Creative Assembly, the developer behind the hugely popular first-person survival horror game Alien: Isolation, has been working on a new IP. The studio has remained rather secretive on its latest project, but a new job opening at Creative Assembly hints that the game could be a hero-based shooter.
First noticed by VG247, Creative Assembly is looking for a lead hero designer to work on "a ground-breaking FPS." The role asks for someone who can lead the creative process for "exciting playable characters" that each have "a range of amazing thought and play provoking specialties." It sounds like Creative Assembly is designing a first-person shooter game that features a cast of diverse playable characters that each possess their own unique set of skills and abilities, much like Overwatch, Rainbow Six: Siege, and Apex Legends.
The lead hero designer role also asks applicants to have a "broad understanding of monetization, rewards, and art production" and a willingness to provide "guidance on visual design and cosmetics." This further reinforces the comparison to the hero-based shooters listed above, as all three feature cosmetics tied to some form of microtransactions.
Earlier job postings at Creative Assembly have referred to the developer's new title as a tactical shooter, but not much else is publicly known about the game. Given that hero shooters have been done for a while now, it's unlikely the "ground-breaking" description of the game is in reference to hero-focused combat. What's more likely is that Creative Assembly is designing a game that utilizes hero-based combat in a genre that hasn't been done much of before, similarly to how Respawn innovated on hero-focused shooters by putting those mechanics into a battle royale game.