During the game fair Pax Australia, which took place from November 4 to 6 in Melbourne, Australia, Warframe developer Digital Extremes held a panel for all interested parties.
The event was held under the title “Forever Updating, Forever Free”. Among other things, the past of Warframe was the topic of the nearly 1-hour conference.
Past
The free-to-play third-person action shooter for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, which entered open beta on Steam in March 2013, now boasts over 26 million registered players. To date, more than 570 PC updates and about 28 larger console builds have been released, continuously expanding the Warframe universe.
This includes a wealth of new weapons and weapon categories, now 30 completely different characters, new gameplay systems, graphical improvements and optimizations, and even whole planets that have found their way into the game over time. And an end to the constant development seems far from sight.
Present
Since the first announcement of the quest “The War Within” in March of this year, which continues and deepens the extremely positively received story “The Second Dream”, the anticipation for this has overshadowed all intermediate updates. Digital Extremes (DE) admitted to being overly excited about its own ideas it wanted to share with the community, even though it was still far from completion.
In general, DE speaks very openly about what they are currently working on and what is planned for both the near and more distant future. During the panel, the release of the long-awaited cinematic quest for PC players in the coming week was also confirmed.
Console Tenno will have to wait a little longer for this, but they will also receive new content next Tuesday. This includes, among other things, the Index preview event, the Ayatan sculptures hidden in the Void, and the universally applicable Vacuum Sentinel mod.
Future
As you may have already seen from the images, DE also provided a glimpse of two characters currently in development. The “Bard” (working title), which features a built-in sequencer that allows you to create simple rhythms, is also heard by your teammates during missions and affects his abilities, has been introduced in advance.
However, the team is still refining an exciting story to meaningfully integrate this music-themed frame into the Warframe lore. Additionally, the sequencer, which inherently has a lot of trolling potential, still needs another look or two. So they surprised everyone with the announcement that another character, not yet shown, will enter the Warframe universe before the “Bard” and that will happen within the remaining weeks of 2016.
This will be an “Infected” frame. Here is an overview of its abilities:
- Tentacle Wave (similar to Frost’s Ice Wave) – damage increases for each enemy hit as it spreads
- Infected Vines – pull enemies together to one point
- Symbiotic Link – when applied to a teammate, both receive increased damage; incoming damage to enemies is redirected to them
- Infected Pod – infects the ground and spawns maggots that jump at enemies, hold them down, and explode after a short time; increased health regeneration in the infected area
Additionally, there are plans to unveil the mystery of the infected door at the back of your orbiter later this year. What exactly it is remains unknown. However, it has been confirmed that this goes hand in hand with a new gameplay system. It can be assumed that the infected character will finally bring light to this part of the spaceship through his quest.
Warframe: Are you ready for “The Internal War”? Our preparation guide.
