Warframe Breaks Through with New Expansion Plains of Eidolon
If you asked me four and half years ago whether Warframe would become a free roaming, open space landscape, I might have looked at you with puzzlement, head cocked. “Pardon me, an open space Warframe?”
Whether we’re considering the 34 playable Warframes, two significant cinematic quests, Earth remastered, or the new landscape, Plains of Eidolon, it’s safe to say Warframe has grown immensely since its humble launch in 2013. In fact, Plains of Eidolon is the biggest, most ambitious, and successful Warframe update we have ever launched. And we can’t wait to show it to you on Xbox One.
It’s big in a lot of ways, and I say this as a modest Canadian! Our new expansion shifts in design from mostly in-door, procedurally-generated tile sets to a massive open-space geography, the largest environment Warframe has ever seen. The dev team rewrote the rendering engine to handle larger draw distances for an open space that’s always full of activity, day or night. The landscape is now nearly 3X3 square kilometers in size. And we created a monstrous 10-story tall behemoth boss that’s one of the most difficult bosses to beat in the game.
Tenno (your name in-game) can attack the environment in any way you choose. You can jump straight into viscerally intense combat with new Grineer enemies, taking over basecamps or pouncing on roaming squads. Or you can wait until the sun sets to fight the massive, lurching Eidolon boss. If chilling out with friends seems like a better bet, you can just casually explore and mine caves, finding just the right lure to catch extraordinary looking underwater creatures (ok – they’re fish), or cruising across the verdant rolling hills.
The day/night cycle feels completely different than anything previously in Warframe. Watching the sunset and seeing the sky light up with yellow, orange, and red hues, followed by the eventual darkness of night, creates an ominous effect that slowly issues a feeling of danger — and even a little dread! Best of all, Cetus and the Plains of Eidolon are easy and fast to get to. They are based on Earth, one of the first planets players visit.
So, come mid-November, if you’re looking for a great big cooperative action game that leans, just a little, toward the colossal, please come see what all the fuss is about. We’ll see you there!