The upcoming Warframe extensions make it "the dream game we never thought we could do"

PCGamesN: Tell us about Railjack and what it means Warframe?

Steve Sinclair: This is a huge surprise for our players and we are making a Dark Sector version that we have never had to do.

It's this idea of ​​spaceflight, ground combat and cooperation, tactical gameplay between players. It's the dream game that we never thought we could do, but now it's time to say, "Do it, let's try it."

We have tried the open world and we are doing it again, but how can we surprise our players? So you get a ship, there are several stations, there are the basics of a game like the FTL, which is one of my favorite games, so you have some management stuff from the 39, tactical energy, you coordinate with the rest of the team. maybe play traditional warframe by running and shooting – and trying to mix that with space combat and archwing. It's like taking all the odd ideas of Warframe and saying, "And if they were consistently connected in one mission?"

What are the limits of the player?

This is happening in real space, but Warframe is moving fast, so we are not saying that now you get to fly over Venus and that is the whole planet. We're not a space simulation game, so you call your ship, you get there, you go up, and now you're in space, and there's this really cool transition that seems more seamless. We tried to do it with the game, using more streaming technology – we did it last year and we did it with Venus where you ride in the elevator and you go up and the world is already loaded. We do more to remove the loading screens from the game. We do not try to be Elite Dangerous when you hover over this whole planet

So, this is not like a galaxy in an open world?

This is not … it is not [an open world] because we are trying to stay true to the spirit of Warframe, which is this game. high fidelity action.

We are also trying to make a connection with the spatial element of the game. One thing that was interesting when we started to focus on this thing of the open world, is that there is has a part of long-term players who say it's a space ninja game. And they say that there are trees and rocks and stuff, but there is an original promise you made on the space.

For me, [this is about] go back to these really old ideas and incorporate them into the game, use our experience to be more ambitious. There are times in the demo that we show where someone plays the game normally, throwing powers and shooting, but looking out the window and seeing another player steal the Railjack shoot at all those fighters . Meanwhile, their boyfriend is on the boat putting out the fires, so that's all this interaction. I think it's going to be frantic in a good way. The reaction that I pray is: "I did not know that I wanted that, but now I really want it". I want to make me feel like home in Warframe

We have seen different vehicles in a I think it was 109, what are the plans for those?

Because the hoverboard turned out so well, we said we will focus on that. But we saw how excited the whole studio was about hoverboards, so we focused on them.

Tell us about the two new frames – they're both vampire-based

Yes, it was a total accident, we have our conceptual art team working on things and it goes through the pipeline, then s people have design ideas and they adapt them. o adapt these visuals, so it's a complete accident.

What kind of roles do you want them to fulfill for the players?

I think Revenant was going to be a supportive executive, but he went so far in that direction that he was missing any kind of punch. We saw the reaction of the community, so we went back there to work a little bit. Garuda is still very early in his conception

What can you tell us about the customization of the ships?

Warframe is a matter of customization, so yes, you're not sure. Will be able to decorate your ship as you wish. We are a loot shooter, which means we have progression curves in everything, so what kind of reactor do you have [in your ship]? What kind of weapons systems do you have and exchange them or improve them? Do you want to paint your boat of a different color? All of these things are under development.

We also plan to have different clbades of ships, but what is tricky is that we do not want to ask players to invest deeply in one thing and say: another & # 39 ;. The Warframes do that, where you improve them and you put the Forma in and change them – we want to do it [in Railjack] but it took a lot of effort to get that ship. Initially, we will say that there is a lot of customization [for this one ship] more than in a game like Star Citizen where it's all different clbades of ships

Well, Star Citizen's model also costs a fortune …

[Laughs] That's right, we're still a free-to-play game

How will this feed the story? Will he offer narrative rewards to the players?

Yes, absolutely For the players who follow the quests and have seen the conclusion of the quests of the Sacrifice we have just launched, he takes a familiar ally and paints them in gray, we have since announced long and [that character] kind of starting and we are remembered somewhere, and we feel like that invites us to a space adventure. That's all I can say now that we are still working on it. We are a cicada, we go out and live for a day and then we die: we work very quickly with these ideas.

It's crazy, you just finished the Sacrifice and you already announce a new story quest here …

People were waiting for the sacrifice to be a conclusive ending, but he's on a cliffhanger, so now we have to feed the next stage of history. All took us by surprise – that people care as much as they do – so we really try to impress them and give them what they want from the tradition. When we started, we were just thinking of writing gun descriptions …

Returning to Fortuna, what lessons did you learn from the Eidolon Plains?

Largest is not necessarily better. If you ask people to go out and return their bounties or MMO quests [at a hub] it creates a bad rhythm. What we did [in Fortuna] was that once you took control of a Corpus base, you have a resistance leader who can continue the missions. It's one of the greatest lessons we've learned with Plains of Eidolon.

Another was that Eidolon was really big, so we wanted you to cross faster we gave you the Archwing. Of course, if you give a helicopter to someone, the distance becomes useless. So, what we tried to do with Venus, is that we are going to give you something really cool, we will give you a hoverboard with which you can do stuff – that's the thing the cooler than Warframe has added for a long time. It allows you to travel quickly, but you still have the reach of the world and what we are trying to convey.

There are also technological lessons: our game engine has never been designed for open-world content like GTA or a Witcher game, and Plains of Eidolon was only refocusing old things.For Fortuna, but maybe are not so interesting to hear about …

Try Me …

The one thing that has been frustrating to overcome is trying to find millions of places in your game engine that is hard-coded to say that the world is not greater than 2 km, is not it? Then the Eidolon Plains barely enter [that space] and all the things that happened outside this ra n Ge was just a decoration. Now, with Orb Vallis and Railjack, we are blowing up the size of things. Literally last night we still fixed another bug where something was binding at 2km. So, Megan [Everett, Warframe’s community manager,] gets on the turret while we train for the demo – we're shitting bricks – and she goes down, she looks amazing, she goes up on the turret … and then the screen goes black and she falls into space because she has been teleported away.

In your head, you can think of all the clbadic games that are open, like Ubisoft games, Just Cause games and GTA games. We are confronted with things we do not know. When I'm up there signing autographs with fans who say they've been playing for three or five years and I ask them why they're still playing, it's because the game keeps changing , to try new things – they are excited future

Does the expanded role of Archwing in Railjack mean that we are getting a redesign of the world? ; Archwing?

Yes, that certainly requires control improvements and some other things that we do not like. By doing Railjack, we learned more about what makes a good control system and what gives you a good sense of scope and scale. We must absolutely go back and apply that. This is the third time we try: we did a redesign of 2.0 and it was not enough. But we are here at this convention, and the players who are dedicated to the game are ready to go through our failures with us for whatever reason. They give us a ton of leeway, perhaps because they know we are trying to give them new experiences quickly

Does this depend on the openness of Digital Extremes in as a developer? [19659004] Yes, yes! I've heard a lot today from gamers. I met a guy who made lore videos and he wanted to talk with me and he said, "I have never come across such a transparent company and so eager to have a conversation with their players. "

of – honestly – a sense of self-preservation. We had canceled all our projects, fired people and we were going to play a game with a tiny team and no money to do it, so how are we going to differentiate ourselves? Well, you can have different abilities and weapons, but everyone is beyond you, so can you feel more in tune? Can you be more honest? Can you own up to your mistakes anymore? Can you be less business? Can you feel refreshing on the community side? All this continued to serve us well.

It's funny because when we started, it was before the rise of Twitch, before it belonged to Amazon … we did not know what we we were doing it, just doing it along the way. But then we went to PAX or to events like that – Nvidia lent us machines because we could not afford to pay for a booth – and we met people from Blizzard and they told us about it. Oh yes, we are Looking at Warframe, what are you doing with your updates? And we are like, what? Do you speak to us? You look at us? So yes, as long as possible, we try to give the impression that there is an honest connection there.

You mentioned some of the policies of the Fortuna update earlier today. Is there any in the struggles of the company a few years ago?

For me, personally, it is a reaction to consumerism and culture Persistent debt … Honestly, [the political story] could have been any matter, I was just looking for a human idea, because it's a crazy update with all those singing robots, so I I am always looking for human ideas, if someone pays attention to it, maybe it will resonate with him.

Another example of this here [at Tennocon] with this quest that xplore somehow the idea of ​​dementia and how music can be therapeutic. You are always shooting guys and playing the game, but for someone who is touched by that, it is significant. Even meet a child through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and you look at how they decorated their ship and that is this quest where there is a girl who is sick and constantly under medical supervision. So with things like that, we're just trying to add a layer of meaning and if that connects with a person, then I'm happy.

Do you have a release window for updating Railjack?

I hope to have a version this year. It will probably be at the end of the year, but would not it be very close? We are always trying to make a big cinematic or dramatic update. Once the team recovers from Tennocon, we will determine what it will take for our players to use.