After several weeks of reviewing all of our interviews with the developers, gathering the reactions of players, and reflecting on my own experiences, I wanted to give my thoughts and opinions regarding Project Nova and what I saw and experienced at the EVE Vegas event this year.
It’s important to explain where I come from to better understand my perspective in all of this and how it may differ from many of the other reviews you may have read.
The first online multiplayer FPS game that I ever played with a lesser-known title on the PlayStation 3 called MAG. It was revolutionary for its time, featuring 256 man battles with different factions, dozens of unique tools and weapons, character and weapon customization, and a “Shadow War” feature that gave bonuses to different factions depending on if and where different factions won battles. While the game was far from perfect, it had a certain charm and vision about it that made it an incredibly compelling experience and one that I still miss to this day.
MAG eventually came to an end as most games do, but in its place, I heard about a game called DUST 514 being produced by CCP Games, makers of EVE Online. While I had never played EVE, I had, of course, heard of it’s brutal and hardcore experience. This paired with the fact that DUST was planned to feature an evolution of many of the elements that I enjoyed in MAG, I immediately threw myself into the world of New Eden.
I started playing DUST 514 in the first wave of the Closed Beta back in May 2012 and played religiously until the game was shut down in May 2016. After a series of social media campaigns and the subsequent announcement of Project Nova, I found myself at the 2018 EVE Vegas event and was fortunate enough to be one of the first to get their hands on the Pre-Alpha build of Project Nova.
The Game Mode
At the event, we got to try Project Nova’s PvE game mode, Onslaught, on the easiest difficulty. The narrative is that Sansha’s Nation, a legion of cybernetically enhanced and mind controlled slaves, are attacking a Minmatar battleship in an attempt to capture the ship and abduct the people inside of it. Players group up in a team of four and are deployed to the surface of the ship to fend off the Sansha forces long enough for the ship to power up its warp drive and escape.
The easy difficulty was much appreciated as the game mode is designed to feel like an uphill battle. When the mission starts, a small group of Sansha forces are already on the ship and actively approaching the objectives which means the team has to fight through the enemies to secure their first objective. The catch is that players can only respawn on captured objectives, so if the team wipes before they capture one, they’ll fail the mission. It’s meant to be unforgiving and for someone unfamiliar with the game, it was a tense couple of minutes on our way to capture our first point, even on the easiest difficulty.
After a couple failed attempts we managed to establish our beachhead, and that’s when the main phase of the battle began. Sansha boarding torpedoes could be seen crashing down on the surface of the ship with groups of enemies spawning out of them and attempting to capture the three available objectives. As more and more enemies began to pour in it became apparent that the members of our team would not be enough to hold off the hoard which is where the turrets come into play.
Around each of the three objectives were one or two places where we were able to construct a variety of turrets which would automatically attack enemies that get within range. While these turrets didn’t seem to be capable of completely defending an objective on their own, they were essential in holding the hoard back just enough so that we were able to move from objective to objective and clear the enemies out.
We only had three players for this particular run despite the game mode being balanced for four players. Luckily this difficulty only had three objectives which allowed us to dedicate a person to each objective with some movement in between to support one another when needed. However higher difficulties will feature up to five objectives meaning that placing turrets intelligently will be critical, as at least one or more objectives will need to be left unattended at times.
Holding these objectives awarded each team points with more points being awarded if multiple objectives were held. Once we hit 1000 points we would win the match, or conversely, if the Sansha reached 1000 point we would lose. However, regardless of the outcome, a final phase would activate where we were told to Exfiltrate by making our way back to where our insertion pod initially landed. This felt much like the extraction phase found at the end of Titanfall matches and added a final challenge for the players to overcome. It didn’t seem like failing to exfiltrate changed the outcome of the main goal of the mission, but presumably, there will be additional bonus rewards for teams that successfully extract from the battle.
The Challenge
As stated before, we only got to play on the easiest difficulty of the PvE game mode at the event, and as we started to learn how the game mode worked, the challenge of the mission quickly diminished. However, the developers explained that this mode was primarily to teach new players the ins and the outs of the experience and less so on delivering a challenge. That being said as a tutorial mission it felt appropriate – not so difficult that I was unable to learn the mechanics of what was going on, but not so simple that I was bored and just wanted it to end.
Unfortunately, the easy mission was the only one available at the demo so we were unable to get any hands-on experience with higher difficulties so it’s difficult to speak on how challenging the game will be. We talked to Paul Wright, the Lead Designer, about scaling difficulty and how the game engine will generate more difficult but unpredictable situations without turning the enemies into bullet sponges which is very encouraging. As for the enemy AI, we only saw two types in this game mode. First off the slow-moving grunts mostly moved slowly towards the objectives but they seemed to favor quantity over quality. However, the melee-based enemies were very difficult to deal with as they would rush and teleport back and forth to avoid your shots.
As per our interview with Paul Wright, combining these enemy types in various larger quantities and situations could quickly lead to some challenging and terrifying situations, so I am eager to see what the higher difficulties play like. There were two other enemy types that appeared in the launch trailer but were not present in the demo that we tried. Presumably, these additional enemy types will appear in higher difficulties.
The Experience
I want to start with talking about the core moment to moment experience because, as stated in our interview with CCP Rattati, “I came here with one objective, to show core experience.”. The moment to moment gunplay and feel of the game was one of DUST 514’s biggest weakness, plagued with unresponsive controls, clunky gameplay, and a terrible framerate. If the developments team’s goal was to avoid these issues in Project Nova, it was an overwhelming success. The controls were tight and extremely responsive, the movement was smooth and felt amazing, and the frame rate was at a reliable 60 fps regardless of what was going on on-screen.
An important part of any game is, unfortunately, something you can’t glean from just watching gameplay videos, it’s something that you have to experience firsthand with your hands on the game, and that is the “Game Feel”. Game Feel simply refers to the overall experience of the game as a whole and if simply the act of playing the game, regardless of content or progression or rewards, is enjoyable, then the game has good Game Feel.
The Destiny franchise has always had a rocky history of content and design choices, but most would agree it has excellent Game Feel. It feels good to move and jump and shoot in Destiny. Project Nova is very much the same, it feels good to play Project Nova. The movement, the way your character shoots, how it feels to move around, what it’s like to use the class abilities – the act of playing Project Nova is enjoyable once you actually get your hands on it. I think that is something that is very important that unfortunately players who did not attend EVE Vegas did not get to experience but is something that shouldn’t be understated.
The new class-specific abilities were really fun to use as well. The Assault’s power slide (while probably needs to be toned down on distance/speed) felt incredible and I could see it being a very fun and useful tool for players to use both offensively and defensively. Additionally, the Sentinel’s High-G mode felt like a proper EVE-styled Siege Mode, and the Infiltrator’s Glide ability made traversing the map a breeze. These abilities gave a unique sense of identity to the classes outside of visual appearance and base stats which is a welcome addition.
Finding the Balance
The most difficult thing that CCP needs to overcome is finding the balance between delivering on the very grounded and methodical combat and the setting of superhuman soldiers in dropsuits on the exterior of a spaceship.
Starting with the setting and giving credit where it’s due, the surface of an EVE Online starship is a fantastic setting for Project Nova. The skybox with the various fleet battles raging overhead and the sight of distant features of the iconic EVE battleships all works extremely well. I also felt like the corpses of enemies floating away into space also helped to sell the zero gravity setting – but unfortunately, that’s largely where the immersion started to drop off.
Player bodies still fall to the ground when killed, grenades still experience bullet drop, and stepping off the side of the map causes you to fall “down” to your death. The developers have explained that there is a lore explanation for this involving gravity harnesses and artificial gravity on the ship, but it was difficult to shake the underlying feeling that this the game was just terrestrial combat with a new space-themed skybox and changes to certain ragdoll physics. Understandably there are gameplay reasons for many of the mechanics, but there wasn’t enough to sell the idea that we were playing on the exterior of a ship and it somewhat pulled me out of my immersion.
Additionally, while I do love the feel and concept of the unique class abilities, they ride a particularly divisive line. DUST featured extremely grounded tactical combat where dropsuits felt heavy and movement was comparatively slow to other games. However, this didn’t always feel in line with the power fantasy that came with being a genetically engineered super soldier. These new abilities definitely push more towards fulfilling that power fantasy but in doing so move further away from the very slow and methodical combat that fans enjoyed in the original DUST.
The developers have a difficult choice to make; do they lean more towards the very grounded style of play in DUST? Or do they lean into the setting and narrative and make the player feel more powerful with unique abilities like slides and jumps?
This also touches on the previous issue of the gameplay appears to not line up with the narrative and setting of the game. I don’t think fans of the series are looking for Titanfall levels of mobility and power, but more needs to be done to sell the setting/narrative and the class-specific abilities could play a large part of the solution if they push them even further. However, finding that balance of immersive mechanics and grounded gameplay is going to be one of the biggest challenges that CCP will need to address. Hopefully, the developers will find more ways to make the player feel that they are in space fighting on top of a starship instead of just visually showing them that they are.
What We Didn’t See
For all intents and purposes, these demos are rarely meant to show off the full scope of features in a game, especially one still in a pre-alpha stage. Project Nova was no different and many of the features that one would expect from a New Eden game were either disabled, hidden, or not yet implemented into the game.
For example, only three of the planned six classes were available and had fixed loadouts as opposed to a traditional fitting system. The fitting system is already partially developed, but it was simply hidden from us in the demo. Additionally, PvP is planned for the Alpha testing phase starting this November but that too was also unavailable in the demo. While we do have some details regarding how these systems will work, much is still up in the air from the perspective of the players until we see more.
This biggest struggle that the developers will be facing is setting Project Nova apart from other competitors in a very crowded market. DUST had the advantage of marketing itself as one of the first free to play shooters available on the PS3 and the first to directly connect and interact with an entirely different game on a different platform. However, we know that while there are plans to eventually link Project Nova to EVE Online, that won’t be coming for some time so the developers will need to show something else to set the game apart from the crowd.
From what we’ve seen, Project Nova is far more grounded in its vision and scope – largely because it has to be in order to guarantee it delivers on that all too important gameplay foundation. It isn’t chasing over the top orbital bombardments or pipe dreams of convoluted real-time interactions with EVE Online. It’s a very grounded approach that has produced the product we saw in the pre-alpha, but it also means that there isn’t currently a grand dream predominantly on display. It was that insane dream that attracted many players to DUST, and while I don’t advocate for CCP to bite off more than they can chew, I’d like to see more in terms of what the final vision really is.
While developers promise and assure elements for planned fitting, progression, and territory control modes are very appreciated, players will likely remain apprehensive until more concrete details can be shown. Project Nova will have a lot of competition in its market, so adding meaning and unique features to its gameplay to a point that really draws players in over other titles. Features such as blended PvP and PvE as well as marquee game modes like persistent territory control will help to make Project Nova stand apart and draw players in who crave tactical gameplay and a strategic metagame.
So in short, the demo did exactly what it intended to do; show off a very smooth enjoyable shooter experience that easily trounces the moment to moment performance of its predecessor, DUST 514. What we saw in the pre-alpha was an extremely solid foundation to build upon. However, Project Nova still has a long ways to go in terms of adding meaning to the game and fleshing out its systems and features such as fitting, progression, and game modes. CCP has come a very long way in setting proper priorities and executing them to deliver on a good foundation. Now it is simply a matter of what they manage to build on top of that foundation moving forward.
With the first wave of the Alpha just around the corner, players will soon be able to get more hands on the game. Don’t forget to sign up for the invite-only alpha https://www.ccpgames.com/
