Hyenas is inspired by Apex Legends, but the dev never wanted it to be a battle royale game

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"We didn't want to compete on other people's terms"

Hyenas, a new super colourful FPS from Creative Assembly
(Image credit: Creative Assembly)

Creative Assembly, best known for the Total War series and the superb survival horror Alien Isolation, is doing something different for their next game, Hyenas. 

In this month's Edge magazine, creative director Charlie Bewsher and lead meta-game designer Christoph Will discuss the games that inspired the team the most when creating the colourful sci-fi multiplayer FPS and reveal why they didn't want to make it a battle royale. 

Will says that his personal experience playing the likes of Counter-Strike and Quake helped shape Hyenas, and explains that Apex Legends, Respawn's free-to-play battle royale, had a big part to play in moulding the game into a hero shooter. "When Apex Legends released, we played a lot of that in the office," Will says. "Apex is probably the single [biggest] one, especially with the hero transition." Hyenas was originally designed to be loadout-based, but the developer felt that offering characters with distinctive builds would be more compelling for players. 

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Despite the Apex Legends influence, the team didn't explore the idea of making it into a battle royale game. "We didn't consider it," says Bewsher, quickly adding, "I mean, we had the conversation, but we immediately dismissed it." He cites the influx of battle royale titles being made by studios accomplished in the shooter genre as the reason the team steered away from this path. "We knew that space would be very quickly dominated by very experienced shooting teams - and it has been, right? So we thought, we don't want to compete there. We didn't want to compete on other people's terms."

The full interview features in Edge #376, now available in stores and via Magazines Direct. 

Anne-Marie Ostler
Anne-Marie Ostler
Freelance Writer

Originally from Ireland, I moved to the UK in 2014 to pursue a Games Journalism and PR degree at Staffordshire University. Following that, I've freelanced for GamesMaster, Games TM, Official PlayStation Magazine and, more recently, Play and GamesRadar+. My love of gaming sprang from successfully defeating that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros on the NES. These days, PlayStation is my jam. When not gaming or writing, I can usually be found scouring the internet for anything Tomb Raider related to add to my out of control memorabilia collection.