Four Slayers drop from the airship that ferries them across the Shattered Isles and immediately fall into a routine learned from a hundred hunts before - fanning out through the woodland, searching for the Behemoth that has made this island its home. One player spots a blip on an otherwise perfect horizon - a feathered crown. It turns, cocks its head to one side, and then the Shrike locks eyes with the player. Those cold orbs in its skull won’t sway their gaze until either one of them is dead. The designers of Dauntless had that specific image in mind from the earliest days of working on the game’s distinctive owl-bear behemoth. At certain points, though, the Shrike was too intimidating. “There were times when we first started working on him when his head was on a full swivel and could do 360 degrees,” marketing manager Nick Clifford laughs. “He was way too eerie.” Phoenix Labs wrestled with that balance throughout much of Shrike’s creation. As Dauntless’s second ever behemoth - after the slow-moving reptile, Drask - the owl-bear was the studio’s biggest challenge in terms of tone. “We don’t want the player to feel like they’re hitting up an animal sanctuary and just beating up some woodland creatures,” art director Katie De Sousa says. “So we tried to push the animations as aggressive, vicious, and fast as we possibly could - more than you would ever see in nature or any kind of normal situation. That gives him that mythical beast quality.”