Dynamics. Escayg simply responded to this line of questioning by saying, "Marvel's Avengers is in good hands." At the time of writing, Escayg hasn't divulged a reason for his departure from the Avengers crew.
Presently, it's difficult to gauge what Escayg and the rest of the Naughty Dog developers could have up their sleeves - barring the Factions multiplayer project, of course. Recent reports claim the studio once served as supervisor on a new Uncharted spinoff from Days Gone developer Bend Studio. Yet, follow up reporting indicates the project fell to the cutting room floor after Bend successfully requested its team be allowed to focus on original IP.
Meanwhile, details about the future of Factions remain under wraps, given that neither Sony nor Naughty Dog have shared much in the way of concrete information in quite some time. Whether or not this might change sometime soon is anyone's guess.
Marvel's Avengers is available to play on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.