2024 is almost over, but before it is, Digital Extremes will transport players back to the turn of the millennium with Warframe 1999, the next, highly-anticipated Narrative Chapter in its long-running shooter.
Creative Director Rebecca Ford made the announcement on-stage at the Game Awards this evening, alongside a thrilling new trailer and a collaboration with a Game of the Year nominee.
Building upon the last Narrative Chapters, The Man in the Wall and The Lotus Eaters, Warframe 1999 takes players back to the titular year, to a version of Earth that’s similar to ours—but while our New Year’s scare involved computers breaking down, this alternate Earth faces a much more violent threat in the form of the Techrot infestation.
Players will step into the frame of Arthur Nightingale (voiced by Final Fantasy XVI‘s Ben Starr), leader of a group of Protoframes known as the Hex—almost all of whom resemble quintessential Warframes from the game’s history. Their mission is to hunt down Dr. Entrati, but they’ll have to carve their way through two new enemy factions, the Scaldra army and the Techrot infestation, as the New Year approaches.
“Warframe 1999 also promises to be the most musically dense addition to the game to date.”
A new tier of fully voiced and customizable cosmetics, dubbed Gemini Skins, will allow players to use a transformation emote to change Excalibur, Mag, Volt, Nyx, Trinity, and new Warframe Cyte-09 into their Protoframe iterations. From there, their human appearances can be customized, and their characters will speak during gameplay, giving even more spotlight to the game’s increasingly star-studded cast (also featuring Cyberpunk 2077‘s Alpha Takahashi and Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Amelia Tyler).
Warframe 1999 will also offer four new mission types. The Legacyte Harvest will team players up with Entrati’s Kavat, Kalymos, to purge the Techrot, while Hell-Scrub tasks them with cleaning the streets of Höllvania, and the H-09 Efervon Tank Assassination puts one of the big new bosses on display. Perhaps most notable, however, is Faceoff, an objective-based relay race and the game’s first PvPvE mode.
For further diversions, the Höllvania Central Mall features an original arcade game developed in partnership with Sumo Digital: Caliber Chicks 2, a classic ’90s-style run-and-gun side-scroller. Players can also interact with their Protoframe allies through a ’90s instant messaging clone called K.I.M. to access Warframe’s first relationship and romance system. Play your cards right to earn a New Year’s smooch or forge bonds of friendship with your fellow revolutionaries.
Warframe 1999 also promises to be the most musically dense addition to the game to date. The chapter’s soundtrack will be fully available on streaming platforms tomorrow as well, with a physical vinyl LP on the game’s merch store. At TennoCon this summer, Digital Extremes released the in-universe boy band anthem “Party of Your Lifetime” on digital streaming, and the track is approaching 2 million plays on Spotify.
To commemorate the launch of Warframe 1999, Digital Extremes is collaborating with GOTY nominee Balatro. As part of the card game’s Friends of Jimbo 3 update, the King, Queen, and Jack cards can be customized with the likenesses of Excalibur, Mag, and Volt, alongside other collaborating franchises like Stardew Valley and Slay the Spire.
“The clock is ticking and the countdown to midnight officially begins tomorrow,” said Ford. “Our venture into the ‘what if’ Y2K scenario of [Warframe 1999] has been a passion project for so many of us. We’ve done everything we can to pack this update with romance, music, action, most importantly, core Warframe gameplay.
“I am so proud of what our team has accomplished and even more excited for all the ‘90s kids to find all the references we’ve baked in. Thank you to the Warframe community for trusting us for almost 12 years as we take big swings like this!”
The Warframe 1999 update will arrive tomorrow, December 13, on all platforms.
