After years and years of watching a pretty standard set of development streams, I found that watching Warframe’s last week was a bit of a new experience. You know how it is; it’s like going over to someone else’s house for a holiday for the first time. You don’t feel unwelcome, but you’re keenly aware of all the ways in which this experience is just a little different from what you’re accustomed to. The silverware is all in the wrong places. Also, everyone seems both happy to be here and they’re speaking English. I’ve gotten used to it being one or the other.
Regardless, I was indeed watching the stream as it was happening, and I naturally have some thoughts. Now, I don’t want to make a big point of what will be validated today; the Belly of the Beast rerun, the new Nightwave episode, and so forth are not things to preview but in fact are happening now. But I do have thoughts about the content that is further out, so let’s put on a mug and talk a bit about everything en route with Techrot Encore and beyond.
Now, technically there is stuff coming out between today and that major update, like Lavos Prime. I should have feelings about Lavos Prime? He was obviously going to be the next Prime we got, so it’s good that it’s happening; honestly, Cedo Prime is more interesting to me. I love that shotgun. Lavos isn’t my main, I’m sorry! At least now you can feel all right about feeding him to Helminth?
But it’s the next major update that has me most invested, and honestly, it’s not even because of the new lineup of weaponry that will be available from the Techrot version of On-Lyne. I’m glad that we are getting these versions of Infested weapons, but I also don’t really care for the aesthetic, so it’s kind of a “not my thing” on a whole. Though I do have some curiosity about this, because… well, Hollvania just isn’t that big.
That’s not to say I don’t like Hollvania, but even as someone who is a bit behind the expected curve here (which is to say that I started more or less cold a couple weeks after 1999 came out), I can’t say that the same handful of missions are exactly the most enticing things to run even more of. I suppose this will be a nice spin as opposed to the now fairly rote bounties that we’ve all run plenty of times, so that’s not a terrible thing, but it feels a little more truncated than the path we follow for Liches and Sisters.
What does interest me very decidedly is the promise of four new protoframes as well as the addition of Temple. We know nothing about Temple beyond the concept, the guitar (so guitars do exist at this point in the game’s world), and the pronouns. Obviously keeping Temple as gender-neutral would make sense as a glam-rock thing, although I think it remains to be seen because it might have just been a cagey pronoun use. (Though that stuff is deliberate, usually.)
Considering the frames in question, I suspect Temple is going to be one of them along, with three others; my personal bet is that at least one of the other frames will be Rhino, since we’re getting a Rhino push with the heirloom skin. (Also, the idea of Rhino’s protoframe being a Dalinar Kholin type of character will not leave my mind.) Beyond that it’s more ambiguous; Ember and either Loki or Ash seem like the most likely picks, but it’s not impossible that we get later frames.
I also tend to doubt that they’re going to be present as romance companions in the same way as the Hex, at least from how they’ve been teased. We’ve just heard that they’re protoframes, not even that they’re going to be allies. It’s entirely plausible that Entrati has more protoframes who are slightly less cantankerous – or even that Scaldra figured out the secret somewhere along the line.
Speaking of Scaldra, I am hype for the new weapons themed after them as well as the cosmetics. That is a good look and exactly what I’m about. There’s also something to be said about the idea that Scaldra is legitimately a different enemy group even more than the Techrot; sure, the Techrot are not the Infested one for one, but they’re clearly similar.
Beyond that, though, we also know about a number of quality-of-life changes that are coming along with the Encore, and that makes me even more excited. Auto-disbanding random people, for example, is just a great option. That’s not to say I don’t like the people I randomly match up with; sometimes I luck into great folks, but I do not automatically want to continue on with them, and I don’t like playing the game of chicken to see who leaves party first.
Changes to Forma? Also welcome. Maybe a little less important to me because I haven’t run into the specific build problems that is being addressed, but still welcome!
Beyond that, it’s more cosmetics and emotes (most of which I want), more music, and more relationship features… and as someone who wrote a whole piece about how embracing romance is a good thing and another piece about how the game’s story made me cry, yes, I am on board for both of these things. It looks like a whole mess of good stuff and more reasons to grind out weapons, materials, and the like.
If there’s any degree of apprehension, it’s just in seeing how the developers start to bridge the gap between 1999 and the Origin System once again, and I think that’s part of what this update is going to be all about. We know that the Technocyte Coda is going to bridge over into the Origin System, and that tracks, but I also think it’s going to be a notably thin line to walk to make sure that 1999 doesn’t wind up as a functional soft reboot.
To an extent, sure, The New War had that feel by upending the status quo, but 1999 is also explicitly the past – and a past we have now explicitly changed, pulling in questions of Eternalism back to the forefront. We still don’t even totally know what Entrati is up to, especially as he seemingly locked us in a loop as an apparent antagonist before the final quest implied he planned for this outcome. So we need to get back to that… but if 1999 winds up existing off in a bubble, that’ll feel kinda anticlimactic.
Still, I’m excited about what we’ve got on deck in March. While I definitely can see some potential hurdles in successfully bridging the gap and a touch of perhaps unavoidable repetition, it’s a welcome chance to flesh out both our roster of enemies and the kind of gameplay available with a new set of foes and cosmetics. And if the changes to cosmetics and weaponry get expanded to Sisters and Liches as well? So much the better.
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
