Your first foray into EVE: Valkyrie, the EVE universe-set shooter previously known as EVR—will feel amazing. When I recently sampled it with the latest HD Oculus dev kit, launching my ship was almost exactly like being in a viper speeding down the tunnels of Battlestar Galactica (you know, the Olmos version). I'm also pretty sure I dribbled slightly during the demo.
Aiming the Rift with my eyes while using the keyboard and mouse felt completely natural. Space battles in Valkyrie aren't as complex as X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter -not yet- but they're instantly satisfying to control, and the Rift amplifies the drama.
It's interesting to consider how these basic combat systems, elevated by the Rift's tech, will be turned into a multiplayer shooter that people will want to play for hundreds of hours. It's still a tech demo, but it shows significant are now different playable ships and a working UI that updates you on what's happening in the surrounding space.
“Since that build at Gamescom 2013, part of what you're seeing here is us taking the prototype of EVR and making it more and more of a game, and adding more systems to the game,” says CCP's CMO David Reid. “So what you're seeing in this build is that you have multiple ships, whereas in the original prototype and even as recently as our CES build, everyone was in [the same] ship, whereas now we're doing a kind of rock, paper and scissors mechanic with different kinds of ships.
Some are slower and take more punishment, others are faster and do more damage but don't take as many shots to be killed -that is one of those changes.”
There's a plan in place for modes, both conventional to multiplayer shooters and also EVE-appropriate. “This is more akin to an FPS in many ways, so we're looking at modes like team deathmatch, king of the kill, CTF, things like that being added to the game,” says Reid. “Similarly we've done some experimenting with escort missions. A Super Capital is floating slowly, and there's a group of valkyrie fighters defending it and another group trying to take it down. Those kind of things are the stuff you'll see.” Weaving in the EVE economy and allowing ship customization is part of CCP's plan, too.
Valkyrie is clearly far from finalized as a full game in this form, but CCP's commitment to building systems around such an effective VR experience is encouraging. It already had a great tech demo, one that will probably make early Rift adopters out of space shooter fans, along with Frontier's equally breathtaking Elite Dangerous. CCP nailed the experience of sitting in a fighter cockpit—now I can see how it plans to keep me there.
Samuel Roberts
DEVELOPER: In-house
PUBLISHER: CCP
LINK: www.evevalkyrie.com
