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What went down in THE NEW WAR, and what’s next for WARFRAME in 2022

-  Samantha Greer

Warframe’s latest chapter in its strange sci-fi saga packed a lot of revelations and twists into its running time, and dived into some of the story’s oldest questions. Be warned, the article ahead contains spoilers for the whole story to date.

Rebecca Ford, live operations and community director for Digital Extremes, spoke with me about the quest and their pride in delivering it at long last. “It may not have been what players expected overall, but it was such a true testament to the story we wanted to tell, and I’m just happy that people cared enough to come back and try it.”

Perhaps the biggest surprise for players who had been teased for so long was that The New War wasn’t really about the war itself. The system-spanning battle against the invading Sentients takes up only a single act of the story, and the battle ends in total defeat. The Lotus and Tenno are thrown into the void, while villain Ballas positions himself as leader of an empire made in his own image. The Narmer Empire. By the end of act one the solar system is completely in their hands, and to cement this break away from the expected story, players are thrust back to the login screen, as if our defeat was so ultimate we can’t even stay in the game. Warframe has always been clever at using little meta-moments to elevate its important story beats, and The New War was no exception.