It’s happening again. As sure as Square Enix overestimating their sales projections, as sure as John Riccitiello pissing off every available customer, EVE Online developers CCP will try to make a first-person shooter set in the same universe.
This time it’s called EVE Vanguard, a shooter “module” which will sit within the EVE launcher and asychronously connect to EVE Online.
Vanguard is a PvPvE shooter that looks to have learned lessons from Hunt: Showdown and Escape From Tarkov, with players in squads fighting computer-controlled enemies in order to secure an item that other players on the same server will then compete to steal. Your actions in the shooter then connect to EVE Online via a corruption mechanic being introduced in the Havoc expansion, says PC Gamer.
CCP hope EVE Vanguard will launch into beta this December, and there’s a sign-up form at the official site along with a load of other screenshots.
If I appear deeply cynical, it’s because we’ve been here before. The most obvious previous occasion is with Dust 514, CCP’s 2013 PlayStation 3-only shooter set in the EVE Online universe. It wasn’t very good and shut down a few years later, but the ambition to create a shooter set in EVE’s backstabby spaceverse didn’t go away. In 2014, CCP announced sandbox shooter Project Legion, set in the EVE Online universe, which went away without ever being released. In 2018, they ran closed betas for tactical shooter Project Nova, set in the EVE Online universe, before cancelling it in 2020.
That makes Vanguard attempt number four – and that’s just the ones they announced publicly. I can’t fault CCP for persevering. As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again. I have begun to feel a little like Charlie Brown though, creduously trying to kick CCP’s football.
On the other hand, it’s better than CCP’s other announced project: a blockchain game set in the EVE Online universe.
