Warframe has fully embraced its weird side in the past few expansions, but if you thought atmospheric westerns and long-lost dimension-shifting laboratories were the most the free-to-play shooter could do, brace yourself: developer Digital Extremes has revealed the first gameplay for its upcoming 1999 story expansion, and, well, let’s just say you’re going into space to kill a ’90s boy band.
We’ve known 1999 was going to be an odd one out ever since its teaser at last year’s TennoCon stole the show – catapulting players away from Warframe’s usual far-future sci-fi aesthetic and into an eerily familiar Earth-like world of grungy subway stations and retro tech. And now, with TennoCon 2024 on the way, Digital Extremes has shared more about its bold new expansion.
To clear up a few burning questions first: yes, this really is set in 1999 (New Year’s Eve, to be precise) and no, it’s not exactly the Earth we know – but it’s close, full of extremely familiar, era-appropriate artifacts that feel blissfully incongruous within the broader world of Warframe. And that starts with the new 1999 hub area: an abandoned ’90s shopping mall filled with artificial palm trees, arcade machines, and screens blaring cheesy infomercials.
The mall serves as the base of operations for the Hex, Warframe’s newest Syndicate, and as Digital Extremes’ 22-minute demo kicks off, we’re introduced to its six members, proto-forms of the game’s most iconic Warframes. Players will take on the role of squad leader Arthur Nightingale (batch designation: Excalibur), and will be joined by Amir Beckett (Volt), Aoi Morohoshi (Mag), Leticia Garcia (Trinity), Eleanor Nightingale (Nyx and, notably, Arthur’s sister), plus Quincy Isaacs, whose batch designation – Cyte-09 – dovetails with the new Warframe arriving alongside 1999.
It should come as no surprise, then, that the expansion revolves around giving players the opportunity to experience some pivotal events from Warframe’s past – but in truth, that’s probably the least interesting part about it. 1999 is almost hilarious in its audacity: this is an expansion that dares to add a romance system to Warframe, allowing players to forge deeper relationships with their comrades by visiting their beige desktop PC, logging into KOL (KIM Online) and chatting with them IRC-style, choosing dialogue options as the conversations unfold. And hey, you might even get a New Year’s kiss if you play your cards right.
And if that raised an eyebrow in disbelief, there’s more to come. One snappy cutscene later, all six members of the Hex are mounted on their motorcycles, hurtling through a neon-lit tunnel (well, five of them are on bikes—Volt is jogging alongside them on foot), which is unexpected enough. But then the tunnel ends and the gang bursts out into the moonlit, rain-soaked streets of Kulvania—a new open-world environment that falls somewhere between a modern-day American city and Half-Life’s City 17. Players can explore its corners from the back of their motorcycles once 1999 arrives, all to a screeching metal soundtrack.
At this point in the demo, Digital Extremes switches gears for something a little closer to Warframe’s traditional third-person action. After a confrontation with Scaldra commander Major Neci Rusalka, enemies begin to storm the streets and there’s a throwback to 1999’s combat, mixing classic Earth-themed weaponry with flashier sci-fi attacks. Eventually, the battle spills out into a large open plaza, where players come across the boss-like H-04 Efervon Tank, at which point everything erupts into absolute chaos – heavy gunfire, poison drones, laser beams, and constant airdrops of new troops ramping up the intensity.
But suddenly, there’s a pause as the figure seen at the end of last year’s 1999 teaser appears, and Arthur gives chase – the action soon moves to the tunnels of an abandoned subway system full of pulsating bioluminescent plants and strangely organic technology. We see Arthur interacting with a “security terminal”, which players can hack by playing a mini-game reminiscent of the classic cell phone Snake – but failure results in a sudden influx of enemies, and even more disturbingly, the possibility of being injected with a Coda worm virus. What is this? Well, that’s not entirely clear yet, but Arthur’s demo journey ends in doubly agony as a strange bank of screens gives birth to a gigantic creature (think Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors) that Than spits out the Warframe version of Excalibur we all know and love. Cue credits.
Except… we then return to the Origin System, centuries later, where something is definitely not right. As a Railjack mission unfolds, pulsating music suddenly begins to play over the comms, leading players to an asteroid in the depths of space. Upon disembarking, they discover the source of the music: a massive Earth-like concert stadium that has manifested somewhere where the Real shouldn’t have done – apparently due to that earlier Coda virus. But we’re not there yet: Arthur enters the stadium and follows the corridors outside, where a live performance is in progress. Lights flash, lasers dance, a convincing 90s pop song blares through the sound system and a strange creature vomits five infected members of the (fictional) boyband On-Lyne onto the stage. Time for the boss – but alas, that’s where the demo ends.
It’s brilliantly bold stuff, and Warframe players will be able to see where this is all going when 1999 launches this “winter”. And alongside the story campaign, it also introduces Gemini skins – allowing players to switch between their Warfarme and its fully customizable 1999 counterpart at will – plus the new sniper-focused Warframe, Cyte-09.
There’s more to come before the 1999 release, though, with Digital Extremes promising two additional Warframe updates before then. August will bring The Lotus Eaters, a “micro-story” that serves as a prologue to 1999, and this will be followed by a second update in the fall – which will be detailed in more detail at this year’s Tokyo Game Show. Expect a new theme, though, plus a new Warframe and various quality of life improvements including a Caliban rework (Caliban will be free as part of the update), new Incarnons, Companions 2.0 Part 2 and more.
But even before everything That — right now, in fact — players can get a taste of Warframe’s 1999 expansion in a special in-game narrative experience that lets them explore a version of the mall as part of a Special Relay. It’s set to be available roughly a week after TennoCon 2024.