On Silly New Weapon Skins

Weapon skins are kinda weird in Warframe. They often come in several forms. There are weapon skins that only change the texture of the weapon, similar to warpaints in Team Fortress 2. But there are also complete weapon skins that change the whole model into something else. A lot of weapon skins, mainly melee ones, are sold via Tennogen and can only be bought with real money. However there are plenty of other skins that can be bought for Platinum. Many deluxe Warframe skins come in bundles that contain unique weapon skins as well.

But for this Nightwave episode (yet another Nora’s Choice), we are getting some interesting tidbits. On top of the weapon skins you find in Nora’s cred shop, there’s actually a handful of skins on the main tracker, as rewards for reaching various levels. We’ve had a few skins on the tracker before, but they actually made sense and fit inside the Warframe universe. These new skins though, they look like modern, real life guns.

What’s amusing here is that these silly modern weapon skins are in Warframe at all. They don’t fit Warframe’s hi-tech, slightly too organic art style.

I’ve only got two of these so far, this one and the uzi/submachine gun-looking one. There’s also a glock slightly further down the track which I fancy getting, and will probably get the more I play Warframe.

But yeah, I’m playing Warframe again, and part of the reason is that I want these super ill-fitting skins. I love stupid stuff like modern weapons in a sci-fi game and weird things like that. They’re no more silly than the pumpkin head for Halloween, or the egg ephemera for Easter, but they are both permanent and somewhat not too obvious. I’ll be honest, they feel a little too small.

The saddest thing though is that they are all only pistol skins. One-handed pistols in particular. There’s no akimbo variant, which would be awesome on weapons like the Akfuris and hilarious on the Twin Grakatas. The closest weapon we have to the modern weapon skins is the Aklex, but not many people use those for very long, and we have the gold-laced Aklex Prime which are superior in every way.

However, despite being stuck for single weapons, there is one way to get a dual uzi. The Pyrana Prime is a pistol and it can use the pistol skins. But the Pyrana Prime actually has a gimmick – kill several enemies in quick succession and the Pyrana Prime temporarily turns into the Akpyrana Prime, and you can go akimbo. Akimbo mode gives you a second ghostly gun, that copies whatever skin and looks you are using.

Aside from lacking akimbo versions, there is another downside. Once this season of Nightwave is over, it’s possible it will take the skins with it. That being said, very few things remain lost forever, and, as long as you’re not Excalibur Prime, I’m certain that silly skins like this will appear again in the future.