Digital Extremes finally reveal Warframe: Tau, the sci-fi shooter’s long-awaited second solar system, and it’s a gruesome place indeed

Digital Extremes’s venerable looty-shooty mechabody extravaganza Warframe is finally getting a full second solar system, after a warm-up flashback tour in last year’s The Old Peace expansion. The developers have just screened a first look at Tau, home of the game’s Sentients faction, during a presentation at Tennocon, the annual Warframe and Soulframe expo.

What does Tau harbour? In brief: lots of noir theming. The first of the system’s two initial areas is a ringed city, Fornax, whose occupants are plagued by corrupting rain and addicted to a substance called the Bloom. Fornax is home to Brysko, a chain-smoking, trenchcoated “Chimera Warframe” with an inner monologue reminiscent of a Raymond Chandler detective (he’s actually voiced by Critical Role’s Matt Mercer). Before you read on, seasoned Warframblers, please understand: I am trying to phrase all this in the language of everyday mortals. I’m sure I’m getting all sorts of lore wrong.

Fornax consists of three hubs, and is a putrid, vertiginous, divided place. I’m not sure this is literally the case, but it’s sort of built inside a giant corpse. It doesn’t have alleyways so much as bronchioles. Imagine if they hired Giger to redesign New York, basically. The residents are gilded or busted biomechanical machines. One is a talking hood ornament; another consists of two mouthy heavy loaders clipped together at the waist.

The lower levels are tunnels where those hooked on the Bloom piss against walls or lie in makeshift tents. Higher up, there are glistening canyons of hovercars that, to my eye, vaguely recall classic cadillacs and other vintage American roadsters, but with a lot more vertebrae. Even higher up, there’s a neon casino with holographic singers, jangling pseudo-roulette wheels, and Warframe’s first ever in-game cardgame, Portau. Which is a bit like poker, apparently.

In the course of an introductory mission starring Brysko, you’ll play cards with the city’s ruler, a crimelord called the Hunra, who looks like a half-vapourised goblin riding around in a ruptured beetle tuxedo. Brysko also throws (explosive) cards in combat, and has a grappleshot you can use on both enemies and the architecture. I do like Warframe’s suit design. Much of Warframe is opaque to me, but Digital Extremes absolutely excel at devising sexy butt-kicking gargoyles.

As I learned in a separate interview, Fornax’s concept reflects quite strong feeling about real-life addiction and gambling. Look out for more on that front down the line, in addition to some interviews with Digital Extremes about Warframe (and Soulframe) at large.

Warframe: Tau launches this year. If you’re new to the universe, and intrigued by Tau, the rub is that you’ll have to chew through the existing story and do your time in the progression mines to unlock access.

The expansion will accompany a host of smaller changes, including tweaks and new stuff for the existing Origins system. There will be new kinds of mission, and new enemies. There will be new plot threads for established characters – Brysko is working for Albrecht Entrati, if you’re familiar with that guy. As of this writing, Digital Extreme have just added a massive, dormant Sentient body to one of the game’s hangar environments – flying it in live during the announcement. You can customise the entity’s skin and gender presentation, for purposes unknown.

There’s another smaller Warframe update on the way this autumn, Iceblade of Narin, which introduces a new ice element Warframe while treating the 2013-era Banshee to a rework. There’s also a sidestory slated for August release that consists of a mini “Fables and Frontiers” role-playing adventure. This reuses the AOL-style messaging system introduced by time-travelling expansion Warframe: 1999, and stirs in a new song from in-game boyband On-lyne.

Did you know that Warframe had a boyband? I’m starting to worry that Warframe contains everything. I just wish it didn’t involve quite so much grinding.