

"Ran is such a pivotal character, we can't have her running around like Judge Dredd all the time," said O'Brien.
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The character, voiced by Battlestar Galactica's Katee Sackhoff, now has a face thanks to artwork revealed at FanFest and it was also announced that a series of Darkhorse comics exploring her story is set for a release just before or around the same time as the game. We wore headphones to make the most of the immersive audio which including our ships' engines, the sounds of enemy fighters and big "moving obstacle" ships around us and the instructions in our ear from the game's female protagonist Ran Kavik, a Gallente pilot who wakes up in a cloning facility and breaks away to form the Valkyries. Your character is immortal, after all, though O'Brien warns that the game mechanic means kamikaze tactics will just mean your opponent end up with more points.ĬCP devs told players that they're not looking to use too many effects - smoke, lens flares, 'blinding' pilots - as it's essentially not a very nice experience in VR. Looking at the shattered glass up close and remains of your ship around you is weirdly beautiful and almost worthy dying a few times to appreciate it. There's plenty of new game design details to discover if you've played EVE: Valkyrie before from the aforementioned fog to the way the cockpit disintegrates around you as your ship takes damage. Read this: Oculus confirms Rift Crescent Bay edition packs two displays There was an added layer of strategy in the Necropolis graveyard multiplayer scrap that we played too- there were three control points to capture, using drones, and depending on which team held these, the points acted as a multiplier so each kill counted more towards the win. You can trade up from the "iconic" starter Wraith ship to a Spectre, which is less agile but more powerful, by selecting the new ship from a virtual menu environment when you die. In terms of what's new, there's lots of fresh content including a new ship to pilot. Erich Cooper, a game designer on Valkyrie, confirmed that joystick support is being currently being worked on, much to the delight of some fans. Speaking of the controller, Oculus is experimenting with hand-tracking, as is CCP with its VR Labs projects, but that sort of input would be out of place in a title like this.

The action was everywhere and pretty fast-paced with CCP's experiments in fog intensity adding to the confusion wonderfully. In a seated position to pilot our Wraith starter ship, the gameplay required us to look left and right but also above and below our ship to find our enemies and lock on with our missiles via the controller. We played through a short multiplayer dogfight between two five-man teams of pirates in a Necropolis graveyard map, the wreckage of the single player convoy mission shown in the trailer. It's the same build of the game that we played at FanFest 2015 on both an Oculus Rift DKII and Oculus' Crescent Bay prototype - a CCP dev told us it's the first time the hardware has been used in non-Oculus demos. "It's a great razor to cut through feature lists and decide what we're going to focus on." Playing EVE: Valkyrieįor anyone who has been following the development of EVE: Valkyrie, the trailer is made up from pre-alpha gameplay footage captured from a VR headset, including a pretty epic space battle at the end there. "We want to be the best competitive multiplayer in VR and that's it," said O'Brien. They've been perfecting the art of focus. And some attendees are still distracted from the confirmation that players of the MMO can expect dozens of new features, every six weeks, to expand their gigantic in-game universe.īut O'Brien and his team haven't been making a VR replica of EVE Online since 2013. When we're shown the new gameplay trailer (below) for the first time, there are shouts of "Again!" and "More!" before O'Brien allows a replay. Before CCP's CEO Hilmar Veigar kicked off the VR keynote, a fight almost broke out between two players meeting IRL for the first time. Outside the hall, someone's getting an EVE tattoo. Wareable guide: Everything you need to know about Oculus Rift He's on stage at the 11th EVE FanFest in Reykjavik with the best part of 1,200 EVE Online players and 200 CCP devs in front of him.

Owen O'Brien, executive producer of EVE: Valkyrie at CCP Games, wants everyone to focus.
