Even the most hardened console gamer should pay attention to me right now: EVE Online: Tyrannis is coming out on May 18th. It’s a free expansion, and it comes with all sorts of improvements, including EVE Gate, an online portal that will let players interact with the game — checking mail, getting updates — through a regular ol’ browser.
But that’s not what makes Tyrannis so interesting — it’s the expansion’s new focus on planet-side mining and development. “There seems to be some deep Freudian desire to erect something monumental. To make stuff. To create something new,” explains a CCP devblog. “You will finally be able to survey for juicy deposits of minerals and other goodies, build infrastructure to harvest them, store them, process them and launch them into space. Build complex networks of facilities and fine tune them for optimal production.”
You’ll be able to do this not only on the terran planets, but on every planet in the EVE universe: the gas giants, the balls of ice, the plasma planets. Cool.
But here’s the kicker, even for those of you who don’t play EVE: while Tyrannis won’t feature any ground combat, it paves the way for Dust 514, the console shooter designed to interact with the EVE universe. Dust 514 groundtroops will be first-person shooting their way through the EVE universe, while PC-based fleets command troops and manage resources. It seems to me that Tyrannis will add an extra layer of complexity to both games — Dust 514 might also be responsible for protecting mines, sabotaging enemy supply lines, and who knows what else.
Very cool.
EVE Online “Tyrannis” Update Dated By Trailer [Shacknews]
