Warframe opens the doors to The New War | Exclusive interview with Rebecca Ford
The beauty of talking to Digital Extremes, or observing their periodical DevStreams, is that to see clearly how the whole team is more than a group of professionals, they are in fact amateurs of what we call videogames, science fiction culture, anime, literature and art. It is difficult to find a group capable of expressing a passion for what it does as it does for Digital Extremes, and in the case of La Nuova Guerra this is even more underlined by the anxious enthusiasm with which they await the birth of this epochal update. "Warframe will never be the same," Rebecca explained during the general presentation, creating a pre and post war world. Exactly what this formula means is still a mystery, however we have received some decidedly juicy clues.
At the dawn of conflict
Let's start with the crudest and already partially known facts, just to pull the strings for those who read our Warframe pages for the first time. The New War is the "final" act of the story that has marked the game so far, particularly relating to what is the chain of Cinematic quests. Through these stories, our Operator discovered the origins of the Tenno, gained a spaceship, rescued Deimos, awakened his powers and eliminated various threats throughout the Origin System. However, at some point, the Sentient threat, an ancient race with enormous invading forces, came close enough to endanger every known planet. Net of their differences and conflicts, all the inhabitants of the system are ready to take the field to stop the invasion, at the heart of which will be the end of all the open plots around our protagonist. Lotus, Erra and Ballas are just some of the names that will appear in the acts of this update, whose battles will lead us to face fleets in space, enemies on the ground with both our Warframes and Necramechs, and for the first time also to control three new characters on different fronts: a Grineer soldier, a Corpus technician and Teshin.Those who have followed Warframe so far will be more than ready to face what awaits in the Origin System, but Digital Extremes has well expressed the willingness to also involve people who have never approached Warframe, who - also thanks to recent updates that have introduced the Tenno Guide - will mainly have to complete all the missions connected to the Cinematic Quest (which we estimate may require you around 30 hours) and finally unlock both the Railjack and the Necramechs. The rest can also be addressed later, although ending The New War will make your account in "post-war" status. In this regard, we asked Rebecca what the motivation behind this choice is and what future it will mean for the game's content:
Rebecca Ford: “We have been very lucky to release a lot of new tools for novices. of Warframe right in November, thus arriving in perfect time for the update of The New War. Now players know where they need to go, so to speak, and for 2022 we want to enhance these tools even more by focusing on "why?" and, for example, give even more clarity to mods and similar systems, especially considering the influence that will come with cross-play. After all, we never stop, we already think about what will happen after The New War! In fact, the story will not end with The New War, part of what the update involves is to show what will begin to happen next and this provides us with the opportunity to enhance our narrative and bring it to new stories. Once we get to this new point of progression, our next steps will be so unified that they will be a relief for veteran Warframe players. In 2020, even with the pandemic underway and with updates like Railjack's, we think we have failed to give that clear direction, creating a chaos that we aim not to repeat. Now we are in a situation where all of this will disappear and anyone will be able to say “I understand what the team is doing, I see where they are going and I can't wait any longer!”. Here, we want that excitement not to wane as it has in the past. ”
Speaking precisely of the way in which The New War seems to represent a closing point for Warframe, in order to open new and more delineated ones , it seemed like an excellent opportunity to ask Rebecca a specific question. For those who don't follow her on her various channels, Rebecca is an avid Final Fantasy XIV fan and has often broadcast the game live on Twitch. As Square Enix's title also came to a close with Endwalker, we asked her if she felt The New War was an experience close to what Endwalker represents for Final Fantasy XIV:
Rebecca Ford: " Absolutely! I just stopped my expansion rush to work on The New War. Of course I can't go into detail about what we have in store for you, however I feel like The New War is for me for Warframe what Endwalker is doing with Final Fanatsy XIV, and you can even quote me literally! In a way we can say that in the game we are destroying something we have created, and we are reaping the fruits of what we have built to get to a new point in history. The New War is part of a path that lasted 6 years, made up of emotions and elements with a precise role and it is in this moment that we want you to feel that we have finally arrived where we all should have been. "
In effects, the Sentient threat itself has always been kind of what we expected to be a "Thanos" level within the lore of the game, something so big that we needed to be able to get all the strength we could both from our past as well as from that of other factions. The classic elements on the chessboard, which in the New War also see two additions of particular importance among our ranks: the first is the new Sentient hybrid Warframe called Caliban and with truly peculiar abilities, able to use the emptiness and energy typical of this enemy in his favor. The second is instead the appearance of the new Harrow Prime, a variant of the famous armor of the eponymous quest The Chains of Harrow (which we recommend playing for any links with The New War) that could not have come at a more favorable time.
Beyond the Battlefield
Although the more action-packed features of this Warframe update were already more or less known, what struck us most about the presentation was a particular section dedicated to a mysterious lecture given. in the past of the Zariman Ten Zero, a very important colonial ship in the history of the game and whose end is unfortunately marked by tragedy. The lesson, with which players will be able to interact in a very realistic school environment (inspired by the mastery of Atlus with the Persona series, according to what the development team said), focused on the Void, time and very particular notions. Having played Deimos and seeing the trend of recent updates, we asked Rebecca if this particular, more academic, descriptive and sci-fi direction is something that they are interested in enhancing even more in the future of Warframe, so much so that they compare it to the action component as a central pillar. .Rebecca Ford: “In a way the world of Warframe, with all the pieces we have scattered, will be completely different than what we knew. What is the Void? What is The New War really? Who are we fighting with? Here, all these things have definitive meanings and the universe is in a state - even after Deimos and his "back room" - in which the understanding of its phenomena is facilitated, which also pushed us to pass limits thematic. For this update there are in fact warnings about some things represented in the missions, which may seem strange (not so much since Warframe was originally known as the Dark Sector) but all in all we want to explore and go even further to be able to narrate exactly this. that we had in mind, especially in the way we want to give relevance to the characters of our universe: with narrative respect, thematic respect and care in weaving the meshes of complex topics. It is not only the latter that characterize the story: every detail of the universe, from lighting to art design, is all part of the story and at the end of The New War you will not wait to immerse yourself in what 2022 will bring. . ”
Part of this mechanism also involves the famous system of moral alignment, introduced precisely in the Kinematic Quests. That is perhaps one of the elements that is most connected to The New War and in this regard Rebecca left us as a clue, telling us about the importance of the "personal" dimension in a conflict of such a large scale and with a morality that is not always clear.
Rebecca Ford: "The choice to give the player control of his enemies is in itself something with a very gray morality and actually our goal is to give a dimension of the conflict that is not" epic "but more experienced , almost close to that war literature and the many currents, from poetics to military, which can be glimpsed in the stories we have created for this occasion. This changes the paradigms of the players as we change the player's perspective during the conflict, without jumping in time. Characters external to the Operator will not be part of the morality of the Moon and the Sun, however that system has a role within The New War and will be present in the dimension of the story of the Tenno and we can't wait to discover the reactions of those who will complete The New War, moving on to the future coming! ”
Warframe is available for free on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PC, Nintendo Switch and previous last generation consoles. Some comics related to the history of the Digital Extremes brand are available on Amazon.
