Dust 514 - Eve Online comes to the PS3

[InfiniteStates]

Dust 514 is a Glimpse of the Future
Does Battlefield in space sound good to you? Thought it might – but Dust 514 is more than that.


Imagine you and a squad of friends are engaged in a Conquest-esque match on the surface of an alien planet, dropping onto the ground near a mining facility that you must capture under heavy resistance from the opposing team. You choose your loadout, pick a spawn point, and call in a couple of vehicles as support, which are presently delivered by dropships. You hop into the tank, gather your team, and move in for the attack. This is something you might have done hundreds of times before. It's hardly a revelation.

But now imagine that this is all taking place in a connected universe: the weapons in your inventory and the tank that you're driving have all been manufactured by someone, somewhere, from elements mined from asteroids by someone else. They've made their way across the galaxy in a cargo fleet, and have been delivered to you by yet another player waiting in their spaceship in near orbit. If you succeed in that mission and capture the mining facility, you get paid and you win the match – but someone, somewhere, just lost their property, and the person up in that spaceship who hired you for the job now has another planet under their command. They might be the CEO of a large peaceful coalition, or they could be the head of a ruthless corp. You might know who they are. You might not.

This is Dust 514, and it is a glimpse at the future of connected gaming. When CCP teased Dust 514 as an upcoming part of the Eve Online universe at GDC Europe in 2010, then properly announced it as a PlayStation 3-exclusive MMOFPS at E3 last year, most people thought that this intention to integrate two entire separate games into the same single-shard massively multiplayer universe was impossibly ambitious. When the developer wheeled out a future-vision CGI trailer at the Eve Fanfest last year that showed a Dust player calling in an orbital strike from an Eve player, there was a lot of scoffing. But now we've seen it actually happen in real-time during a live demonstration at this year's Fanfest in Iceland, and we know it's not just possible – it's working right now.

I'm not an Eve player. Chances are, if you're reading about Dust 514 on IGN and not one of the Eve community sites or newsblogs, that you're not either. Dust is aimed at a very different set of people to the 400,000 paying subscribers participating in the gorgeous, grand-scale space opera that is Eve Online – it's aimed at people who enjoy their console shooters, and like the idea of playing one in which their next bullet could topple an empire rather than just improve their K/D. And, as if it weren't unusual enough already, it's free-to-play. You won't ever be forced to spend a penny on it, if you don't want to. No item you can buy in the game will give you an advantage over anyone else – and if it ever does, CCP has promised in advance to immediately remove it and refund everyone.

This year's Eve Fanfest was the first chance that anybody has had to actually play Dust 514, and the surprising thing is that it's not just impressive as a concept, it's also compelling as a shooter in and of itself. The development team in Shanghai is made up of people who've gained their FPS experience working at DICE, Ubisoft and more, a team specifically put together for this game whilst CCP in Reykjavik continues to concentrate on Eve Online. Dust 514 isn't just a side project for a studio used to designing giant spaceships. It plays and looks like a science-fiction Battlefield, with a big emphasis on large teams, vehicles and huge maps. Tested out by EVE fans over the whole weekend in 24-v-24 matches, it holds up very well.

You start in a command center, where you walk around in third-person in a room full of cool-looking holographic maps and giant projected screens of strategies, comms and spaceship schematics. Here, you can pick up missions from the console – either missions offered by Eve players, or NPC missions designed by CCP to get people into the game and ensure there's always something for them to do, even in the rare weeks when the Eve universe isn't in the grip of multi-faction warfare. The battle room is sort of like a visually realised pre-match lobby, where you can look at a map, fiddle with your equipment and chat to other mercenaries inbetween sorties. Imagine PlayStation Home in space, basically.

Your loadouts – called dropsuits in-game – are fully customisable, and made up of the weapons, resources and armour that you've purchased from the shop, using either in-game or (presumably) purchased currency. Playing around with anti-tank, recon, sniper and heavy assault loadouts, the differences are clear; heavy armour makes you move more slowly, and different equipment changes your playstyle alongside different weapons. It's flexible, but easy to understand.

On the ground, Dust 514 plays out a lot like other FPSes with a multiplayer bent. It's fast-paced but strategic. The maps range from multi-level smaller arenas with a bit of an old-school Halo feel, where you can play out a smaller 5-v-5 team deathmatch, up to enormous five-square-mile battlefields. There's a top-down 3D map that shows exactly what's happening in real-time whilst you wait to respawn. Amazingly, CCP claims that every single one of the thousands of planets in the Eve universe will have its own unique layout, eventually. When the game launches it'll be temperate planets only, but a 2013 update promises lava, gas and snow planets alongside much else. This is an evolving game, and the idea is that it will be supported and updated actively years and years into its lifespan, like EVE Online itself.

The matches are full of heart-in-mouth moments – like any good multiplayer FPS, being on the edge of conquest victory or racking up a miraculous kill-streak is exhilarating. But the real spine-tingling moment during this impressive unveil came when an orbital strike was called in. As two players on the PC in Eve Online started a fight in near orbit, sending missiles shooting across space towards each others' ships, you could hear the rumble on the ground on the PS3. After requesting an orbital strike through comms, the PC player entered the launch code provided by the PS3 player, and bright jets of light plunged down from the ship towards the planet's surface. Seconds later, the lasers broke through the atmosphere of the planet, and the PS3 player looked on as the enemy base was devastated. Seeing that connectivity in action is incredible.

Not all the complexity outlined in those opening paragraphs will be present from the off. The Eve Online universe has been around since 2003, and it's a complex place governed by unpredictable but organic economical and political trends that keep the world in balance. Adding in anything to this universe can have unexpected results, so CCP is being careful about Dust at first, rolling out new things slowly to see how they affect the world economy. But every item in Dust is an item in the world economy, including weapons and vehicles. Eve players will be able to make money out of manufacturing these armaments and delivering them to Dust players – in a way that complements the arms trade that's already a part of Eve's economy.

Up until now, all that anyone has really been able to say about Dust 514 is that it'll be cool if it works. Some hedging still feels necessary – the specifics of how and where and how often you can call in an orbital strike and how to make it so that the best-funded mercenaries aren't automatically almost certain to win are still in question, for instance, and CCP will be iterating very slowly to ensure that Dust 514 doesn't suddenly upset the delicate balance of the universe that they've spent nine years nurturing.

But now that we've seen it in action and know that it actually DOES work, it's safe to say that this is a game worth getting excited about for a whole array of different reasons. I now have confidence that CCP can actually pull this off – and when it does, it'll be a vision for gaming's future that opens up opportunities never thought possible before. Dust 514 is the PS3's first MMOFPS, and it right now it plays and looks great – but it's also part of something much bigger.

[Ninja-Welshman]

Hey guys. Any of you taking part in the first Beta event this weekend? I'm bored and purchased the Mercenary Pack off PSN. D/L now.

[Symonator]

i've been in the closed beta, didn't like it at all.

[Ninja-Welshman]

Oh well thats £13 down the drain. God damn summer drought making me buy stuff I wouldn't normally!!

[Symonator]

It's alright like, but hopefully they fixed all reported bugs and made it a bit more of a fps experience.

It was a bit "old" if you know what i mean.

[YorkshirePud]

is it free to play? just pay for stuff you want? might give it a whirl

[Ninja-Welshman]

It will be free to play on release but you can pay to get into the closed beta by buying the mercenary pack on the PSN store. It gives you a bunch of stuff to use and in game currency.

[chrisdfa1]

It will be free to play on release but you can pay to get into the closed beta by buying the mercenary pack on the PSN store. It gives you a bunch of stuff to use and in game currency.

played the private beta as well mate, needed 'A LOT' of improvements if i was to ever think of playing again. Graphics reminded me of MAG, they were that bad .

another cool concept badly executed imo!