Comment Since releasing its signature game in 2013, Digital Extremes has been largely known as the “Warframe” studio. Today, that changes. The developer describes its new game, “Soulframe,” as less of a sequel and more of a sibling to “Warframe,” the online ninja space project that has come to span countless genres for a decade’s worth of updates. Steve Sinclair, who is stepping down from his decade-long tenure as “Warframe” director to help lead the new project, told the Washington Post that the game will share “Warframe’s” focus on cooperative player-versus-environment combat and procedurally generated environments. but it will be “the mirror universe version of ‘Warframe’. “ This goes for the setting: “Warframe” is a unique, mechanical spin on the sci-fi genre. “Soulframe” will be a strange take on fantasy. It will also apply to the gameplay. “Where ‘Warframe’ focuses on shooting, this focuses on hand-to-hand combat,” Sinclair said. “When ‘Warframe’ is super fast and crazy high speed, this is going to be much slower and heavy. But it still has a lot of similarities to the genre we’re experienced in.” Is aim assist fair? Professionals, experts and developers can’t seem to agree. Even in the age of endlessly updated live service games, “Warframe” is a unique success story. Released in 2013 to little fanfare and middling critical reception, the game nevertheless found an audience after Digital Extremes rolled out numerous ambitious updates to it, creating the Frankenstein’s monster of the online gaming world. Slowly but surely, a humble co-op shooter gained an emotional story, complex character progression systems, first-person murder mysteries, massive spaceships you can pilot with friends, catchy musical numbers about labor rights, open-world planets, hoverboarding (with tricks). pets and fishing. Fans have been able to see and help shape the creation of many of these systems through development streams on Twitch that have also been running since 2013. The result is a live service game driven by the whims of developers and players, with the question , “What’s the nicest thing we could do here?” at the heart of countless decisions. But no game is unlimited. Ultimately, developers need a blank slate. For Sinclair and company, “Soulframe” represents a chance to step out into a familiar but fresh edge and see where it takes them. The world of “Soulframe,” as suggested, may be its most interesting character. The game will focus on themes of nature, restoration and adventure, as inspired by works like “Princess Mononoke” and “The NeverEnding Story” — specifically, the conflict between industry and nature. In the service of this, people will show their displeasure towards the players who employ them. “The conceit [in ‘Soulframe’] it’s that people themselves are a bit angry about what’s been done to them, and the reasons underneath tend to change throughout the day,” said creative director Geoff Crookes. “Well, there will be procedural character within the cave networks and the rifts and so on under the world.” The hub world, meanwhile, will be open, more akin to the open-world planets recently added to “Warframe” than its early establishment of corridors and space stations. Crookes wants “Soulframe” to focus on exploration that “Warframe” never had — to make it feel more alive to players from moment to moment. “I’m chasing that ‘short session but high immersion’ thing where you log in and out of your yurt and you’re where you last logged out,” he said, “but the world feels like it’s going on without you. .” Can virtual nature be a good substitute for the great outdoors? Science says yes. While the fight will be slow and focused on hand-to-hand combat — and the game is literally called “Soulframe” — Sinclair and Crookes emphasized that they are not trying to make a game along the lines of From Software’s genre-defining Souls series, which includes the 2022 megahit “Elden Ring.” Or rather, they didn’t go into the project with that in mind. “I think it’s definitely not an inspiration for the original ideas or what we wanted to do,” Sinclair said. “Ironically, other titles that may have borrowed from ‘Warframe’ may have been some sort of reverse influence. But the ‘Elden Ring’ has absolutely become a thing some chat — maybe it has to do with the camera, maybe it’s how great their battle pacing is. And you know, screw these guys, because damn, [‘Elden Ring’] it was absolutely fantastic.” Sinclair and Crookes weren’t ready to discuss the exact details that set Soulframe’s melee combat apart from the Souls games, and there’s a good reason for that: Soulframe is still very early in development. Basic ideas for the game began floating around at Digital Extremes in 2019, but only a very small team—largely artists—had dedicated themselves to working on it by February. So why announce it now when there’s almost nothing from the game to show? Sinclair acknowledged that it’s become a “meme” when companies reveal games with vague CG trailers and few concrete details, but above all he wants to be upfront with players. “Our work has been extremely community-oriented,” Sinclair said. “It feels disingenuous not to say it [players] about the changes and who is leading “Warframe”. It’s too early to announce “Soulframe”, actually! But in terms of transparency and making sure they understand how we think, we tend to be a lot more open… than most studios.” But Sinclair and Crookes don’t plan to announce “Soulframe” and then retire to a silent development lab that’s all metal bars and tinted glass. After finding success with regular “Warframe” behind-the-scenes Twitch streams, they plan to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at “Soulframe” as soon as possible. Ideally, this process will begin as soon as possible, and Digital Extremes die-hards will be able to play a version of “Soulframe” within a year. “What we want to try is to do similar to ‘Warframe,’ which is, ‘Hey, watch us play the game and hold your hands for the hard parts and tell us how you feel,’” Sinclair said. . Former ‘World of Warcraft’ developers reveal game in collaboration with Twitch stars That strategy might sound out of place at such an early stage, but Sinclair believes it’s not too far off from what Digital Extremes did with “Warframe,” a game that’s now completely unrecognizable compared to its release version. “Making it is like discovering it at the same time,” Sinclair said. “In my mind it’s like, well, if it doesn’t work, you just keep going until you die or it does. There are a lot of things in “Warframe” that were just, like, abject failures from a design perspective. And we just said, “Okay, we’re not going to do it anymore. Just repair it and rebuild it.’ “It’s tiring and difficult. You realize someone has made a spreadsheet of promises you’ve broken. But I think with ‘Warframe’, we were able to turn some people into champions [of the game] speaking to them in a less reserved, less careful way.’ Sinclair also chose this moment to announce “Soulframe” because “Warframe” is about to receive a new open-world expansion, “The Duviri Paradox,” and he wants to show that the game is in good hands. “A decade in ‘Warframe,’ where all the people in leadership positions were there for 10 years, there weren’t many opportunities for other people to step into leadership roles,” he said. “I wanted to step away a bit and get some fresh ideas – to have an opportunity for the next generation of our great team to do some flex.” That said, after so many years on the project, it wasn’t easy for Sinclair and Crookes to let it go. “It feels like when you leave home for the first time. It’s exciting, but it’s also kind of bittersweet,” Crookes said. “Even though we’re leaving, I can’t see us completely ignoring ‘Warframe.’ “ “We’ve already clapped our hands a few times,” Sinclair said with a laugh. “I couldn’t help but intervene and it created some conflict.”
