EVE Vanguard Makes A Lot of Big Promises, But Delivers Good Gunplay

It's almost surreal to ride a drop pod down to the surface of one of EVE Online's tens of thousands of planets in the upcoming shooter tie-in, EVE Vanguard. I've flown by them hundreds of times in the many years I've been playing the venerable spaceship MMO, but usually at astronomical distances. I always wondered about what was going on down there. I would make up stories about it in my head. Now I have a high-powered space rifle in my hands and I'm experiencing the universe up close and personal. And while it was a very, very build that couldn't show off a lot of the bigger promises, to my disappointment, there are some promising hints already.

As a quick caveat, the footage you're seeing is still from an early build and a lot of things, including the weapon and enemy models, are not final. CCP just announced that Vanguard will be going into Early Access in Summer 2026, so we've still got a while to wait. Also, the portion we actually got to play was only the session-based shooter maps themselves, and not the career and progression stuff that will be taking place back in space. But I got to talk to the devs about both, so we'll get into a bit of each here.

What, exactly, is a Vanguard? Well, like most things in EVE Online, it's some esoteric high concept sci-fi that can seem a little bewildering at first. Your character is a semi-immortal "infomorph" – which is to say a digital human consciousness that lives in cyberspace. I guess you could say you're something like Johnny Silverhand from Cyberpunk 2077. To fight on the front lines of New Eden's many wars, you upload yourself into a powerful war clone, which is purpose-grown from a fresh soup of biological matter for each mission. They're not free, but you can call down a new one in the middle of a mission if the one you're in gets blown up, explaining how you can respawn over and over.

On a scale from random cannon fodder to Master Chief, the devs said you can think of war clones as not exactly superhuman, but more like the absolute peak of human ability an elite athlete could achieve. They are renowned across the galaxy, and running into another player-controlled Vanguard on a deployment is meant to feel like a mini boss fight.

Suit Up

Vanguards gather in bastions, which CCP says you could think of almost like The Continental from John Wick. I swear I'm not trying to shoehorn in more Keanu references here. It just happens! It's neutral ground to shop, swap stories, and pick up new contracts, represented by a virtual space where you'll be able to physically walk around and interact with other mercs' avatars. As someone who was devastated when EVE Online removed the ability to walk around in stations, I was particularly pleased to hear this.

The really cool thing, though, is that these bastions exist out in the same universe where EVE Online players are zipping around in their spaceships. The initial ones will be NPC-controlled, but it will eventually be possible for players to attack, build, and even own their own bastions. CCP hopes specific bastions might develop a reputation as the place you go if you really need a job done right. And similar to how EVE has "high sec" space where NPC law enforcement protects new players and "low" or "null sec" where players are free to PvP to their heart's content, new Vanguards will also be able to choose where they end up based on how interested they are in fighting other players.

Hair Trigger

One of the biggest changes in philosophy EVE Vanguard has undergone since its reveal back in 2023 is how the guns themselves are being designed. We're moving away from sleek, understated military sci-fi into what the designers called an homage to the "golden age" of shooters, citing inspirations like Doom, Quake, and Unreal. There is still your standard space rifle, which comes in a few different faction variants. But I also got to play around with an energy shotgun with ricocheting projectiles that can fire in a spread pattern, or a single, massive orb of destruction if you hold down the fire button for a couple seconds.

As more of a long-range enjoyer, my favorite was this high-powered sniper rifle that features the ability to hold your breath to line up a perfect shot. While the model is clearly unfinished, the reload animation of swapping out the little focusing crystal is slick and memorable as well. Like in EVE Online, almost everything is gathered and crafted by players, too. Even in a mission, I had to loot some corpses and spend a bit of time with my portable fabricator to top up my ammo. Mining and industry will also be a part of the Vanguard experience. It will even be possible to specialize in it – though the devs warned me that you'll probably want to bring some backup with combat skills if you do.

You might see me switching weapons with a debug menu in the video at the top of the page, which was just for the demo. Eventually, we'll be picking our loadout from the deck of our own battlebarge ahead of a deployment. This will also let us pick which kind of war clone to spawn, and we were told they will eventually come in all different shapes and sizes for different specializations. Vanguard will also have a bit of separation from the main EVE Online economy. Notably, you don't buy guns and ammo with ISK, which is the main currency for the starship jockeys, since it wouldn't make much sense for a rifle to cost the same as a frigate.

There absolutely will be ways for players of both games to work together and benefit one another symbiotically, though. Some materials Vanguards can access planetside might not be abundant in space, for instance. Another example I was given likened it to Star Wars: Rogue One or Return of the Jedi, where an elite ground team might have to take down a shield generator so the fleet above can attack a fortified station.

Nightmare Fuel

The enemies here are also a work-in-progress. Using placeholder models, they spawn in small groups and mostly keep their distance, but I did get caught a couple times by a flanking attack from an unexpected direction. We got to see some concept art of one of the PvE enemy factions, Mordu's Legion, though, and they are extremely unsettling. These cyborg space mercs who have their heart ritually removed as part of their initiation will come in several different ranks, with some being able to direct the others on the battlefield.

On any given deployment, you might end up running into these NPCs and other players. These arenas are massive, open-ended, and varied, a combination of procedurally-generated terrain and handcrafted battlegrounds featuring the wreckage of some of EVE's recognizable starships. In this mission, there was debris actively streaking through the atmosphere as we fought, which was a really awesome touch.

For now, EVE Vanguard is still a lot of "wills," "shoulds," and " hope tos." It is playable, and the gunplay feels a bit unpolished still, but satisfying. The environments are impressive, and the weapon designs are diverse and bombastic. It's just hard to get the full picture without actually experiencing how it will tie into the EVE Online shared universe or the social features, which are definitely the most exciting part of the whole idea. For that we'll have to wait until the middle of next year when Early Access warps in, at which point both games will be connected at last.