TennoCon is upon us as soon as once more, and the Digital Extremes fan occasion’s introduced us an prolonged gameplay demo for Warframe: 1999, Warframe’s subsequent main story replace. When Warframe: 1999 was first teased final 12 months, I will admit I used to be skeptical about how on-board I might be for the house ninja recreation’s dabbling in CRT-era nostalgia. However when this 12 months’s TennoCon gameplay demo kicked off with an unique single from On-lyne, an alt-universe NSYNC knockoff, I knew I used to be flawed to doubt.
Warframe: 1999 will pluck gamers out of Warframe’s far future setting and place them in an episode from its historical past: the ultimate New 12 months’s Eve of an alternate twentieth century, the place they will hunt named Albrecht Entrati as an outbreak of a biomechanical Techrot infestation is corrupting the world’s computer systems and equipment. Whereas searching Entrati, you may get to discover metropolis streets affected by alt-history ’90s ephemera and Techrot monsters, drive excessive tech bikes, and—put together yourselves—dabble in Warframe’s first romance system.
Through the 1999 story quest, you may monitor Entrati as Arthur Nightingale, squad chief of the Hex: a six-person unit of operatives geared up with Protoframe exoskeletons that every, conspicuously, seem to be an early model of Warframes we have seen within the recreation’s current-day. The Hex operatives will probably be Warframe’s newest faction, with its personal popularity development just like the Solaris United or the Ostron.
The Hex will even be Warframe’s first romanceable characters, as Arthur will be capable of flirt with them by way of conversations on KOL Immediate Messenger. If KOL and On-lyne do not talk how exhausting Digital Extremes is leaning into its late ’90s parallel actuality, I do not know what’s going to. Possibly the deeply Rob Zombie-coded music that performs throughout a boss battle later within the demo?
Arthur himself is a particularly late ’90s concept of cool, being a man who has each a katana and a motorbike. In 1999, you can freely experience by way of the Techrot-infested metropolis of Höllvania whereas drifting, bullet-jumping, and stunting with a high-powered Atomicycle, which you may ultimately be capable of use in Warframe’s different open world areas. Arthur’s story looks like it’s going to additionally shed some gentle on the Warframes themselves. Through the demo, a Techrot creature vomits out a faceless entity mimicking the superpowered sword skills of Arthur’s Protoframe, and it is none apart from Excalibur—the sport’s mascot Warframe.
DE closed out its 1999 exhibiting with a sequence again in Warframe’s current-day, the place a surviving pressure of Techrot has spent the centuries producing my new favourite Warframe foe: a mutated, biomechanical incarnation of On-lyne themselves. After ending Warframe 1999, you can hunt the house zombie boy band because the long-awaited Infested reply to Warframe’s Grineer and Corpus revenants, providing endgame weaponry by way of nemesis system showdowns.
As anticipated, Warframe: 1999 will even add a brand new Warframe for gamers to assemble in Cyte-09, a beret-wearing sharpshooter. The replace will even deliver new weapons just like the Kalashnikov-ish AX-52 rifle, and new “Gemini skins” that’ll allow you to play as one of many Hex operatives for those who’re utilizing their related Warframe. The Gemini skins are totally voice acted, and they are often personalized independently of the bottom Warframe.
Warframe: 1999 is ready to launch in Winter 2024. Earlier than then, Warframe will probably be getting a smaller replace in August so as to add The Lotus Eaters, a brief quest that’ll bridge the hole between Whisper within the Partitions, the earlier main story chapter, and 1999.
