Warframe: The New WarPREVIEW
certainly be needing a Warframeof choice
and your operator as the main playable
quest content. The system’s at war and
what we aim to do with act one of The New
War, which is what we showed at Tenno
Con, just shows the system’s perspective
on the war, and then it will immediately
become a personal story.”
For those invested in its twists and
turns (the quests preceding The New War
left players with a lot of personal stakes)
this new campaign is set to be an
emotional chapter. “I think the story is
going to leave people emotional... I didn’t
finish the script without crying. It’s a very
personal work for us.”NEWBIES WAR
This sounds all good for those already
enthralled but what about those who’ve
never even tried Warframe? Well, it might
just be the best time there’s been yet to
jump aboard, as Digital Extremes has
released a new onboarding update. “The
goal of that is to make people’s journey
from the starting the game to getting to
The New Warway less grindy.” Though it’s
no simple thing to rebalance the game’s
early portion, some aspects weren’t so
difficult to implement. “Luckily there’s a
couple of really easy ways to do it by just
reducing the resources required... it’s
very much a de-grind.”
All of which is a testament to Digital
Extremes care for its community, a
responsibility it takes great care with, but
one that isn’t always easy, especially
during a global pandemic where your
game suddenly becomes a lifeline for
portions of your audience. “It’s been
surreal. I myself have picked a game and
made it my digital therapist for coping
with lockdown. I knowWarframehas
become that for a lot of people. Which
comes with its own series of issues to
engage around, because no one’s really
happy, right now, and we’re just trying to
do our best to not add to the
unhappiness.” So what’s the best
approach? “We’re just trying to exercise
caution with everything we do to not make
people’s days worse by doing something
inWarframethat is a net negative.
Sometimes that’s a nerf, right? I’m not
saying the design philosophy is not to nerfduring lockdown because people are
depressed but it’s not a mutually exclusive
concept. You need to be aware of how the
player base are invested in the world
you’ve built and for us that’s come with its
challenges because we’ve had a couple of
misfires over the course of the pandemic
wherein we released a pretty buggy
update, or maybe we nerfed something,
but we’ve just taken an approach where
we’re trying to over-communicate the
truth with all our decisions to alleviate any
misunderstandings.”ALL LIFTTOGETHER
The New War’s arrival represents more
than a new story to tell. It’s the fruit of a
very tough couple of years for the team.
“We’ve only really gotten together once
this year and that was for Tenno-con, for
the developer stream crew all included. So
when it comes to work, that was it, and
we’re now all remote again. I wish we were
together because I think it would change
the... sense that we’re actually doing this,
this is the year, this is the time. But we’re
making it work remote. There are more
challenges remote, that is baseline truth,
but we’re doing what we can to get around
those challenges.”
For Rebecca The New Waris more
than just the next update. “This quest is
like... theHalf Life 3of Warframe, you
know? Because we’ve been talking about
it for so long and it’s finally here. I’m so
proud we got to this point despite all the
hardships... I hope people think it’s
worth the wait. More than anything I
hope people realise the next year of
Warframeis all about what happens
after The New War.”
So what is coming inWarframe’s
future? What of the elusive Duviri Paradox,
teased back in 2019? “It was the weirdest
thing we’ve ever shown. Fans should wait
to hear from us on when to set their
expectations accordingly. The truth is,
now we’re about to release The New War,
our next update will be that. There are
some interesting things going on, I’m not
going to say it’s directly connected
because The New Waris its own thing but
one or two players already saw some
connections in the trailer at Tennocon.
There was a very interesting horse in one
of our Tennocon videos... This world is
always connected.”
You can find those connections
yourself, and maybe you’ll even get a few
tears in your eyes, whenThe New War
releases later this month.
SamanthaGreerIT MIGHT JUST BE THE BESTTIME THERE’S BEEN YET TOJUMPABOARDWARFRAMEYou’ll get tocommand
your little robot army as
one of the Corpus.