Holy fucking Shit – TennoCon 2017
So July 8th 2017 was the date of the second TennoCon, basically a Warframe convention hosted in London, Ontario, Canada, where Digital Extremes do tons of cool Warframe stuff. Like last year, they ended the convention with a live, streamed section where they talk to the audience, answer questions and reveal upcoming stuff.
This stuff included things like the next Primed Warframe, which will be Hydroid Prime (which looks pretty neat); the next Warframe to be released, a currently unnamed ‘Glass’ Warframe with an exalted weapon and shapeshifting abilities; and a set of new Tennogen (i.e. Steam store) items, including the first TennoGen skin for Equinox and a Grax Mag skin. We also discovered that a Mag deluxe skin has been put on the back burner, which is a shame.
The hugest thing though is that, either this year or in 2018, Warframe is getting an open world area. Warframe up until now has been static casual areas and procedurally generated maps made from lots of tiles and stuff. But they’ve clearly seen Anthem and Destiny 2 and gone “hold my beer”, combining insanely nice outdoor world spaces with resource gathering with quests with a day and night system with Archwing and high mobility with normal Warframe gunplay with weapon crafting with gigantic boss battles… Well, really, it’s a gigantic step forward. It’s fucking insane. On a whole new world. Literally.
What is interesting is that we’re leaving our ships and Ordis behind and actually going out and doing stuff in our Warframes. It’s… almost unfitting. A world with a proper market place and proper quests and the like, rather than just getting everything from transmissions from the Lotus. It’s so different, it’s scary.
Another thing of note is some more development on our stupid space kids. It seems that Digital Extremes have finally realised that the space kids suck, so we’ll soon be able to build them up, make them stronger, give them some armour and have more energy to do more than one attack without running out. Finally.
The last thing, and probably the most hyped thing of all, is the confirmation that Excalibur Umbra is finally coming to the international version of Warframe. Excalibur Umbra is the Chinese variant of Excalibur Prime, which was a Founders-only limited edition version of normal Excalibur. An alternate version for the international game has been hinted at for years, ever since the Chinese version was released. But today, at the end of the TennoCon stream, a trailer played, clearly showing Excalibur Umbra.
But this isn’t just a new, dark version of a Primed Warframe. This is bundled up with a quest that finally, FINALLY looks more deeply at the Warframes, rather than the stupid bloody space kids. Fingers crossed this won’t just be Excalibur Umbra, but a whole new set of Warframes.
It’s all available for everyone to see on this Twitch video. But holy fuck, this is a whole new level for Warframe and I’m really bloody hyped!
I mean, it might all end up being shit, but I hope not.