Tennocon 2019
I should point out, I wrote most of this at 3am. Because I stayed up to watch Tennolive. But Tennocon is cool. Oh so very cool. And this year, we got to watch all the shows and presentations, as they were all streamed on Twitch. That meant we got to see lots of cool stuff that was all teased as “Maybe” or “SOON.” While we’re watching the stream, people at the convention itself are doing Q&As and meeting staff and things like that. We can also buy literally everything Baro Ki’Teer has ever sold from a special Tennocon relay with a unique Hydroid/water aesthetic.
So yeah, Tennocon is cool. But we haven’t really got into the cool stuff. Most of the cool stuff was during the Tenno Live, but there’s a bunch of other cool stuff they showed as well.
Right at the start, we saw a ton of new things. A ship rework and a bunch of deluxe skins for Harrow, Ash, Titania, Ivara and Excalibur. Then we’re flooded with new weapons. And new enemies. And new Archwings. And new Warframes. All in the Art of Warframe, a concept art presentation early on in the day.
Said presentation also went into how things come to be, concept art slowly being built up into working gameplay and things you see in-game. For example, the developers talk about how they were trying to build the world of the Sentients for the New War, how they exist and how their environments build character as well as the enemies that live in these places.
But as I said earlier, the meat is all in Tennolive and holy shit, this was a very meaty sandwich.
I mean, right from the start, we have a whole thing about a contest where you can go to space for real. As in, a competition to win the chance to go to space. Yeah. Of course it’s for select countries only but that was a fucking weird start.
It all got weirder from there.
Next they had a special guest in the form of the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, who helped direct the trailer which will be the new introduction to Warframe. Which looks bad ass, like a Blizzard-level CGI cinematic. And immediately after that was over, everyone was told that Wukong Prime and Nightwave Season 2 would be released as soon as Tennolive ended, and we had a live countdown to the update hitting.
Nightwave’s new rewards were teased too, with a badass operator suit, a unique armour piece and the return of the Umbra Forma.
After that, we got a New War trailer. The New War seems to literally be a war, with Sentients invading the whole solar system, causing all sorts of chaos. The trailer ends with a lone Sentient looking up as other Sentients fly by – apparently this character is Natah’s brother, and the devs claimed the story is about how, why and who you choose as family.
The really, really cool stuff was all the Empyrean stuff. This WAS teased last year, but it’s been fully fleshed out this time, a whole collection of systems, a drastic way to mod your ship on-demand, switching in and out of the ship, its guns, its systems, its resource collecting and into Archwings, the ability to hijack other ships and more. It all accumulated into a fight based on a Kingpin system where you basically get your own personalized stalker who adapts to your powers each time you kill them.
But on top of that, these Empyrean missions tie in to squad support. You know when you do a Survival, you are told about a “lone Tenno operative?” Well you will be able to PLAY as that lone Tenno operative, completing a mission that helps other players in real time. Oh and every Archwing will get Itzal’s blink ability. Which is nice.
Things get really strange at the end. The Empyrean demo ends with some sort of strange flash as Excalibur’s operator is kicked out of their Warframe and finds himself in a very strange place. It’s really hard to describe what happens, but frankly I think there is time travel shenanigans and there’s also a cool Orokin horse. More importantly, Space Kid seems to turn into Space Adult, and seems to be able to use a gun.
This is the Duviri Paradox. And it looks fucking strange as fuck.
Sometimes I forget that Warframe is free to play. Because all of that was… insane.
Anyway, now for the long, long wait until all of that comes out. The only potential date we have is “Christmas maybe” for New War and “Soon” for everything else. At least we have Wukong Prime and Nightwave for our immediate enjoyment…