Warframe’s been fully embracing its weird side over the course of its last couple of expansions, but if you thought its mood-world westerns and long-lost dimension-shifting labs were as far as the free-to-play shooter was willing to go, then you might want to brace yourself: developer Digital Extremes has revealed first gameplay of its upcoming 1999 story expansion and, well, let’s just say you get to go into space to kill a 90s boyband.
We’ve known 1999 was likely to be an odd ‘un ever since its tease at last year’s TennoCon utterly stole the show – catapulting players away from Warframe’s usual far-future sci-fi aesthetic to an eerily familiar Earth-like world of grungy subways stations and retro tech. And now, with TennoCon 2024 underway, Digital Extremes has shared more on its audacious new expansion.
To get a few burning questions out of the way first, yes it’s really set in 1999 (New Year’s Eve to be exact) and no, this isn’t quite the Earth we know – but it’s close enough, full of extremely familiar era-appropriate artefacts that feel gleefully incongruous within Warframe’s wider world. And that starts with 1999’s new hub area: an abandoned 90s shopping mall full of artificial palm trees, arcade machines, and screens belching out cheesy infomercials.
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