THIS MEANS WAR

How WARFRAME’s most ambitious update ever is launching a new era of unprecedented conflict.

- Steven Messner

Considering the name, it’s odd how little war there is in Warframe. Plenty of blood is shed as players carve their way through procedural corridors and open-world zones, turning mutant soldiers and cyborg super-capitalists into gravy. But the only real, full-scale battle in Warframe’s universe happened centuries ago, an event that looms over the Origin System like an apocalyptic hangover. Until now.

Digital Extremes’ next two updates, called Empyrean and The New War, usher in a new era of chaos and conflict as players unite to repel an all-out invasion by an alien force known as the Sentients. To even the odds, squads will work together to build and pilot a ship in hectic space while also uncovering the truth behind some of Warframe’s biggest unanswered questions.

And at the heart of everything is a personal story of family, betrayal, and a Canadian game developer making a weird-as-hell shooter that never stops taking wild risks.

“War doesn’t start and end in a day,” Digital Extremes live operations and community director Rebecca Ford tells me. “When we say ‘The New War’, we mean it. You’re going to be living a story in a world where parts of it will be barely recognizable after what the Sentients do to it. Expect the world to change, because that’s what war does.”

DAWN OF WAR

That an army of bio machines-turned intergalactic gods is coming to obliterate Earth won’t be a surprise to any player that’s been following Warframe over the past two years. When it first launched back in 2013, Warframe had no real story or setting to speak of—Digital Extremes was too busy trying to avoid bankruptcy to worry about why the space ninjas were angry. But in the years since, Warframe’s world has blossomed into a vibrant and alien universe.