Warframe’s The New War update is live, and it changes the Lotus forever

Warframe’s The New War quest is here on all platforms, and it is the end of a storyline that has been running for years. It’s one of the wildest narratives in all of gaming, so much so that players have carefully protected the wild twist in The Second Dream quest that sets up the events of this long-awaited expansion.

You can take a quick look at WarframeIt may be difficult to appreciate its full potential. Space ninjas play futuristic space ninjas as they battle aliens and capitalists. But once you get past the surreal aesthetics and the faceless, voiceless protagonists, it’s easy to get into the flow of things. New players are just starting to find their feet. WarframeWith a captivating, intimate, and humane story, he pulls them back from the ground. With The New War, that story is over and the new era begins.

Polygon interviewed Rebecca Ford from Digital Extremes, the live operations director and community manager. Her voice is the Lotus’s, affectionately called Space Mom by the public. Warframe community.

[Editor’s note: This interview contains spoilers for The Second Dream.]

You were the Lotus’ voiceover, so I can imagine it was quite emotional.

Rebecca Ford: Ah yes. I think the first time I read through the script — without spoiling anything — I definitely was crying by the end. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity to review the script, and to make suggestions or comments. We were able see how this character had come to the point where we all felt that we were doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Digital Extremes Image

Lotus, her connection with the operator have been central to our foundation. Warframe. We’re resolving parts of that and moving on to new things. Is there any trepidation in wrapping up this chapter. Was it relief to move on from the cliffhanger?

This depends on who you ask, and you’re asking me, so you’re only getting my answer. My point of view is that we created The Second Dream in 2015. The game wasn’t even two years old. We were like, “Oh really? We’re doing story content? Sweet, let’s go.” We didn’t really know where we were going, per se, we just knew what emotions we felt we were capable of pulling off. The Second Dream turned out to be more fulfilling than we had hoped. And we went, “OK, it’s time to go all in on something human in this very ridiculous world.” Well, no. This is not ridiculous. It’s beautiful. It’s very …

This reminds me of a lot. WarhammerIn terms of scale and scope, 40,000. Just like how many bodies are being fed into the meat grinder.

Yeah! How do you make mummy/daddy participate in the body grinder process? Well, we had to tell it in a way that’s distinctly Warframe. And frankly, now that we’re at the point where this story is going to effectively reach its conclusion, let’s say with The New War — we know we’ve set ourselves up for a very interesting next step.

When it comes to online games — and I think this is a problem a lot of developers are dealing with — how do you link the new content to the old stuff without it being an increasingly unsteady Jenga tower?

You can use business terms such as vertical and horizontal integration. And like, when you’re a game as a service, you kind of have to do both. Otherwise, you either become the suburbs, a suburban nightmare, where it’s just horizontal growth everywhere, or your vertical growth can’t support its own weight.

We’re in this really weird… we’ll say “predicament.” But we have this really fortunate scenario, where everything we’ve done, sprawl-wise, actually has formed like a peak in The New War, where your Railjack matters, the open worlds matter, everything established in Deimos matters, which is convenient.

Originally, Deimos was going to come after The New War — or not at all — but we had to release something last year with COVID lockdowns, and The New War was a year out. Today it could be as it is today. If it were released in January 2020, this would be an entirely different quest.

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There are characters who aren’t a Tenno or the Operator — Tenshin, Kahl-175, and so on. You guys have been amazed at the love people show for the cast of supporting characters and the game’s enemies. The folks who are like, “Oh, I’m here for the Corpus, I’m the #1 Corpus fan.”

It’s funny you mentioned Warhammer 40K, because it Does give me the same vibe — when people are super loyal to a Warhammer army, like they love their Chaos armies or their little rat people and all that stuff. I don’t think we expected that early on. I WarframeOur protagonists were quiet. You had cool robotic space cyborg looking things that don’t say a word and still don’t say a word. All you had for flavor was Corpus, Infested, and Grineer, so players created a mythology that we didn’t expect. But we knew it meant something, so let’s push it further. Let’s recast this; let’s give them speaking voices and personality.

It’s a sure thing. I imagine it’s a collaborative process at times with characters like Clem.

Yes, yes. The Clem Story was an integrated community meme in the game in a manner that made sense.

The narrative is changing as we move into The New War. LotComplexity is becoming more common. There’s talk of philosophy and choices, which is a big departure from the early days where it was “go shoot gun and do flip.” How are the world-building elements of Warframe Everything is being designed as it becomes increasingly complex, and everything is integrating into The New War?

It was a privilege to replay our earlier quests the previous week. As I went back, and looking at all of the elements established there, it took me everything not to just turn around in my chair, like, “How did we set this all up?” The intentional world-building to make The New War work has been so deliberate. Our story doesn’t have as much exposition as other games — and that’s not a fault, I love to listen to some good exposition — but the actions that occur in WarframeThese are the main events leading to The New War precise This arc will end with the ending of Chains of Harrow, when you first hear the voice of a particular person, and the betrayal at The Sacrifice.

They were all replayed, so I did. Continue reading sense to me now that I’ve finished The New War and went back. The New War has been a deliberate, consistent world-building effort. The New War elements should be logical because all the information is available.

Digital Extremes Image

What is the best way to decide on what events you should pull? Is there a decision-making process?

These are the most difficult decisions that we have to make. With Orphix Venom, we recognized that it introduced a very important concept. Sentients are able to repel Warframes as well as break Transference. This is what we did. We thought, “OK, we have that working — can we permanently integrate this into Railjack?” Which we succeeded at, so a player who engages with Railjack can play that whenever they want.

Scarlet Spear had a lot of lore production and custom areas. Erra was a key character. And if you weren’t there, you can’t play it, and that’s really hard for us — to stick with that decision. The only reason Scarlet Spear isn’t around right now is we aren’t comfortable that we can give it the permanent attention it needs as a sustained content choice. This is very unfortunate because the result was amazing. But realistically, we’re not a huge team. [Maintaining Scarlet Spear]must be solved in the coming year. So the decision is made by the virtue of a Mr. Spock quote — the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Moving away from the technical side of things, you’ve been playing the Lotus for years now. Space Mom holds a special place in a lot of players’ hearts. No matter what happens, there are some people who will never be the same. Is it a great experience to see this Lotus effect the players and be part of the story?

It’s weird … It’s fun. It’s … I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t ever feel like I’m truly 100% internalizing this experience I’m living, because it feels like one of those things where if I touch it, it’ll disappear. I’ve never really fully internalized the reality of the system I find myself in. My role is to play the part of a character and interact with other players. MeThey sometimes see me as another person. And I’m very careful not to stare too far into that side of my life, because I am afraid of it. I’m afraid what will happen if I let it get too close.

But at the end of the day I feel like, as a creative person with a creative team that is capable of things, I’m just lucky to be a part of it. I’m lucky that the experiences we’ve had together have been positive enough that I can contribute in the way I do with the team, with story development, with added touches — which I’m sure we’ll have some fun talking about after the quest is out.

And ultimately, I would never be able to express what it’s all meant to me. And at the end of The New War, when all this is said and done, I don’t know how I’m gonna feel and how I’m gonna react. I don’t know what players will think, really. I don’t know what they’re gonna think. I really don’t.