I have a perplexing relationship with online videogames – if we were in a Facebook romance, it’d be ‘complicated.’ I’ve played League of Legends for [redacted] years because I know it’s there and easy to drop into. I’ve sunk hours into MMOs like Final Fantasy 14 and World of Warcraft, only to fall off because I can’t keep up with the grind and, as a result, can’t really play the game any more. When it comes to online multiplayers, I stick to what I know because I don’t have the time to try anything new, so a world in which I actively tried to play Warframe – one of the most complex games out there – felt like nothing but a far-off reverie.
Enter Warframe 1999, the online action game’s latest, grungy questline. Set in the World War II-esque universe of Höllvania, you’re thrust into the guise of Arthur Nightingale, the protoframe for the ever-popular Excalibur, Warframe’s poster child. Albrecht Entrati, our age-old enemy, has returned, and his machinations have led to bouts of Techrot infesting the city. As Arthur, our mission is to hunt him down, but in the present-day Origin System, we’ll simultaneously have to face the consequences of a Coda Worm hack gone wrong. Spoiler alert: it involves an infested boy band, and it’s iconic.
But it was 1999’s aesthetic that entranced me. While Warframe itself has its own, art deco-esque style, 1999 feels like a far cry from the Egyptian-style golds and twisted Parisian comedy and tragedy masks that we see throughout the base game’s world. Instead, 1999 is a mashup of classic military aesthetics and good ol’ fashioned punk rock, framed by a soundtrack that’s to die for. As Arthur tears his way through the Techrot, industrial metal echoes off of the walls, whispering and goading him onwards as he cuts a path through a slew of enemies. It’s bloody, it’s glorious, and, most importantly, it’s exactly what I’m looking for.
But striking that perfect balance isn’t easy, so I ask creative director Rebecca Ford and community director Megan Everett how the team went about building Höllvania – fitting, given we’re sitting in a recreation of one of its eerie abandoned subways. “What is this!?” Ford jokes when I ask her about the game’s setting. “Is it the Cold War?!
“With the world, we wanted [it to be] vaguely Eastern European, we wanted a military force that looked like, if they had enough analogue, they could have been in the ‘90s. The tank, the motorcycle, the parachute drops – they’re all critical to our own self-referential wartime faction.”
I comment that, despite the fact that 1999 is a very different look for Warframe, the Tennocon 2024 demo maintains the essence of what makes the multiplayer game so great. It’s relentless, it’s explosive, and it’s got the base game’s unique parkour-style combat. “It’s very fast, we’re hitting all of the beats,” Everett echoes. “But when you actually get to go into the world and see all of the little Easter Eggs, it’s very cool. I was just playing it, and I didn’t know there was an alley cat that meowed at me; there are so many little surprises that even I didn’t know about. The team has made it so immersive.”
But a living, breathing world is nothing without its characters. With a star-studded voice cast that includes Final Fantasy 16’s Ben Starr, Resident Evil’s Nick Apostolides, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Amelia Tyler, and Cyberpunk 2077’s Alpha Takahashi, this is easily the game’s biggest project to date. But all eyes have been drawn to Major Neci Rusalka, the character that I describe as 1999’s ‘tall vampire lady,’ and the one Ford calls “a beautiful, threatening woman that could kill us all.”
Sporting bright orange grenadier gear and an arsenal of toxic weaponry, Rusalka has won the hearts of players everywhere. While her ambition to get rid of the Techrot (and Entrati by proxy) aligns with Arthur and The Hex’s, that doesn’t make them friends – in fact, it’s the opposite.
“Every faction needs a good villain,” Ford tells me. “She’s this intimidating, relentless force; we wanted a femme fatale. There was a lot of feedback internally on ‘how far should we go? How can we make this feel Warframe and legit?’ and honestly, I’m really proud of what the team did with her. She is my dream.”
But an even darker, more twisted foe lurks in the bowels of the Origin System, playing the incredibly catchy ‘Party of Your Lifetime’ full blast. You might have noticed I casually dropped ‘infested boy band’ earlier on, and it’s exactly what you expect and more.
Höllvania’s resident superstars, On-Lyne, have been transformed into eerie alien creatures, headed up by frontman Zeke, played by Apostolides. Aesthetically, 1999 had me. Soundtrack-wise, everything is an absolute banger. And there’s an evil boy band. Do I really need to say anything else?
All joke’s aside, I’ve never been a Warframe player – I never thought I would be, given the sheer weight of the game’s lore and the complexity of diving in as a new player. 1999 however, has creative flair in droves, and while its gameplay largely builds upon Warframe’s base mechanics, 1999 feels like something new.
If you’re a long-time World of Warcraft player like me, it sometimes feels like each new expansion is, well, just another WoW expansion. Bad guy appears, you defeat bad guy, clear up the fallout, and then scour for hints about the next chapter in Azeroth’s story. It’s a similar story with League of Legends; there’s a new mode every now and then, but we’ve been lacking something fresh for a long time. It’s a trap that a lot of live-service games fall into – how, exactly, do you innovate on what works?
While Tennocon 2023 focused on Whispers in the Walls, which didn’t quite pique my interest because I didn’t know the game, 1999 is the reason that I got home and re-downloaded Warframe. It’s the reason that I plowed [redacted] hours into it during my annual leave. While the new player grind is going to be rough (I asked Ford and Everett about that in this interview), I want to do it. I want to experience what Warframe 1999 has to offer – it embodies the riskiness and creativity I think is missing from this industry right now.
So here I am, abandoning Azeroth and Runeterra to take a walk around an abandoned old mall in a videogame I never thought I’d actively want to play. Yet, it’s easily the most fun I’ve had with a live service game in months. I know that, after I write this, I’ll dive in this evening, complete a few more bounties, and try to get the relevant Garuda blueprints. 1999 has me playing Warframe, and I’m absolutely loving it. Hello, fellow Tenno, I have arrived, and I think I might just be obsessed.