Ever get that nasty repetitious feeling fighting over the same stale maps in your favorite shooter over and over again, to no discernible purpose? In the upcoming free to download and play PS3 exclusive DUST 514, every battle you wage with your friends will be on the surfaces of new and unique worlds. The outcomes of those battles will then go on to reshape the geopolitical map that players in its already-existing sister game, EVE Online, experience from among the stars those worlds orbit.
To provide context for the setting and plot of DUST, it is necessary to know some of the mechanics of the game world in which it takes place.When CCP Games debuted EVE Online in May of 2003, players were given the opportunity to assume the role of capsuleer, a starship captain and pilot whose consciousness can be intertwined with his or her vessel and safely transferred to a cloned body at the moment of death, regardless of circumstances. These capsuleers were set loose into a massive single-shard sandbox game world consisting of 7500+ star systems called New Eden. Beginning with the release of Dominion, EVE’s twelfth free expansion, the vast majority of these systems could be (and have since been) claimed by anyone powerful enough to seize and maintain sovereignty, be they massive capsuleer alliances or dedicated corporations of just a few. With the May 2010 release of Tyrannis, the thirteenth expansion, players were allowed to begin claiming area on the surfaces of the system’s planets for the extraction and refinement of the resources therein. After the release, CCP made it known that this facet of gameplay would be the stage for an innovative new idea in massively multiplayer game worlds: DUST 514.
The concept is simple: EVE Online runs on a single server, with all the players able to interact with one another if they so choose, and the ramifications of every choice made affecting everyone. DUST is to obey the same rules. Players will take contracts from other players, likely most often capsuleers, being paid to represent those players’ military interests on the surfaces of the planets they are colonizing from space. This will add another dimension of territorial conflict to the face of New Eden, forcing enterprising EVE agents intent on consolidating power to account for not only the naval tactics of their opponents in space, but the presence of their hired ground troops directly threatening their harvesting and production facilities. This is a new concept in online gaming; having two playerbases operating in the same game world in real time, with the events transpiring having tangible effects on all players involved and the game world itself.
In this title, which was confirmed early on to be on a major console as opposed to EVE’s PC-centric format, the player would assume the role of a soldier-for-hire, rendered immortal through cloning much like their space-borne counterparts. Taking the place of the bus-sized nuclear missiles, massive artillery shells, laser cannons and hordes of intelligent combat drones aboard the leviathan starships EVE players employ against their world and one another, DUST players will be given their own tools of destruction befitting a terrestrial immortal. Dropsuits, the soldier’s futuristic exoskeletons made for a wide range of combat applications, will be up-gradable alongside a steadily growing suite of equally varied weaponry. Confirmed is the choice between buying your upgrades and munitions from the game itself or a player-driven market, though whether or not a manufacturing and production system like EVE’s will be implemented as well is still unclear.
With EVE Online, CCP set out to create not just another internet spaceship game, but a science-fiction simulator. It was their intention to have a massive game world featuring gameplay of extreme variety to cater to any sci-fi fantasies prospective players might wish to live out. EVE has recently introduced an avatar system, allowing starship captains to finally step out of their pod and into a change of clothes inside an orbital space station. But with DUST 514, CCP can now offer a gameplay experience that seems a logical next step towards their ultimate goal: ground-based FPS-style combat in a real-time MMO format, with direct linkage to EVE itself.
As for me, when DUST finally drops, I’ll be Bogarting my roommate’s PS3 quite a bit to experience the action from the other side of the table while observing the results on New Eden from the capsuleer perspective on my PC.
