This year’s Tenno live announced two awesome looking expansions for Warframe. The first, called Fortuna, includes a new cyberpunk themed exploration area on Venus and will be playable before the end of the year. The second, due to be released in 2019, is a new play mode currently called Codename: Railjack. This mode will, for the first time, introduce space based combat into the game.
Fortuna
The first new expansion for Warframe, named Fortuna, will revolve around Solaris United, a new faction of cyborgs that control the Debt Internment Colony on Venus. This is the underground hub area where players will be able to interact and trade the loot they’ve been collecting on the planet’s surface. Fortuna doesn’t have an exact release date yet, but will be coming at some point this year.
The topside section of the open world area is going to be called The Orb Vallis. As in previous areas, players will be instanced and allowed to roam freely hunting for items, monsters etc. Personal highlights for me are the Moa creator and hoverboards!! Venus looks incredible, the landscape is dotted with giant fungal looking structures, and a winter storm is basically terraformed within the existing furnace. There’s even a conservation system being added to hunting.
Codename :Railjack
While Fortuna looks like an honest replication of the existing formula, Codename: Railjack is entirely new.
Digital Extremes showed off an 11-minute demo of the mode over the weekend at TennoCon 2018. Your Warframe looks on as the planet is bombarded from outer space. The scene is pretty bleak. In the distance, a spacecraft looms closer. In a series of clips, you board said craft, blast off into space and begin to engage the enemy. Up to four players will be able to group up, head into space and kick some alien butt. Each will have a unique role, seemingly from navigation right through to tactical. The combat takes place both externally and on board, with the capacity to infiltrate your enemies’ ships and wreak havoc. Indeed, the aim of this new mode is to work co-operatively to do just that, with a range of functional actions from within your own spacecraft to compliment the ongoing espionage.
Two new waframes, the Revenant (left) and Garuda (right) are also being added to the game.
Coming from a slow start, Warframe has truly evolved and flourished in it’s four year lifetime. Railjack is especially exciting, and if the actual content we get next year reflects the demo accurately, I will be one incredibly happy space camper. I am so glad that players have supported this title, and that the core fan base believed in it’s potential. The struggles the title faced are epitomised in a Tweet from the game’s Director, Steve Sinclair:
“15 days ago [the] entire RailJack section of the demo was going to be cut. Broken, incomplete, flawed. But our team went all-in. I’ve wanted this type of gameplay since I was a boy. Solaris sing ‘we all lift together’ and I choke up because the song and it’s message became real for me.”
Stay tuned as more information becomes available, this is definitely a title to keep your eye on.
About the Author
Jakob Quilligan
Jake hails from Bendigo where his console of choice is the PS4, closely followed by the Nintendo 3DS. Anime and volunteering tend to keep him occupied, though his staffy/ rotty/ husky cross named Iris keeps him busy first and foremost.
