On the 15th of September, at about 7:30pm local time, I got a flurry of messages over Discord. The New War, Warframe’s new and biggest quest, was finally here. All we had to do was download it. So I closed Warframe and immediately opened the launcher to start downloading. Surprisingly, for a 5GB update, it went really quickly. But the Launcher itself had changed, playing the same video over and over. An Operator and Natah facing off against each other.

Finally, Warframe finished downloading and I could jump into the New War…

This article is spoiler-free. However, I heavily recommend playing the quest for yourself.

Seriously, the quest isn’t hard. The New War does require concentration and patience, but the gameplay itself was simple. Enemy levels rarely went past 30, and the missions have plenty of health and energy drops.

The New War is also a long quest. It took me over 4 hours to finish it completely. So be prepared to spend a long time in front of a screen.

My first thoughts

Now I’ve warned you all about the quest, here I am, sharing my first thoughts. This is a long, curious quest, and it starts with you being someone else. Being able to see and fight as other denizens of the solar system is a great insight to who they are. As shown in pretty much all the trailers and Tennocon’s live demo, we got to play as Kahl, Veso and Teshin. These sections involve a little puzzle-solving, and they go by quite slowly. Teshin’s section is faster and harder, requiring some normal-Warframe-like mobility.

These little side parts all end on a down note. Because this is a war, after all. And a lot of crazy things are about to happen.

A lot of stuff going on

What’s interesting though are that a lot of stuff is happening, and there seems to be a constant flow with little downtime. I played the quest for a straight 4 hours, pausing for a glass of water and a hotfix from Red Text. I didn’t even take a peak at Harrow Prime or the list of changes and the like for this update either, it was all just New War stuff.

Thankfully, progress is saved on the regular, but it is easy to get pulled in to a chapter and just keep on playing. There are times where you NEED to carry on though, where you just can’t take a break. Not because there’s no save points or anything, but because the story does not stop. The only calm scenes are the ones with your ship, working out what to do next.

Massive red herrings

I must point out though, a lot of the media regarding the New War is… I don’t want to say inaccurate, but it completely caught both me and my expectations off guard. So much so that it was only after I finished the quest that I realized something was wrong. All those Youtube videos were technically accurate. However, they don’t even scratch the surface of what was actually going on in the New War itself. Even launcher is a bit of a red herring. You get flung around all over the place thanks to the… timey wimey stuff going on.

You should start the New War.

Seriously, just go and do the quest. Yes, it is a long quest, but it’s an amazingly well-designed quest. One with good pacing and a lot of twists and turns. A LOT of twists and turns. I can’t guarantee that you’ll love or even enjoy the New War, but it is a unique experience that you need to see for yourself.