Tomb Raider Dev Hires Hitman, The Last of Us Designers

Crystal Dynamics, the longtime Tomb Raider developer most recently responsible for the 2013 reboot, has announced it hired veteran Hitman producer Tore Blystad.

Blystad spent a decade at Danish game studio IO Interactive, working on the Hitman franchise. Most recently, he was the game and art director for 2012's Hitman: Absolution.

Though he needed to move across the world to join Crystal Dynamics in California, his paycheck will still say Square Enix, as the Japanese publisher owns both IO Interactive and Crystal Dynamics. Blystad's new role at Crystal Dynamics is performance director.

Prior to his ten-year run at IO Interactive, Blystad worked at Norwegian developer Funcom, the company behind franchises such as Age of Conan and The Secret World.

Crystal Dynamics also has confirmed the hiring of Nate Wells, who joins the company as its environment art director. Wells previously worked at The Last of Us developer Naughty Dog and originally confirmed his move to Crystal Dynamics in December 2014.

Wells in an industry veteran, having gotten his start at Looking Glass Studios in Boston, where he worked on System Shock 2 and Thief: The Dark Project. He also served as technical director on the original BioShock at Irrational Games, and is credited with creating the original concept for the Big Daddy.

"We are thrilled to add Nate and Tore and their years of experience shipping top quality and award winning games to Crystal Dynamics," Square Enix head of western studios Darrell Gallagher said. "Crystal has pulled together some of the best talent in the industry to deliver our upcoming games."

Crystal Dynamics did not specify which projects Blystad and Wells would be working on. In addition to the upcoming Xbox-exclusive Rise of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics has an unannounced new IP in development. That Blystad and Wells are just joining the developer now, less than a year before the release of Rise of the Tomb Raider, suggests they are working on something else.