Warframe rules. I first realized this in 2020 while stuck inside, absolutely fiending for something to occupy my time. I proceeded to sink nearly 100 hours into the game, which had by that point already been around for nearly a decade. What I discovered was a co-op shooter MMO so rich with inventively implemented systems that it boggled the mind. Then I fell off playing it. Since then, I’ve repeatedly told myself that I’ll one day return to Warframe’s beartrap-like embrace. But four years’ worth of additions mean it’s something of an intimidating proposition, especially when the game keeps adding even more new systems.
This is, to be clear, not a bad thing unless you are in my specific position. I have always respected Warframe’s dedication to kitchen-sinking so many different game genres that, if you try to describe it to a regular person, it barely sounds real. That in mind, I responded to this weekend’s announcement that the game’s next expansion – the amusingly throwback-y Warframe: 1999 – will include a dating system with both a knowing nod and a sigh of exasperation.
"Unlike other syndicates, when you arrive, we want you to be able to get a little closer with them,” creative director Rebb Ford said during a live demo of the expansion at developer Digital Extremes’ annual TennoCon event. “So for this syndicate, because we are in 1999 ... we figure you should be able to use instant messengers and build a romance system with any one of them. If you play your cards right, one of those six, including [expansion protagonist] Arthur, could be your New Year's kiss."
So basically, the expansion is introducing a whole new cast of characters, and you can romance any of them via a fleshed-out dialogue tree and text interface. It’s more than just a gimmick, a recurring theme with Warframe’s teetering tower of systems. Here, for the uninitiated, is a non-comprehensive list of the others:
- Space ninja combat
- Cover shooter combat
- Hoverboarding (with tricks)
- Fishing
- Open-world exploration
- Linear corridor crawling (with dozens of variations)
- Cinematic story quests
- Character creation (one of the biggest twists in video games)
- Moral alignment
- Faction reputation ranks
- Mining
- Clans
- First-person crime scene investigation
- Pet capture/raising
- Weapon upgrading
- Additional weapon upgrade systems that each require their own wiki pages to fully explain
- Flesh mech collection/upgrading
- Bigger mech collection/upgrading
- Flesh mech ability mixing/matching (after you feed them to a giant, pustule-spotted mouth)
- Flesh mech fashion
- Ship battles
- Bigger, cooperative ship battles
- Ship upgrading
- Adversaries (basically Warframe’s version of Shadow of Mordor’s Nemesis system)
- Hacking
- Musicals
- Kahl's Garrison
- Duviri (a roguelike mode)
- Pool parties (with floaties)
Now, some of these systems have at various points fallen by the wayside or proven to be less than the sum of their parts due to the inescapable gravitational pull of the game’s grind-y core, but you can’t accuse Digital Extremes of resting on its laurels. The studio always swings for the fences, which is not-so-coincidentally the reason I’m also excited for Soulframe, DE’s new fantasy game that will naturally launch in a more pared-down state than its significantly-older sibling.
But will Soulframe ever add an infested ‘90s boy band with their own era-appropriate hit song? I doubt it.
