In October 2025, members of the Amazon Game Studios team found out they had been let go from their roles. They weren’t alone. After the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, a continuous round of layoffs swept across many studios worldwide. The reasons behind it are still argued over: some point to a sudden recalibration after the dramatic expansion seen during the pandemic, others cite tougher competition for attention in the attention economy, while some suggest there simply wasn’t a compelling “growth story” to satisfy key investors, pushing them to back different ventures. Still, at Amazon Game Studios, the outcome followed a familiar pattern. Creative staff—people ranging from junior to senior—were abruptly pulled into meetings and stripped of access to company accounts. It was a grim hallmark of the period.
Many teams within the Amazon Games Studios structure were affected. Take New World, Amazon Game Studios’ long-running MMORPG: the project took a serious hit when its team was dismantled, aligning with an end-of-life announcement for the game after its tenth season and final major update, Nighthaven.
These examples are well known, but they weren’t the only ones. Another title was canceled too, with large portions of its team dismissed, even though it had shown promise internally—and it fit a growing pattern across the industry: developers were being encouraged to build games that incorporate generative AI. Internally, that project was referred to as Project Trident.
According to sources from different Amazon Game Studios teams who spoke to Eurogamer anonymously to protect their employment, an AI directive had been introduced inside the studio as part of a broader company initiative to adopt the technology. Even so, it wasn’t enough to keep the project from being shut down.
To understand what was happening, it helps to look at how Amazon Game Studios was organized. At the time, vice president Christoph Hartmann led the umbrella, under which several major developer groups were focused on large MMO efforts such as New World, Lost Ark, and Throne and Liberty. Other teams contributed to Amazon Luna products like Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite, or Courtroom Chaos featuring Snoop Dogg, while the publishing side kept working with select partners on certain projects—including the newly announced Crystal Dynamics Lara Croft games (Crystal Dynamics has said these are still proceeding as planned, despite the layoffs). Alongside all of this, smaller teams were proposing and building fresh concepts, including Project Trident.
When Amazon Game Studios announced layoffs last year, however, it did so alongside a major turn away from large-scale internal development. In an internal memo at the time, Steven Boom reportedly wrote that a “considerable amount” of internal triple-A work would be stopped as part of the shift. That change meant the San Diego-based Project Trident team—at the time led by studio head Andy Sites—was disbanded alongside their coworkers on teams responsible for New World, Lost Ark, and other projects. For the Lord of the Rings MMO, one insider said the team “had like three people on it for the longest time,” adding that it continued “before they started reallocating New World developers to Lord of the Rings – and then everyone got laid off.” After prolonged speculation, the same source told Eurogamer that Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings MMO had also been canceled, though Amazon says it is still working on something using the IP.
At the moment it was canceled, Project Trident was described as a third-person action game set in a comedic Nordic-style world, built around a fictional offshoot company called Valhalla Ventures, which hires the protagonist to embark on a larger adventure.
It’s a fun premise, but there was a significant twist. As shown in a large amount of gameplay footage reviewed by Eurogamer, the game’s defining idea was the use of generative AI to enable conversations between the player and NPCs. This included light, joke-filled back-and-forth with characters outside missions, but it was also used during missions as a key tool for both combat and puzzle-solving.
For example, in combat sequences from the footage, the player could tell a character named Thor to launch a special move either by saying its name aloud or typing it into a command box. The LLM (Large Language Model) would interpret the command and then Thor would perform the action. Players would also face environmental puzzles similar to what you’d expect in a standard triple-A action-adventure. At one point, a route is blocked, and the player has to direct Thor—again using spoken or written commands—to carry out particular steps. The LLM-driven NPC can respond accordingly. Once the task is completed, the way opens and the player can move forward.
In some moments, players could even recruit enemies to join Valhalla Ventures, using tailored dialogue choices. In the gameplay segment Eurogamer reviewed, Thor captures an opponent, enabling one attempt at persuasion. Thor can suggest how to frame the pitch—pointing out, for instance, that the target seems to have an ego that might be flattered—after which the player must negotiate with the captured foe by speaking or typing in an effort to win them over. That enemy’s personality, again powered by an LLM, will either agree to team up with you or reject your argument based on what you choose to say.
“We were playing outside of the play tests because it was really fun. We knew what we wanted to create and how to accomplish it, we just needed time to execute.”
The game’s art direction, music, storytelling, and primary gameplay were still built by developers, with the LLM only handling player-to-NPC communication. Generative AI was also used to improve the look and quality of animations—for instance, creating lip-synching on the fly. One benefit of this playful storytelling approach, according to the same source, was that it helped manage generative AI hallucinations without completely pulling players out of the experience.
Project Trident, though, didn’t start out this way. Before 2024, it was shaped as a cooperative four-player action game, still set in that Nordic setting (though in a more serious tone), where players fought gigantic, looming creatures a la Shadow of the Colossus. In another short gameplay clip Eurogamer reviewed, a group of players is shown clearing an arena packed with smaller enemies, using grappling hooks to climb to higher ledges and draw themselves toward foes. They then move into a wide open area where a mountain jotun looms above everything else while throwing flaming boulders at the players. During that encounter, players can climb up the jotun’s legs to reach vulnerable spots, needing to hold on tightly when it tries to throw them off. They can also use grappling hooks to travel around structures near the jotun, alongside a flying mount that lifts them quickly to its head and upper body.
Internally, this version was viewed positively, according to a source who was familiar with how it was developed. “Everyone was thrilled by it,” they told Eurogamer. “We were playing beyond the play tests because it was genuinely enjoyable. We understood what we intended to create and how to do it; we just required time to bring it to fruition. We recognized it was special whenever external teammates witnessed it in the rough development visuals and exclaimed, ‘This looks fun, can I try it?'”
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