Avalanche Studios Is Working On A “Cutting Edge AAA Open World Game”

Avalanche Studios has revealed they have a new game in the works with a new job listing.

The company put up a job listing on their website, for a senior gameplay animator to work in either Avalanche’s Stockholm or Liverpool studio. While Avalanche is famously working on Contraband for Microsoft Gaming, they have other job openings that specifically state that they are for Contraband.

The job listing says this:

“Avalanche Studios Group and its division Avalanche Studios are crafting our next cutting-edge AAA open-world game, and we are now looking for a highly skilled and motivated Gameplay Animator to join one of our exciting AAA projects at either of our studios in Stockholm or Liverpool.”

It also provides this description of what Avalanche is looking for:

“The ideal candidate will have experience breathing life into 3rd person player controlled characters as well as realizing NPC movement, performances and behaviors.”

Avalanche Studios has been fortunate to not have been part of the wave of layoffs in the industry. On the contrary, their employees in their main studio in Stockholm have recently unionized, with reports that Avalanche will work with the union to form a collective bargaining agreement.

Avalanche has been best known for the Just Cause games, but perhaps outside of the spotlight, they have been moving as a comparatively conservative, responsible studio. Most of their titles have been published by bigger companies, and they have taken time with their releases.

As a curious anomaly, Just Cause 3 and Just Cause 4 released three years apart from each other, but perhaps there was a simply better business environment for them to do this between 2015 to 2018. And this leads us to talking about Just Cause 5.

The Just Cause games had been published by Eidos, and then Square Enix after Square bought Eidos. In a press conference in 2022, Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda announced that they retained ownership to Just Cause after they sold Eidos to Embracer Group. Matsuda also revealed that a new Just Cause game was in development.

It’s entirely possible that the “next cutting-edge AAA open-world game” is Just Cause 5. Avalanche Studios would be in the middle of its development, and they would likely want to make sure that they get this game out before this generation of consoles retires for the next one.

The need to speed up the pace of development is also likely affected by potential delays and setbacks they suffered through the quarantine/lockdown period of the pandemic. Of course, we assume all video game companies went through it, but it seemed invisible for them.

If this is the case, it’s also probably that Avalanche isn’t quite ready to announce or reveal it yet, but perhaps Square Enix will want to reassure us it’s still on in the coming months. Hopefully, they will all have a good surprise for us very soon.