Once upon a time at Tennocon 2023, I bonded with Warframe’s creative director, Rebecca Ford, over being dumped by Astarion. I thought we were having a real, feminine moment, forging an inseparable bond over broken hearts and countless tubs of ice cream. Yet, with Warframe 1999, Digital Extremes has introduced its own take on Baldur’s Gate 3’s romance system, and I suspect that some dreams might be shattered. Emotionally perplexed, reeling from this discovery, I asked Ford how she felt about potentially playing heartbreaker after having the Pale Elf rip out her heart and stomp on it.
“Honestly, I don’t want to break hearts,” she tells me with a smile. “But it could happen, maybe.” I feel my breath hitch; Warframe 1999’s protagonist Arthur is, to borrow Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair’s words, a “handsome hunk” – I don’t want him to break my heart.
“But we’re not going to create a permanent losing situation for you,” she continues. I exhale. “We’re an always-online multiplayer game, so we can’t make it permanent unless you want it to be. That’s the key takeaway, it’s what the player will want.”
But the system is, indeed, inspired by Baldur’s Gate 3 – Astarion has certainly left his mark. “It was the push over the cliff,” she tells me, noting that the team has been making “‘romance sim when?’ jokes for years. We had our parachutes and everything on, but we were too scared to jump until Baldur’s Gate.”
“There was never a bunch of characters that made sense to romance systemically in a design that would be evergreen. Then, as 1999 came together, Megan [Everett, Warframe’s community director] and I are sort of our own little book club, and we’d been reading nothing but romance novels for the entirety of 2023 – and then Baldur’s Gate came out.
“I was fully realizing the depth of what we could do, and what made me feel a certain way in [Baldur’s Gate 3] – it’s not multiplayer, you have to save scum if you screw up a romance, so how do we do this in Warframe?”
1999’s romance system is heavily integrated into classic ’90s dating culture, with MSN-style instant messaging apps being the core – “you’ve got mail!” vibes, to quote Ford. Everett, however, notes that the system is “optional. You don’t have to romance anyone if you don’t want to, you can just do the classic Syndicate route, and you can work your way up from that.”
But a surprise lurks in 1999’s interconnected web of hormones. While Ford quickly volunteers that there are “no sex scenes, unfortunately; we’ll leave that for the fan fiction,” she does note that “there will be an intimate New Year’s kiss.”
I’ll mention that Everett does add an emphatic “not yet” after Ford’s ‘no sex scenes comment,’ but I digress. “There’s a very big surprise in store with one of the kisses,” Ford continues, then frowns slightly. “It’s kind of disgusting, but in the best way. Get ready for a weird one.” Color me… vaguely concerned (read ‘vaguely’ as ‘very’).
If weird kisses sound right up your street, then make sure you’ve completed Whispers in the Walls ahead of the Warframe 1999 release date so you can dive right in. Or, if you’re looking for more Tennocon coverage, here’s our Warframe 1999 preview.
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