They fall but they rise, and you can never stop Eve Online studio CCP Games from trying to make an FPS set in the universe of their Excel(lent?) MMO. EVE Vanguard – the studio’s admirable fourth attempt – was announced last September. It’s had a few open betas since then and, according to a up-to-date and somewhat vague roadmap, should be released after November. Here’s the infographic in question – more scribbles on a napkin stained with crispy pork than a satnav.
As you can see, the current roadmap is basically a yawning gap that marks the time between now and the last open beta event, though there are a few details about plans (though not dates) for the future. The wish list includes establishing more economic ties between the shooter and their long-running MMO, which I still think is very frosty conceptually, even though I have no real interest in them. There are also plans for more weapon customization, “diverse environments,” more progression options, and “expanded gameplay elements,” which, you know, you’d hope for.
In the meantime, there will also be a series of Founder’s Closed Tests running through November, culminating in a major update on November 16. There will also be developer diaries, such as the “vision of the future” trailer below, which features several comparisons to CCP’s previous FPS, Dust 514.
As mentioned, EVE Vanguard is just the latest in a series of attempts to graft the standalone shooter onto a hugely successful and undeniably deserving MMO. Dust 514 launched in 2013 for PlayStation 3 and was shut down a few years later. Project Legion was announced in 2014 but never saw the delicate of day. In 2018, CCP was kind enough to fly me to Vegas to show off Project Nova, but that was canceled in 2020. Vanguard has neither numbers nor the words “Project” in its title, so maybe it will do better?
Last October, Julian Benson wrote about why CCP hasn’t stopped trying to make an EVE Online shooter for 15 years. “I can’t say if Vanguard will be what the team has been looking for all this time, but it has two things that give it a better chance of success,” Benson wrote. “EVE Vanguard is described by CCP as a module of EVE, not a separate game, not because they run on the same engine, but because you run both through the same client. CCP is working very hard to make sure that even if Vanguard develops its own player base, it’s very aware of its ties to EVE Online. Second, there’s the “vE” in Vanguard’s PvPvE presentation. Even if you were the only player in the world to run Vanguard, it would be a game you could play.”
