Warframe’s 1999 expansion has a shopping mall, romance system, and you even get to fight a boyband

Warframe’s been absolutely embracing its bizarre facet over the course of its final couple of expansions, but when you thought its mood-world westerns and long-lost dimension-shifting labs have been so far as the free-to-play shooter was keen to go, then you may need to brace your self: developer Digital Extremes has revealed first gameplay of its upcoming 1999 story expansion and, effectively, let’s simply say you get to go into house to kill a 90s boyband.

We’ve identified 1999 was probably to be an odd ‘un ever since its tease ultimately yr’s TennoCon totally stole the present – catapulting gamers away from Warframe’s standard far-future sci-fi aesthetic to an eerily acquainted Earth-like world of grungy subways stations and retro tech. And now, with TennoCon 2024 underway, Digital Extremes has shared extra on its audacious new expansion.

To get a few burning questions out of the best way first, sure it is actually set in 1999 (New Year’s Eve to be actual) and no, this is not fairly the Earth we all know – however it’s shut sufficient, filled with extraordinarily acquainted era-appropriate artefacts that really feel gleefully incongruous inside Warframe’s wider world. And that begins with 1999’s new hub space: an deserted 90s shopping mall filled with synthetic palm bushes, arcade machines, and screens belching out tacky infomercials.

The mall serves as the bottom of the Hex, Warframe’s latest Syndicate, and as Digital Extremes’ 22-minute demo begins, we’re launched to its six members, proto-forms of the sport’s most iconic Warframes. Players tackle the position of squad chief Arthur Nightingale (batch designation: Excalibur), working alongside Amir Beckett (Volt), Aoi Morohoshi (Mag), Leticia Garcia (Trinity), Eleanor Nightingale (Nyx and, notably, Arthur’s sister), plus Quincy Isaacs, whose batch designation – Cyte-09 – ties in with the brand new Warframe arriving alongside 1999.

Unsurprisingly, then, the expansion’s all about giving gamers the chance to expertise some essential occasions from Warframe’s previous – however, actually, that is in all probability the least attention-grabbing factor about it. 1999 is sort of hilarious in its brazenness: that is an expansion that dares to add a romance system to Warframe, enabling gamers to forge deeper relationships with their comrades by visiting their beige desktop PC, logging into KOL (KIM Online), and text-chatting to them IRC-style, choosing dialogue choices as conversations unfold. And sure, you may even get a New Year’s kiss if you play your playing cards proper.

And if that managed to increase an incredulous eyebrow, there’s extra to come. One brisk cutscene later, all six members of the Hex are straddling bikes and careening down a neon-streaked tunnel (effectively, 5 are on bikes – Volt is working alongside them on-foot), which is sudden sufficient. But then the tunnel ends and the gang bursts out into the moonlit, rain-slicked streets of Kulvania – a new open-world setting that feels someplace between a up to date US metropolis and Half-Life’s City 17. Players can discover its corners from the again of their motorcycle as soon as 1999 arrives, all to a screeching metallic soundtrack.

At this level within the demo, Digital Extremes switches to one thing a little nearer to Warframe’s conventional third-person motion. After a run-in with Scaldra commander Major Neci Rusalka, enemies start swarming the streets and there’s a have a look at 1999’s fight, combining basic Earth-like weaponary with flashier sci-fi assaults. Eventually, the battle spills out into a massive open plaza the place gamers encounter the boss-like H-04 Efervon Tank, at which level the whole lot erupts into absolute chaos – heavy gunfire, poison-spewing drones, laser blasts, and fixed airdrops of recent troops ratcheting up the depth.

But all of the sudden, a pause because the determine seen on the finish of final yr’s 1999 teaser emerges, and Arthur offers chase – the motion quickly shifting down into the tunnels of an deserted subway system filled with pulsating biolumicent vegetation and unusually natural tech. We see Arthur work together with a “security terminal”, which gamers can hack by taking part in a mini-game harking back to cell phone basic Snake – however failure ends in a sudden enemy inflow, and extra troublingly, the potential to be injected with a Coda worm virus. What’s this? Well that is not solely clear simply but, however Arthur’s demo journey comes to an finish doubled in ache as a unusual financial institution of screens births a large creature (assume Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors) which then spews out the Warframe model of Excalibur everyone knows and love. Cue credit.

Except… we then return to the Origin System, centuries later, the place one thing’s positively not proper. As a Railjack mission unfolds, pulsating music is all of the sudden heard over the comms, main gamers to an asteroid within the depths of house. Disembarking, they uncover the music’s supply: a big Earth-like live performance stadium that is manifested someplace it actually should not have – seemingly as a results of that earlier Coda virus. We’re nonetheless not achieved, although: Arthur enters the stadium and follows its corridors out into the open, revealing a dwell gig in progress. Lights flash, lasers dance, a convincingly 90s-style pop anthem blasts out over the sound system, and some bizarre creature is puking 5 infested members of the (fictional) boyband On-Lyne out onto the stage. Boss time – however, alas, that is the place the demo ends.

It’s brilliantly ballsy stuff, and Warframe gamers can be in a position to see the place all that is heading when 1999 launches this “winter”. And past the story marketing campaign, it will additionally introduce Gemini skins – letting gamers swap between their Warfarme and its absolutely customisable 1999 counterpart at will – plus the brand new sniper-focused Warframe, Cyte-09.

There’s even extra happening forward of 1999’s launch, nonetheless, with Digital Extremes promising two extra Warframe updates earlier than then. August brings The Lotus Eaters, a “micro-story” serving as a prologue to 1999, and it will be adopted by a second replace in autumn – to be detailed extra totally at this yr’s Tokyo Game Show. Expect a new theme, although, plus a new Warframe and varied high quality of life enhancements, together with a Caliban rework (Caliban can be free as a part of replace), new Incarnons, Companions 2.0 Part 2, and extra.

But even earlier than all of that – proper now, in actual fact – gamers can get a style of Warframe’s 1999 expansion in a particular in-game narrative expertise that’ll allow them to discover a model of its mall hub as a part of a Special Relay. It’ll be accessible for round a week following TennoCon 2024.