This is my 3rd time playing EVE Online’s upcoming extraction shooter little brother, and it finally feels like it’s coming together—all without the ambitious crossover features it was made for
Fenris Creations, the studio behind the upcoming extraction shooter EVE Vanguard, continues its long journey to realize the vision that began with Dust 514 over a decade ago. The original PS3-exclusive FPS failed to gain traction despite being designed to integrate with EVE Online’s economy and player-driven sandbox universe. Now, the London-based developer—a continuation of CCP Games’ FPS efforts—is attempting to deliver on that promise with EVE Vanguard.
The new extraction shooter aims to combine core mechanics from games like Escape from Tarkov with deep integration into EVE Online’s persistent universe. Rather than simply cosmetic crossovers, the game’s design seeks to create meaningful connections: EVE Online’s player corporations and alliances will influence EVE Vanguard’s ongoing narrative and gameplay landscape. Game director Scott Davis outlined the ambition as creating “ongoing storytelling” powered by EVE’s “perpetual motion machine” of player-driven conflict and economics.
While the developers acknowledge that launching with authored content is necessary to establish the foundation, the ultimate goal is to transition to a self-sustaining gameplay loop where player actions in both games feed into each other. This approach mirrors the narrative integration seen in live-service games like Helldivers, but scaled to EVE’s complex alliance warfare and economic systems. Whether EVE Vanguard can succeed where Dust 514 failed remains to be seen, but the vision of a tightly integrated MMO-shooter universe continues to intrigue parts of EVE’s passionate community.