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The Initiative, one of Microsoft’s first-party developers which is shrouded in mystery, has welcomed 16 new recruits to its studio, including talent from Crystal Dynamics and Bungie (via IGN).
The studio has been collecting developers for a very long time now, to work on an unannounced title which uses “various weapons, gadgets, and a camera surveillance system.” Its latest additions include Remi Lacoste and Christine Thompson. Lacoste had spent ten years with Crystal Dynamics, beginning as the lead cinematographer for Tomb Raider, then ascending to cinematic experience director for Rise of the Tomb Raider, and then game director for Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Avengers. He is now an experiential director for The Initiative.
Thompson cut her teeth as a community content writer for Star Trek Online, before being hired as a lead writer for the game. She then moved on to Bungie, to write for Destiny and Destiny 2, with credits on the campaign, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and Forsaken. She’s joined to become a lead writer for The Initiative.
An exciting announcement, but we still don’t know what The Initiative is cooking up. “The past year has been an exciting time for us as we have more than doubled the internal creative teams making up Xbox Game Studios,” said Microsoft last year. In July’s Xbox Game Showcase, we saw The Gunk, Avowed, As Dusk Falls, CrossFire X, Everwild, and lots of others flaunt the creative power of the Xbox teams. Whatever The Initiative has up its sleeves, it’ll be something special.
