In a surprise announcement at Eve Fanfest in Reykjavik, Iceland, CCP Games has announced its brand-new standalone FPS game, Eve Vanguard. Being developed using Unreal Engine 5, the shooter will see players take on the role of the Vanguard for the first time ever, and will be available separately to the main Eve Online experience.
The Vanguard are new war clones sent on missions by factions in Eve Online. In a gameplay premiere of the new FPS game shown to PCGamesN during a press briefing at Eve Fanfest, we see a Vanguard player land on a sparse world tasked with retrieving a Nexus chip from some Gurista pirates that have been located nearby. Environmental hazards such as a huge acidic swamp block our Vanguard’s way, and opposition squads are plentiful, attempting to thwart their plans.
Speaking at the press briefing, Eve Vanguard’s lead product designer, Scott Davis, explains that the new offering “is a module with Eve Online. It’s not meant to be a standalone shooter competing with all of the other shooters in the universe”.
Nevertheless, Vanguard can be played as a standalone experience – you don’t need to be an existing Eve Online player to jump in. “It’s designed to be a fully fleshed out Eve experience,” Vanguard’s game director, Snorri Árnason, continues, “There’s extraction elements, there are crafting elements, there are survival elements”.
You can play Vanguard solo or with a squad, and you’ll explore planets aiming to strengthen your equipment, and in turn your clone. You could go from finding resources to engaging with rival squads over an objective. Through Eve Vanguard, you can affect Eve Online through your decisions and combat.
Árnason explains that the CCP Games team has not rushed Vanguard, and true to the studio’s mission of developing its games with the community first, player input will be vital to Vanguard’s evolution. “We have the seeds of what needs to be done in this game to actually make it work. And that works.”
For anyone on the fence about giving Vanguard a try, he also has some key advice. “Stick around for the evolving,” he says. “You don’t just get reset in the next ‘2’ game, or ‘3’ game,” he continues, “You can come back to it. There’s no resets. This is our game and it’s never going to go away.” Starting in December 2023, all Eve Online players with an Omega subscription will be able to play Vanguard in its First Strike mass test for free for a limited time.
If you can’t wait until December and you’re thinking about dipping your toe in the main game, we’ve got some Eve Online beginner tips to help you along. If you’re unsure if your setup can handle it, we’ve also compiled the Eve Online system requirements so you can double check beforehand.