HomeNewsHyenas
Cancelled shooter Hyenas was reportedly Sega’s most expensive game ever“So what went wrong? Total lack of direction"
“So what went wrong? Total lack of direction"
Image credit:Sega
Image credit:Sega
Creative Assembly’sHyenas- therecently cancelled extraction shooterabout space Robin Hoods - was supposedly publisher Sega’s biggest budget game ever. New details about the game’s development claim that a lack of direction, slow progress, and an engine change turned the once hopeful “Super Game” into the cannedFPSthat it sadly is today.
Hyenas is said to have been one ofSega’s much-discussed super games, which were described as mega-expensive blockbusters that the publisher hoped would rake in mega-bucks. Last year, the publisher described the initiative as a game that “can draw together a large community, involving not only players but also streamers who stream the game and viewers who watch their videos.” Mixing parts from every other blockbuster shooter would seem like one way to achieve that goal, but alas. “Towards the end, there were people from Sega Japan more or less permanently at the UK office,” one anonymous source told Volound, “this hasneverhappened the whole time I’ve worked at [Creative Assembly].”
Thatedgieredge lasted until Neil Blomkamp - the Hollywood director behind District 9 and Elysium - jumped aboard to provide some early ideas. Blomkamp apparently came up with the idea that players should fight over pop culture fossils from Earth - vinyl records, VHS tapes, and other lost physical media. Basically, you’d play as scalpers fighting over invaluable merch - like something out of a viral Black Friday disaster video, only this time with kinda cool abilities.
“He also had that idea of inserting a lot of internet humour and stuff,” the source continued. “He even made a mood video to show what he was thinking, and to be honest after that period of ‘wtf are we doing here’, it was a real shot in the arm to have somedirection(the project so often felt utterly rudderless).”
Sega cancelled Hyenas alongside other unannounced projects. Redundancies at developer Creative Assembly followed suit, with employees working on the Total War series also affected. “What I’m actually furious about is that the redundancies are affecting people who had nothing to do with Hyenas,” said one anonymous source. “Like IT, operations, marketing, HR, even some people over on TW, they bear no responsibility for this binfire.” The studio still plans to release the next installment,Total War: Pharaoh, on October 11th.
