Jade Raymond and Sony’s Haven Focusing on “Next-Level” Visuals, Self-Expression for PS5 Game

Earlier this year it was announced that Jade Raymond, best known for her work on Assassin’s Creed and Star Wars, was starting a new Montreal studio called Haven following the shutdown of Google’s internal Stadia studios, which she had been overseeing. Haven has the full backing Sony, and will be working on a PS5 exclusive, but beyond that, the initial announcement didn’t provide much concrete information.

Well, during a recent “fireside chat” with GamesIndustry.biz, Raymond revealed a bit more about what she and Haven are planning, and it sounds like they have some pretty major ambitions. Raymond cited three pillars – games as a social platform, remix culture, and creating new IP – as Haven’s guiding lights, as it seems like they want to create a unique IP and universe ala Assassin’s Creed while also giving players a lot of control over the game’s content. Sounds like a tough balance to pull off!

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Interestingly, it also seems Raymond wants to really push what the PS5 can do, dropping mention of delivering the first “terabyte” game (whatever that means exactly).

And when it comes to really ambitious games and the PS5 and what it can do, and you’re trying to achieve this next-level quality visually, and you have an art director like Raphael Lacoste, and you have these ambitions. You need to think: What does it mean to support the first terabyte game? What does it mean to support this level of data? All of these things that we learned to make game streaming of this generation possible, are interesting to reach the next-level of quality. So there are quite a few things that we have learned [at Google] that we are applying our tech stack.

This all sounds very ambitious, but Raymond is assembling a solid team. Haven is up to 54 employees, and many of the original minds behind the Assassin’s Creed series are on board, including Corey May (original AC writer), Raphael Lacoste (art director), Mathieu Leduc (creative director), and Pierre-Francois Sapinski (head of production).

What do you think? Interested in what Raymond and team are cooking up?