A Dust 514 novel may be in the works
Development studio CCP Games has been in the news a lot this year with their ambitious MMOFPS project codenamed Dust 514. When it's released, Dust will actually tie into the studio's current MMO EVE Online. Dust players will hire themselves out to EVE players as mercenaries, their combined aim being to dominate territories on a planet's surface. The first steps toward this unique integration of two MMOs in the same concurrent universe came with EVE Online's Dominion and Tyrannis expansions. Dominion gave EVE players a new Sovereignty framework, which will later be adapted to include planets as strategic points of interest. In the recent Tyrannis expansion, the planets of EVE began producing resources worthy of domination, ensuring that players will fight over them once it becomes possible.
When Dust 514 is eventually released, huge territorial wars will be fought over the planets of New Eden. Part of the war will be waged on land in Dust 514 and the other part in the depths of space in EVE Online. So far, much of the background story behind the marines of New Eden and how they tie in with warring capsuleers remains unknown. Of particular interest to roleplayers and fans of the EVE fiction is the new advancement in cloning technology that allows ground troops to be cloned. It comes as no surprise, then, that CCP may be planning to release a novel leading into the story behind Dust 514.
The guys over at E-ON magazine tipped us off today to the fact that pre-orders for a novel entitled "Dust 514" have appeared on Amazon.co.uk. Apparently written by author Tony Gonzales, the book's pre-order date is currently set for March 17th, 2011. Of course, this isn't Tony's first novel; he was commissioned in 2008 to write EVE: The Empyrean Age, a novel telling the story of how the four empires of EVE went to war. Earlier this year, CCP's internal fiction writer Hjalti Daníelsson followed up with the release of a second novel set in the EVE universe. EVE: The Burning Life tells the story of EVE's major pirate factions and the rise of the capsuleer elite to dominate the galaxy. Whether the planned Dust 514 novel is part of the build-up to the game's release, and so hints at a release window, is anyone's guess. What's certain is that the book is sure to gain interest of both EVE and people looking forward to Dust.
