If you've been keeping track of news here at Game Watcher, then surely you know that Digital Extremes' Warframe convention, Tennocon, had just taken place this weekend.
Those who are in the know will remember that last year's Tennocon culminated in the reveal of Plains of Eidolon, Warframe's very first open-world area, and took the gaming world by storm. Developers themselves have cited this moment as one of the many key breaking points for their pet project, which makes it very important indeed. There was some doubt on whether it was possible for Digital Extremes to top last year's reveal, and whether there was any point to doing so at all, but against all odds, it seems that they have managed to do so with plenty of overhead to spare.
Warframe's next open-world update, titled Fortuna, will be set upon the surface of terraformed Venus, where players will join an underground resistance group in an effort to overthrow their literal Corpus overlords. Said resistance group consists of people whose heads have been removed and replaced with mechanical neuroptics so as to keep them docile until their debt is paid, for Fortuna is primarily a Corpus debt internment camp.
Mechanically similar to Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna is actually five times larger and designed with various improvements and iterations upon the developer's very first offering. Highlights include craftable Moa pets, custom firearms, an animal preservation minigame, and - most importantly - an actual, usable hoverboard, with tricks and all. The improvements to Warframe's open world systems are said to be retrofitted for Plains of Eidolon as well, which is an added bonus.
After a live 30-minute demonstration of how exactly Fortuna bounties will play out, and after a close call with what may well be the game's largest and most imposing terrestrial boss encounter, the credits were already rolling when a considerably large space vessel descended from the sky to meet the player's Warframe.
As it turned out, Digital Extremes had more than just Fortuna to announce, and the ship signified Warframe's second upcoming update - Railjack - which will serve as a sort of a synthesis of the game's many various gameplay systems and mechanics. With Railjack, players will get to maintain a large combat interceptor, where they will be joined by other players to operate said interceptor vessel in tandem to take down large enemy ships in outer space.
While one player controls the interceptor, others may jump out of the ship in real-time, activate their Archwings and go and board enemy ships to take down defenses for the turret operators to punch through. At the same time, enemy units may board the player interceptor as well, so that someone has to go take care of them, put out the fires and reboot systems on the go. Railjack will be tightly intertwined with Fortuna from the get-go, with players taking down orbital bombardment systems which will be bombarding the area at first.
Finally, to top all of this off, Digital Extremes have also announced their next big cinematic quest with The New War, which hints at a whole new solar system for the players to explore - Tau Ceti - and which has long been theorised about by the more lore-inclined players.
This all comes alongside other assorted announcements, including new cosmetics, items and various other things. While full, uncut footage of the entirety of TennoLive can be found on Youtube, included down below is the official announcement trailer for Fortuna.
