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Former DICE art director Jhony Ljungstedt has joined Retro Studios.

Having previously worked as art director on Battlefield 3, Battlefield 5, Medal of Honor 2010, and Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, Ljungstedt has now moved to join Retro Studios. Though it's unconfirmed what projects Ljungstedt is attached to, all signs point to Metroid Prime 4.

Ljungstedt joins other high profile hires, including former Halo lead character artist Kyle Helfey, and - after a two-year stint elsewhere - Stephen Dupree, the lead designer of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, has also returned to the Austin-based studio.

Metroid Prime 4, which was announced via a logo way back during Nintendo's E3 presentation in June 2017, was restarted from scratch this time last year, significantly delaying its release. Nintendo also switched development teams, appointing the original Metroid Prime trilogy developer Retro Studios to take over, led by the trilogy's producer Kensuke Tanabe.

Nintendo exec Shinya Takahashi said at the time that the company had taken the rare decision to restart the game as it had "not reached the standard we seek in a sequel to the Metroid Prime series".

"The current development status is very challenged, and we had to make a difficult decision as a development team," Takahashi said when the decision was taken to reboot development. "We have decided to re-examine the development structure itself and change it."

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For doomed studio with an awful working enviroment, they sure are getting quite a few new employees from renowned places. Huh... guess people want to work there after all. I guess those rumors about Retro being doomed are not very consistent...

Bringing company secrets to Nintendo no doubt.

That's encouraging in terms of the actual company conditions.
High profiles like those must use serious consideration when deciding on which projects they're going to work on.

I can't wait for Metroid Prime 4. Maybe his hiring will help speed up the development process.

They have hired people from Naughty DOg before then made a DK game. I wish Gray Ginther stayed as I liked his work on Darksiders. He worked as the artist for DK Tropical Freeze but went to Gunfire games to work on DS3. I really wanted to see him work on Metroid. Maybe this Dice guy will stay. Seems many have left the last few years.

I am so done waiting for Retro to make something good, 13 frikkin years at this point

I believe you need to practice your math more

Metroid Prime 3 was released in 2007, we are in 2020. 2020-2007=13

I'm not a DK fan but Country and Tropical Freeze were very well made games even if they were not for me. Stellar soundtracks as well.

This is just amazing.