There’s a lot to be said about the nature of EVE Online. There are complaints that the game is essentially just a spreadsheet given visuals, and that the sheer complexity of the game turns off new players to a heavy degree. Yet this hasn’t stopped developer CCP Games from trying their hardest to get more players into not just EVE Online, but the universe that has sprung up around it in the last two decades of service.
EVE Vanguard is the next attempt to expand on the EVE universe, with a first-person PvPvE shooter that promises to have an impact on EVE Online itself, but also vice versa.
EVE Vanguard will be interfacing with EVE Online in various ways, with both games affecting each other. For example, if something shifts in the economy and world state of EVE Online, then it’ll be reflected in the gameplay loop of EVE Vanguard, but there’s a fine line. Players won’t be seeing downed ships from EVE Online appearing in Vanguard and causing shifts in the way that the map works, and people in EVE Online won’t be able to directly impact the war happening below by using their weaponry and technology.
“Thematically, both games are in the same universe. There’s also an economic pillar, meaning that there’s some kind of value or resource that can flow from one game to another. If you mine something and you send it to me in EVE, I can then use it in EVE. It’s a usable commodity in both games,” EVE Vanguard’s art director, Neil Kaminski told us.
“You basically set up a win condition that both games can impact. You’re not trying to make them fight in the same battle. You make them fight for a common objective and then they will self-organize. We’re not trying to link, 'I shot you out of your cockpit and then we won the war', that’s never going to happen. We’re trying to create an asynchronous common objective,” Kaminski concluded.
Early access for the title is planned for next year, though it’s currently vague as to when in 2025 CCP wants to launch. What they do know, at the very least, is that they want to release the final product globally in 2027, before launching for consoles in 2028. The idea is to give more people access to Vanguard than EVE Online, so it can act as a stepping stone for players who want to get into the main title on PC.
“People use it in very different ways. It’s naturally the next step for us to go from founders program access into bringing more people into the development journey with us [through early access],” product manager Scott Davis told MMORPG.com.
“Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely changed everyone’s impressions of Early Access,” art director Neil Kaminski continued.
“Before that, early access was for indie games, but Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably the biggest game ever made. Who could have curated all these paths other than people testing the game out in early access?”
One of the big things here is that this isn’t the first time that EVE has tried to do a first-person shooter that interfaces with the main MMO. The first attempt, Dust 514, was released over a decade ago and promised to connect directly with the political and economic ecosystem of EVE Online.
So what happened? Well, Dust 514 suffered the problem of being a PlayStation 3 exclusive: a console that is historically remembered as a system constantly overshadowed by the Xbox 360. There was also the restriction tech-wise: after all, a PS3 is much less capable than a high-end PC, so figuring out how to make both games sing in tandem is difficult.
Vanguard, however, is looking to solve at least one of these problems. While early access for the game and the initial release of the title are planned only for PCs, down the line, a console release is planned for the game, as we mentioned previously. CCP wants Vanguard to be a “forever game,” with the template of the last two decades of EVE Online being used heavily for the game. CCP Games is, however, hesitant to refer to the game as live service, especially with the recent stigma that has arisen around the term, instead preferring to describe Vanguard as an “MMO FPS.” There are also plans to have the game working on Steam Deck down the line, with the noted intention being to have the game running on as many systems as possible:
“I think Unreal [Engine] 5 gives us some tricks optimization. We’re going to continue to keep optimizing the game anyway, make sure that it can run better on more machines,” Davis told me. Indeed, there are already people who are testing out the game on the handheld, with players noting that the game runs fairly decently for a game that is currently still in development.
Another question I had was whether the world of New Eden, and indeed the world of Vanguard, see more IP Crossovers going forward? With the popularity of Fortnite, does CCP Games see any value in that idea?
“There is an important thing that when players log into EVE Online, they’re actually transported 21,000 years into the future. We owe it to our players to keep that like this; it’s a contract we made with the players. We don’t want to break immersion. We’ve done crossover projects in the past, but that was testing the waters a bit. With player-made skins coming [to EVE Online], however, we’re seeing a lot of very interesting skins and very imaginative skins from players,” creative director Bergur Finnbogason told me.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see where EVE Vanguard goes. The lessons from Dust 514 will greatly inform the path of EVE Vanguard, and the success of the MMOFPS will be a curious exploration of what exactly CCP Games is capable of other than EVE Online itself. From what I played myself, it’s worth keeping an eye on, with the pre-alpha build being extremely fun, if rough - Vanguard itself is an interesting mix of both survival mechanics and the traditional first-person shooter mechanics that you’d expect. If it can balance everything, then there’s something worth keeping an eye on here.
Full disclosure: Travel and accommodation for this hands-on event was provided by CCP Games.
