EVE Vanguard, Fenris Creations’ most recent attempt to bring on-the-ground FPS gameplay to the massive, shared, persistent universe of EVE Online, has changed quite a bit since I first laid hands on it last year. From the presentation to the basic movement and gunplay, it’s becoming a lot clearer what exactly our disposable warclones will be doing on the wreckage-strewn surfaces of EVE’s countless planets, and how that will translate back to Avalon, the station where our consciousness exists between missions.
I got a chance to play the latest build, which is launching today as Operation Avalon, in a closed playtest with a handful of devs and “VIPs,” and talked to game director Scott Davis and creative lead Jamie Stanton about what’s coming. The big news? If all goes according to plan, Vanguard will be connecting up to EVE Online 24/7 by the end of this year.
That’s just over the galactic horizon, though. Operation Avalon is a more focused slice of what’s coming.
Soldiers of Fortune
While Fenris previously hesitated to use the term “extraction shooter,” that’s very much the core of the game mode at the moment. You beam down to the planet in a clone body, try to collect as many resources as possible, and beam out before you get annihilated by other players or the NPC baddies of Mordu’s Legion guarding the juiciest loot. There’s no closing circle and no victory royale – just the promise of higher risk for higher rewards.
There’s a palpable tension built into every moment that fits very much with EVE’s ruthless universe. Even opening a container triggers a short waiting period in which every piece of loot is revealed one at a time. You’re vulnerable during this entire process, and I definitely found myself saying, “Come on, come on!” out loud while gunfire echoed somewhere nearby. Player snipers could be hiding anywhere, so thinking about sight lines and how to get from one structure to the next is always challenging.
Operation Avalon takes place on a new, handcrafted map with some randomized elements, and this is part of how Vanguard helps ease you in. Different points of interest are labelled based on the difficulty of the NPCs who spawn there and, in turn, how good the loot you might find is. And while a griefer could certainly camp the lower-level areas just to be a pain, they aren’t going to get much out of it since their prey won’t be carrying particularly good loot. So if you want to farm for some better gear and get your head around the mechanics scavenging the outskirts, I found that’s a pretty low stakes playstyle. You’re never completely out of danger, but you can stock up on the basics and beam out with a little bit of vigilance.
Eyes on the Prize
This scales all the way up to more treacherous areas that might require a keycard from elsewhere on the map to open, featuring the toughest NPCs and the most competition for highly valuable loot. The Command Block at the northwest corner felt like a high-level raid area, full of elites that I wasn’t equipped to deal with. Even with a couple allies, I didn’t make it much further than the front door.
And that’s where Vanguard’s progression kicks in. Like EVE Online, you lose everything your clone is carrying when you die. But that’s just part of the job for a Vanguard. One successful trip down and back can bring you valuable resources and, more importantly, blueprints. You might lose a gun, but as long as you have the blueprint for that gun, you can keep manufacturing copies of it back in orbit using basic materials from mining and common containers.
Industry is a part of Vanguard, too. Aside from better guns, there’s a system for crafting Chipsets, which are equippable perks that can combine to make something almost like a class loadout, adding new optics, increasing reload speed, or even changing how a gun works.
At the end of the day, though, Fenris wanted to get the shooter gameplay dialed in for Operation Avalon. And I found its small handful of weapons pretty satisfying. A common piece of feedback from last year’s playtest was that it had a little bit too much of a sense that you were playing as a floating gun, not a person. In Operation Vanguard, my warclone had much more of a feeling of weight while still being agile – even slightly superhuman.
If you want to give life as a warclone a try yourself, Operation Avalon will be open to the public from July 7 to July 20.
Leana Hafer is a contributing freelancer for IGN with a specialty in RPGs, strategy, horror, and survival games. She has been reviewing video games professionally since 2010 and is one of IGN’s most prolific contributors, with more than 100 reviews published. You can also find her work on sites like PC Gamer and PCGamesN.
