New possible details have been published about the development of Hyenas abolished SEGA and Creative Assembly Hyenas shooter, including it states that it was the largest -budget SEGA game in the history of the company before it stopped developing.
Last week, the Japanese publisher announced the abolition of a multi -user shooter "and some non -anneized games in the development" in Europe, after at least six years of work on the project.
Creative Assembly developer suggested that the game was canceled "ambitious" plans and high competition in the field of multi -user shooters.
However, in the new video published by the Voloud YouTuber, specializing in Total War and confirmed by the sources of a large edition of VGC, anonymous developers say that the absence of a direction, a change of engine and excessive caution in the development.
You can find a more complete retelling under the spoiler:
One of the anonymous developers wrote: "What went wrong? The complete lack of leadership, many leaders are sleeping behind the wheel, but it seems that they will never lose their jobs. Change of engine in the middle of the way. An attempt to break into a oversaturated market and a reluctance to do something adventurous with the game".
Hyenas, or "Project Keaton", As he was then called, he was created after the success of critics and players, but alien Islation commercial disappointment, after which "Console team" Creative Assembly has released the Halo Wars 2 project, which is alleged also had modest sales.
The CA leadership wanted to create a console game with a wider commercial potential, and called Destiny, Escape from Tarkov and Pubg as an inspiration.
The game was Pvpve (Player vs Player vs Environment) a shooter with support of up to fifteen players in teams of three people. The goal of the players was to penetrate the storage facilities located throughout the map, to fight with AI enemies, as well as with other teams of players, to plunder the goods and get out alive from the ship.
"In the early stages, Hyenas sought to create an atmosphere "cute outcasts", surviving in a random world controlled by the elite, imitating the khan Solo and a little "Firefish"", – Voloud told one of the anonymous developers. "Sounded intriguing, but the details were foggy. The Earth lay in ruins, the rich had everything, they stole to survive – a gloomy scientific and fantastic setting with an admixture of NASA".
It was originally planned that the game would use the Alien: Isolation engine, but due to disappointment to its tools it was decided to switch to Unreal Engine, which required a temporarily transferred part of the team to work on Total War.
In 2019, even before the announcement of Hyenas, a photograph of the Hollywood director Nile Blumkup was published on the Creative Assembly Twitter Account.
According to sources, the director of the films "District number 9" And "Elysium" He was a big fan of Alien: Isolation, and his visit to the studio was more than just a secular visit, since he really expressed his opinion on the general direction of the game.
"He comes to the studio and shows what we should do", – Voloud told one of the sources. "He has some ideas in which direction to move, mainly that you do not steal to survive, but Netflix/Steam/etc no longer exists, so DVD boxes, music, games, all these physical media are now very valuable".
This coincided with the Sinopsis of the game at the time of its announcement, in which the players had to make raids on huge ships "Plunderships", departing from the Earth with valuable relics of pop culture, such as old VHS cassettes or vinyl records.
"He also had the idea to insert a lot of Internet humor into the game and other things", – The anonymous developer continues. "He even shot a video to show what he was thinking about, and, frankly, after that period "What are we doing here" This was a real revelation – to get at least some direction (the project so often felt completely without a steering wheel)".
At some point, Creative Assembly broke up with Blomkup, and as a result, Hyenas was announced during a direct broadcast in June 2022. However, the direction of development of the game and even its business model remained uncertain.
After several closed alpha tests of the game, sources claim that Sega was unhappy with the course of work on the game, and in recent months, Japan began to more carefully monitor the project.
Sources also confirmed that although Hyenas was originally planned as a premium game, by the time the project was canceled, it was transferred to the Free-to-Play model with microtransactions, although post-release support was developed in a very limited volume.
It is believed that Hyenas was one of "super-game", Which Sega often mentioned in its financial results: ambitious, large -budget games, which, as she hoped, will pay off large sales in the future.
In November 2021. Sega said that to realize her ambitions in the field "Superigr" She intends to invest up to 100.0 billion. yen (882 million. Doll.) within five years, which involves the development of several projects.
Although it was not known about how much Sega invested in Hyenas, former developers told VGC that, in their opinion, it was the largest budget for the game, compared to 1999 Shenmue, which, which was stated, was spent around 70 million. dollars.
"I forgot to mention that Hyenas was the most large -budget game Sega", – Voloud said one of the anonymous developers. "Closer to the end in the British office, there were more or less constantly people from the Japanese company Sega, which never happened over the entire time of my work in CA, they sometimes went to visit and checked what the game looks like, but, as I said, in all of them did not interfere"
In conclusion, the developer stated that he was not angry with the SEGA for the cancellation of Hyenas, but expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that as a result of Creative Assembly, it conducts dismissal throughout the studio, including departments, which, it is claimed, was not related to a multi -diverse joker.