Warframes it’s a game full of surprises. At first glance, the Digital Extremes team is simply creating a free game about space ninjas. When I started digging beneath the surface, I was constantly shocked by the appearance of modern features in left field: a fighting game, a character creator for a modern form, or another game mode with deep progression trees and unique rewards.
Next huge one Warframes expansion, Warframe 1999will feature even more huge changes, such as a climactic battle with a boy band in space. But the modern feature that interests me the most is the romance system. As the main character of the game, the Tramp, we explore the world… 1999they will encounter the Curse. Hex are six proto-Warframes that live in the abandoned remains of a shopping mall, and if you play your cards in a series of IM conversations on old-school CRT monitors, you can kiss one of them on New Year’s Eve.
“We always wanted there to be a deeper relationship system in the game – not necessarily a romantic one, but one that you could be more immersed in,” said Rebecca Ford, artistic director of Warframesin an interview with Polygon. Ford then gave examples of developer inspiration: Stardew Valley, Baldur’s Gate 3and the Fire Emblem. In the early stages Warframe 1999the team realized that the framework would allow for a contextual romance system.
After joining Digital Extremes, Kingsley begged her Discord community for facilitate. The Warframes fans on Discord gave her a crash course on the Drifter’s identity, Warframe secrets, and the political factions warring across the galaxy. Writing around the canon of an 11-year-old game is a challenging task, which Kingsley compared to balancing a Jenga tower.
So the Drifter arrives in this alternate timeline, meets the six members of the Curse, and then starts talking. Each Hex member has their own writing style, set of interests, and sense of humor. “We wanted to make sure that these characters would be identifiable, even if you wouldn’t be able to remember whose usernames they were just by the way they spoke,” Kingsley said. “So one of the first things we came up with was a style guide for how to write each character.”
The player can revisit and repeat the events Warframe 1999meaning that while a decision may determine the events of a given campaign, the player is not locked into any enduring choices. “Whatever happens, it won’t last if you decide it won’t last,” Ford said. “When we started designing this experience, we went to watch other live games with a romance system and quickly discovered that, oh, there weren’t any.
“It became clear very quickly that we needed an easy way for our players to be able to go back after their choices and give them the freedom to explore and feel safe to click on options without having to Google the answers to everything.”
The relationship between the Curse and the Tramp is not only sweet and lithe. A drifter enters their lives with a prosperous alternate universe story that makes the group question everything they know. “We really tried to make it a relationship system parallel to the romance system, so you can go through it fully platonic and get just as much knowledge and conversation without having to flirt with the characters or go on dates,” Kingsley said.
Hex hosts a group chat where the player can find recognizable progression systems. However, individual messaging windows offer their own possibilities, and the player can ask each character about knowledge, ask probing questions or try to interest them in flirting. There are no cosmetic or gameplay rewards associated with the IM romance, but after the New Year’s Kiss, your loved one will warp to the Drifter and offer custom dialogue.
“This is not an ordinary video game,” Kingsley continued. “If, when you first talk to a hero, you ask the hero to dump his story on you, it won’t go well. I got kicked out and that’s okay. I recovered. It was just a bump in the road in my burgeoning romance.
Warframe 1999 has a demo version available Warframesand is scheduled to launch for free on all platforms in December this year. Developers from Digital Extremes are also continuing their work Soul framea similarly constructed open world game with slower combat and a immense Elden’s Ring vibration.
