EVE Online developer CCP Games has had a long and colourful history of trying to break into the first-person shooter genre. Since the launch of PS3 exclusive MMOFPS DUST 514 back in 2013, there has been no fewer than three EVE themed shooters announced at events or shown off to fans. CCP is now hoping that third time’s the charm with EVE Vanguard, its upcoming shooter set to enter early access next summer.

EVE Vanguard was revealed in 2023 as a kind of PvP-focused military extraction shooter with an EVE Online theme, but it’s now leaning far more heavily into a full MMOFPS experience with its own persistent sandbox worlds and plans to eventually link it meaningfully to the EVE universe. We got hands-on with Vanguard at this year’s EVE Fanfest and learned more about what the future has in store for this ambitious shooter.

A long and colourful history

Those who remember the release of DUST 514 may recall it as an enormously hopeful time for EVE Online and its developer CCP Games. EVE was celebrating its 10th anniversary, and DUST 514 was poised to bring countless console gamers into the fold. The game launched as a PS3 exclusive toward the end of the console’s life cycle, and unfortunately the expected flood of console players was more of a trickle, but the game did develop a small core audience.

In 2014 CCP announced plans to bring DUST 514 to PC under the name Project Legion, but by 2015, development slowed and then stopped while work on DUST 514 itself continued. When DUST was officially shuttered in 2016, we heard that early work was actually starting on a different FPS unconnected to DUST or Legion, and at EVE Fanfest 2016 it was announced as a new FPS codenamed Project Nova.

Crucially, Project Nova wasn’t meant to be an MMO connected to EVE Online but just a separate game that used the EVE IP as a setting. A public demo of the game was shown at EVE Vegas 2018 but failed to make much of an impression with EVE players thanks to the lack of a killer hook or integration with EVE. Legion was shuttered shortly after the event, and in the years that followed there were hints of a new EVE FPS in the works. Those rumours were confirmed in 2023 with the announcement of EVE Vanguard.

What will EVE Vanguard look like?

Vanguard is set on planets all across New Eden where massive EVE ships from interstellar wars have crashed and spilled their flaming guts across the landscape. Vanguard players will take on contracts called “commissions” from different factions within EVE, each one a set of assignments that need to be completed on these planets.

Players will deploy to planets either solo or in groups via drop pods and then fight their way past NPCs and other players to reach and complete various mission objectives. Players will be recovering sensitive data from computers, securing sites against hostile factions, and salvaging components and cargo left behind. There will be a crafting system to let players make new ammo and equipment on the fly and a mining system for gathering resources.

Between deployments, players will live in their own space called a warbarge. It’s here that players will craft stockpiles of equipment to use in deployments, organise their inventory, and customise their drop suits and weapons to fit different play styles. It’s expected that tactical metas will emerge from this just as happens with ship fittings in EVE Online.

What makes Vanguard more of a full-scale MMOFPS now than an extraction shooter is a new layer of persistence revealed at EVE Fanfest 2025. Certain planets in Vanguard will get ground stations called Bastions that function kind of like space stations in EVE Online. It’s here that Vanguard players will meet each other, organise groups, buy and sell equipment, and find unique NPCs offering new commissions.

Each bastion has a certain sphere of influence around it, and players can deploy down to only those planets in range. Interestingly, that influence can grow as players collectively complete missions or shrink if activity in the bastion is low. Players will also be able to jump-clone from one bastion to another but their gear won’t move with them, so each new bastion is a blank slate and an opportunity to build yourself up from the ground up.

When the game launches it will have a series of NPC bastions throughout the galaxy, but the plan is to let players build and maintain their own bastions that grow in power and influence as people use them. As the spheres of influence grow, they will inevitably overlap with other players’ bastions and spark conflicts over resource-rich planets.

In terms of the minute-to-minute gameplay, Vanguard is also moving away from its bland military shooter roots with new sci-fi weapons inspired by classic shooters such as Quake and Unreal Tournament. I got hands-on with a new railgun-style rifle and a shotgun that seems very much like the Unreal Tournament flak cannon, both of which felt satisfying to use.

When the game goes live, players will have a weapon locker in their warbarge where they can craft and customise their guns and have a selection of different battle suits. We’re also told that the plan is to eventually have a real economic link between Vanguard and EVE Online where certain things needed in EVE are found or made only in Vanguard and vice versa.

Hands-on experience

Above is some raw footage from the latest build of Vanguard from EVE Fanfest 2025, when we explored some of the new game environments and tried out prototype versions of new weapons such as the sniper rifle and shotgun. I left in the part where my fellow game journalist shot me in the back (well, front) because that may be the most EVE Online thing to happen to me throughout Fanfest.

Some big changes have landed since I last played Vanguard in 2024, including the introduction of a new ore mining system, more work on inventory mechanics and banking, new craftable items and tools, and the ability to revive teammates from a downed state. The visuals have also been dramatically improved, with much clearer indicators for enemies and loot and some really impressive-looking new environments across different planet biomes.

The minute-to-minute combat gameplay felt pretty solid, and I can definitely see how compelling it would be to deploy into a planet full of other players to complete a specific mission or even just to farm resources for equipment. I can imagine certain corporations staking a claim to specific planets rich in resources, running weekly gathering operations with defenders and miners, or getting reputations as an unstoppable force in their corner of the galaxy.

The current build of the game is not without its flaws, however. The user experience of crafting and the menus and in-combat UIs all still feel like early prototypes and require navigating through monochromatic popup menu trees. Other shooters with harvesting and crafting mechanics such as Rust or No Man’s Sky have opted for much larger and more detailed UIs for crafting, which I feel works better for this kind of game.

Mechanics such as the mining system and deployable items feel very rough at this early stage, and you do spend a frightening amount of time looking at boxes on the ground and holding down E to loot them. We also didn’t get a good sense in this playtest session of how the PvE missions or the different PvE events throughout the map will work – or how PvP will come into it. None of this is a problem yet as the game is still very early, and we know there’s a playtest session coming up this September that might answer more of those questions.

With the announced details about the bastions, warbarge, weapon customisation, and resource gathering gameplay, Vanguard is definitely leaning far more heavily into full MMOFPS gameplay. The idea of corporations eventually building their own bastions, staking a claim to the planets within a certain area of the EVE universe and building it up as their base of power is a pretty compelling endgame.

While the game has its problems, I am reassured that there’s more than a year to go before Vanguard hits early access, and that CCP is taking things slow and involving players. The progress on the new weapons and visuals has been solid, and the plan for persistent sandbox gameplay that could later link into EVE Online sounds pretty good. After several previous attempts to break into the FPS genre, I have a strong feeling that this could be the one to finally do it.

Disclosure: In accordance with Massively OP’s ethics policy, we must disclose that CCP paid for our writer’s travel to and accommodation at this event. CCP neither requested nor was granted any control or influence over our coverage of the event. I’m still mad that there’s no tanks and vehicles though! EVE Online expert Brendan ‘Nyphur’ Drain has been playing EVE for over a decade and writing the regular EVE Evolved column since 2008. The column covers everything from in-depth EVE guides and news breakdowns to game design discussions and opinion pieces. If there’s a topic you’d love to see covered, drop him a comment or send mail to brendan@massivelyop.com!