So, despite having been looking forward to it quite a lot last fall, once it was actually released I took my sweet time to check out Warframe’s newest batch of content. What else is new?
However, about two weeks ago I finally made my return to the game and dove headfirst into the 1999 update, and so far I’m really fricking digging it.
Why? I’m glad you asked.
I won’t go into much detail about the story in case anyone reading this hasn’t played it yet, but I think it’s great. Because of reasons we’re thrown into a pretty fucked up version of the year 1999 and group up with a bunch called The Hex to try and make it…well…less fucked up. That’s about the gist of it.
The first and most obvious consequence of this time travel is of course the environment. As I understand it Höllvania is an entirely fictional place, but to me it looks and feels like an amalgam of London, Paris and maybe Prague. In other words, it’s completely different from anything we’ve ever seen in the game and thus a welcome breath of fresh air. It also reminds me strongly of Hellgate London, which is always a plus in my book.
The tileset is accompanied by another new feature: with every weekly reset time passes and seasons change in Höllvania. I’ve started to play during winter, right now it’s spring, and so on. Great stuff!
They’ve added a new way to traverse the game world as well, the Atomicycle. It’s a damn cool ride, and I’m glad that we can use it almost anywhere – yes, we can go and rack up speeding tickets on the Plains of Eidolon or the Orb Vallis with it. I will say though that it’s unfortunately not overly practical. The streets of Höllvania are mostly quite narrow and I rarely choose to use the bike there, and as for the open world zones, well, why ride when I can fly instead? But, again, it’s cool and fits the expansion’s theme very well.
The setting isn’t the only thing that’s brand new however. They’ve also added a way to interact with allied NPCs that goes above and beyond what we’ve seen before.
In addition to just walking up to them and opening the usual context menu there’s this text messaging software used via an old-timey computer. Think ICQ, if anyone remembers that. Each day we can have a new conversation with every member of the Hex, and most of the time they go much deeper than just smalltalk. We learn a lot about these people, and they about us (which is helpful for me, too, because I’d forgotten quite a few bits of what came before over my five plus years of playing the game).
There’s even an option to become really close with and eventually date one of them. It might be debatable whether or not Warframe “needed” something like this, but I like it. From what I’ve seen so far it’s thankfully done in a mature way and not cheesy or cringey at all. Also, our character has gone through a lot of shit over the years and has essentially been alone during all that time, so having someone care about them for a change actually feels pretty good.
Just like the story, the actual gameplay follows the trajectory Digital Extremes have established with the Angels of the Zariman and Whispers in the Walls expansions, meaning there’s new enemies to fight, a mix of familiar and new mission types, hidden collectibles that can be picked up and exchanged for faction standing (sucker for scavenger hunting that I am I’m hugely pleased that these seem to have become a mainstay by now), and of course tons of new stuff to earn and unlock. Warframes, weapons, arcanes, mods, housing items, it’s all there.
DE have thought of something new here too though. Each season (i.e. real life week) is accompanied by fresh entries into Höllvania’s calendar, and if you accomplish the tasks given (“Defeat X enemies with abilities”, stuff like that, nothing too fancy) in chronological order you earn rewards along the way.
The kicker here is that those rewards aren’t just a bunch of resources or faction standing, but actually rather “valuable” items. For example, I’ve had the choice between two random arcanes and an Exilus Adapter, or between an archon shard and a three-day booster, among other things. There’s no doubt in my mind that this would be called a “battle pass” in most other games, and we’d have to pay 10 bucks a month for it.
Yet another really nice touch, at least for me, is the fact that we can earn or buy pretty much every piece of music we hear during the expansion to add to our Somachord library and play them in our orbiter or other bases of operations – of which we also get an additional one in Höllvania. It’s quite spiffy too, arguably the nicest one yet.
Oh, and speaking of new music, did I mention that 1999’s version of Kuva Liches / Sisters of Parvos are called Technocyde Coda, and that they’re actually the members of a famous boy band, afflicted and deformed by the techrot, Höllvania’s precursor strain of the infested? I kid you not!
Last but not least, our new allies are a different breed of Warframes, kinda (again, won’t spoil anything), and you can buy their appearances as skins for their respective ‘frames. If not having a face most of the time while playing Warframe is a major turn-off for you, well, there’s a remedy for that now. At least for some ‘frames, with more to come I believe.
So, yeah, I think 1999 is a damn good expansion. Is it the best one yet? That’s really hard to say. Warframe has so much content by now, and every update, even those that I didn’t like nearly as much, added something to the game that I wouldn’t want to go without nowadays.
Let’s just say Warframe keeps getting better and better. That’s all we can really ask and hope for when our favourite games are concerned, isn’t it?
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