HYENAS aims to provide a diverse shooter experience, even outside of gameplay

HYENAS is one of Sega’s new flagship titles, being developed by Total War and Alien: Isolation studio Creative Assembly as a multiplayer sci-fi that will provide players with a layered experience mixing multi-team PvP and PvE elements in new and creative ways. 

In HYENAS, Earth is no longer inhabitable, the rich have colonized Mars, and the rest of humanity is fighting for survival in a space slum called The Taint. This is the setting for Sega’s new FPS title, which will have players take on the role of a HYENA, characters with “unique abilities and big personalities,” as they work to grab enough loot to make a quick buck off of the billionaires on Mars. 

That is the basic pitch for Creative Assembly’s new title, and with it, a move to step out of the RTS genre with its expanded team and create a shooter that will stand out even as an underdog in today’s packed FPS landscape. 

“We are building a team that can build great shooters,” Creative Assembly lead meta game designer Christopher Will told Dot Esports. “I joined four years ago, but in that time, there were a lot of other highers from different shooter studios. So we brought that skill set in and we definitely feel confident in our ability to [create,] even though maybe that expectation isn’t there. But sometimes it’s good to be the underdog and underestimated, right?”

At the start of development, the concept for HYENAS already revolved around robbing spaceships with multiple teams and an element of PvE mixed in because the team felt that “no one was really putting that additional PvE challenge in front of that PvP fight.” 

The items players will be fighting each other to loot are going to be based on “pop-culture artifacts salvaged from the ruins of Earth.” And while the team isn’t ready to share details just yet, it sounds like several Sega IPs could be making an appearance in some form when the game launches and in future updates. 

A lot of development went into crafting gameplay mechanics that would give HYENAS a unique feel, including zero-G movement options and the core mode that mixes those PvE and PvP elements together. Initial feedback for the game has the team looking forward to getting the game to more people in upcoming closed alpha tests because they want to continue refining the experience. 

And not only is the team working to create a diverse experience from a gameplay perspective, but they are also ensuring that the roster of playable characters is inclusive of multiple different backgrounds and nationalities. 

This is being done through work with cultural consultants and other individuals to make sure that every character is done justice based on their selected background, with one such example being a drag queen-esque character that Creative Assembly developed in partnership with a drag queen who people might recognize when that information is officially revealed. 

“As a company, we pride ourselves on diversity, we are a very diverse team working on this game,” Will said. “We didn’t just do it for the drag queen either, there’s other characters there that we wanted to make sure have backgrounds from all different nationalities. We have worked with a lot of cultural consultants where appropriate. But yeah, it’s important to us.”

The team is focused on the actual development of HYENAS right now, but there are hopes that making a fun, competitive shooter will open the door for esports in the future too even though the launch plans aren’t there right now. In the words of the team, they want to “make sure that it has the potential, but we’re not planning anything specific other than making it a fun competitive shooter.”

Creative Assembly was also not ready to share details about what the business model for HYENAS will be, such as if it will be a premium or free-to-play title. More information on that will be shared in the future. The game is currently slated for a release sometime in 2023.