Sega and Creative Assembly have announced Hyenas, a PvEvP shooter from the team behind Alien: Isolation and Halo Wars 2.
Set in a future where billionaires have colonized Mars and made Earth inhospitable, Hyenas is a fast-paced multiplayer FPS that turns players into anti-hero pirates who steal from the mega-rich. Each game hosts 15 players divided into five teams of three, and these teams compete to steal treasures from a spaceship and escape with the largest pile of loot. It looks a bit like Hunt: Showdown, but with the clever and fast sensitivity of Apex Legends.
The trickiest thing is an AI-controlled security force defending the vaults containing the treasures you’re looking for; known as the MFPF (or ‘murphs’), these guards will fight anyone who tries to rob billionaires.
“These ships are not helpless,” creative director Charlie Bewsher explained in a talk with IGN. “They are full of security, sensors, switches, interactive systems and gadgets. It’s a great environment for this competitive game in which it develops.”
Because maps are set in cargo ships traveling between Earth and Mars, there is also zero gravity to deal with. Some segments of the maps will have no gravity, allowing you to float and use 3D space in new ways. Other locations, such as single rooms and hallways, also have zero-on and off switches. The characters have maglock boots to help them overcome any seriousness problem, if freestyle zoom is not your favorite method of travel.
With numerous corridors, vaults, rooms and hangar spaces, each hyena map is quite large. Creative Assembly says you have to expect something bigger than a normal PvP death match map, but something not as big as a Battle Royale map. Despite this, the team has been inspired by the type of gameplay seen in games like Fortnite and Warzone.
“We didn’t want to do a battle royale, but we wanted to take that idea of creating that unpredictable, chaotic space where players will find this new gameplay, find new tactics, and finally find new player stories,” Bewsher said.
We wanted to create this unpredictable and chaotic space where players could find a new game
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Each party is aboard a cargo spacecraft carrying items from Earth to Mars. But these items, now traded for massive money by billionaires, may not be what you expect. In the world of hyenas, the pop culture artifacts of Earth’s past are the new diamonds, so you’ll steal everything from Rubik’s cubes and Sony Walkman tape decks to Sonic statues and men from the world. ‘green army. Bewsher even says that you could end up looting the first album you bought and promises to see many different pop culture IPs represented in the game.
The movie revelation trailer shows a cargo ship full of New York-themed memories, including subway cars to the Statue of Liberty itself. Hyenas definitely don’t take themselves seriously, and their colorful comic-style art reflects that.
Hyenas – Reveal movie screenshots
Creative Assembly has not yet detailed all the playable characters, but notes that each is divided into one of three categories: implicate, evade, and exploit. Engage’s characters focus on action, while escape heroes focus on agile movement and sometimes stealth. Exploitation characters, on the other hand, are hackers and supporting characters.
As part of the ad stream on IGN, Creative Assembly checked the names of some of Hyenas’ heroes. The Pro is a classic-style bank robber with a shotgun, a drop-down turret, and a President Nixon mask. Commander Wright is an astronaut with a foam pistol who can quickly create barricades, decks, and climbing platforms. Doc Hotfix is a player who thinks he is a character in a game and therefore offers a fourth comment that breaks the wall. You can see some other characters in the trailer, but they have not yet been detailed.
No release date for Hyenas has been announced so far, but a playable alpha is planned and can be registered at playhyenas.com. When Hyenas is finally released, it will be available on Xbox and PlayStation consoles, and on PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
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Matt Purslow is the UK news and feature editor.