Hey all, I am back with a breakdown of the major announcements and reveals from Digital Extreme’s Digital Tennocon event specifically, TennoLive 2020. Heart of Deimos Expansion will release on August 25
TennoLive 2020 Breakdown:
Hydroid Prime
First off, anyone who watched TennoLive 2020 on Twitch or Steam with their Warframe account linked will have or soon receive Hydroid Prime. Here’s the much long awaited Hydriod Prime Trailer.
With that also came the announcement of the Hydriod Deluxe Pack.
Three New Warframes Announced
During TennoCon it was revealed that three new Warframes are in development.
All three warframes were designed by Liger a fan artist well known in the Warframe community that DE has now hired as a full time employee.
Alchemist and Wraithe are still in development with concept art and early in-game models shown during the Tennocon Art Panel. Gameplay of Xaku was demoed during TennoLive by Rebecca Ford the Community / LiveOps Manager that has guested on Giant Bomb.
Xaku (pronoun: They/Them) are a Warframe based on pitched design ideas from-and then voted by the Warframe community. The “Broken-Frame” Xaku is made up of grafting parts from fallen Warframes, and has abilities that allow them to come apart,dismantle.
Xaku’s abilities include:
- Xata’s Whisper the power imbue weapons with Void Damage.
- Grasp of Lohk which dismarms enemies and their weapons will automatically act on their own and act as turrets
- a) Deny fires a Laser Void Beam that that deals damage or CC (should they survive) to enemiesb) Accuse: Creates a Radial Fissure that has similar CC properties to Denyc) Gaze: CCs a singular target and surrounding
- The Vast Untime: Throws off Xatu’s warframe tatters the shrapnel deals damage to nearby enemies and Xatu is left in a Skeletal state with 75% damage reduction and faster movement speed.
Xaku will be coming as part of the Heart of Deimos update.
The Heart of Deimos update is coming to all platforms August 25th. It includes the following content announced:
New Player Experience
The New Player Experience is finally coming in the Heart of Deimos Update
Last Tennocon 2019 when they revealed the new Cinematic Trailer directed by Dan Trachtenberg
The developers have worked on refining the tutorial and the starting quests to be more in-line with the cinematic trailer. Aside from the visual changes shown, Players will have more of an opportunity to try out the new starter weapons before committing to a weapon. I am still personally wondering what changes they made to tutorial to better on-board players.
Existing warframe players will be able to playthrough this new player experience as well. Regardless where you are currently in the game. You will not need to make a new account or start over.
New "Helminth Chrysalis" System
The helminth chamber on the player ship is significant for lore purposes as I explained in my warframe lore summary also on Giant Bomb, its critical role in the creation of the player's warframe. The helminth chamber will now also serve a gameplay mechanic relevant role. After such a reveal, I think we don't need to beat around the bush and can soundly spoil the revelation that Warframes are actually bio-exosuits not made of metal and circuits but of flesh and disease and the helminth is key in the process. (Don't worry I will still leave the mystery of what then are the Tenno?
For those who have not read my lore summary or played the Second Dream quest.) It is funny that just as Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis announced the drastic change away from feeding ones Mag. I hope @jeff, @vinny and @unastrike see how weird it is!
Warframe doubles down on its feeding mechanic as Rebecca demonstrated during Tennolive feeding the Warframe called Mag to the helminth. This allows the helminth to subsume Mag and take her warframe ability, "Pull". After 24 hours the ability would become available for other Warframes to swap out. In some ways similar teaching a ™ to a Pokemon, except you sacrifice one of your existing Warframes to create the ™. This mechanic is interesting in that it presents a resource sink to players who have amassed large stockpiles of resources while giving them a chance to customize Warframe abilities kits. Rebecca stated, the developers would be hand selecting which abilities would be transferable to other Warframes in this new system. In the selection process 4th/Ult abilities will not be made transferable nor signature abilities so don't go holding your breath for suddenly being able to equip a super op move on every single frame you own. Honestly I think this system has great potential, there are just some abilities on frames I never use and now with this system I can swap out the ability with one I will use. Also the potential new meta developing around ability synergies that this also opens up is exciting. Also interested in knowing what they will do about warframes like limbo, grendel, octavia whose abilities are coupled, functionally dependent on the unique properties of warframe itself.
Heart of Deimos Expansion / Live Demo:
The Heart of Deimos will be a new “Planet” (technically “Moon” of Mars) on the Star Chart it has been infested and a SOS signal has been sent out to the Tenno by LOID a new Celphalon-Machine hybrid character.
In this open world there will be new story missions and side-activities (incursions) as we know from the previous open world expansions.
Existing Warframe players note that Deimos will replace the Orokin Derelicts levels in the game.
Deimos features a new open world environment , and a new “Grey Strain”: of Infested enemies.
The Day / Night cycle of Deimos seems to be controlled by giant Infested known as Wyrms, There’s a Sun Wyrms and a Moon Wyrm depending on which Wyrm is out there will affect what type of smaller infested hordes the Tenno face.
Here's a look at some of the new enemies: (gifs supplied thanks to @forcen)
To get around in this horrific landscape players will be able to ride new Velacipod beasts with K-drive hoverboard like controls, furthermore also be able to use their secondary weapons while using the “new k-drive”.
Instead of the width of the open world, Deimos will focus on depths, players will need to travel and descend down into the “heart” of Deimos.
The Heart of Deimos’ campaign seems to be very dense with Lore, it sounds like through the story missions we will learn not only about the history of the planet its significance during the period of the Old War and the Tenno’s cryostasis, but also we will finally get a explanation as to the deep connection between the Orokin, Infestation and Warframes.
In the TennoLive demo, we are introduced to The matriarch of the Entrati family is called the Mother. (not to be confused with Tenno's Space Mom the Lotus… although story-wise we aren’t on best speaking terms right now...). Mother is of The Orokin origin, partly infested, she seems to have resided in Deimos after the Old War all this time. From the cutscenes shown at TennoLive, The Entrati family were Orokin Archmestites (ie. Scientist, Mathematicians, Philosophers) who know of knowledge to harness the power of the Void. The Heart of Deimos was briefly alluded to “pumps the arteries of ‘the here’ and the Void” and serves as a place of power for the Tenno and Warframes. Mother will likely be serving as the expansion’s primary quest and bounty giver.
To assist the Tenno, the Entrati faction will provide you access to the Necramech these mechs of the Old War will be pilotable by our Operators. These giant mechs will be customizable and eventually use-able on the other open worlds as well.From the demo, these mechs are reminiscent of the Titans in Titanfall, only you control them in third person. They seem to have 4 abilities similar to the Warframes. Shown briefly, players will also find non-friendly Necramechs in the heart of Deimos to contend with.
Here’s a video of just the Heart of Deimos live demo by itself.
The entire TennoLive stream is 1h 18 mins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoKO1nAk0MQ
For a condense “Abridged” version that is 24 minutes long check out QuietteShy’s video
During TennoconLive they also had an “interactive” in-game component to the demo. Players on the TennoLive relay Social Hub in-game were able to view different showcases throughout the stream with their in-game character. In short they create a Fortnight-like experience in which as the demo was running, players were teleported to different rooms and visit displays and character models of the new enemies and characters presented in the demo they just watched.
I had a fun day with the Giant Bomb Warframe community over at our discord.
The big surprise for me is how well demo ran without too many hitches. The game and stream saw a large player and viewership spike.
On steam they beat their record of number of concurrent players in the game.
https://steamdb.info/app/230410/graphs/
Here's a snap shot of the GB Warframe discord of genuine reactions when everyone realized DE was pulling a Fortnight and their characters were being transported from the relay to the different showcases and they demo'd the Necramecha Also the reaction to the Helminth Chrysalis system in the main Giant Bomb Discord
After TennoLive ended we discussed which abilities we most likely expect to be able to transfered through the New "Helminth Chrysalis" System. Some including myself have started rebuilding some of frames in anticipation. For the warframe heads like me out there, DE Pablo has already clarified some of what abilities they plan to make transferable.
https://twitter.com/LoopStricken/status/1289710516403761153?s=20
Let me know what your favorite or most memorable part of the TennoLive / Tennocon panels were!
If you want to listen to some foks chat about TennoLive in a podcast format. Check out this video highlight I edited of @thouddin, @ilikepopcans, @dannyhibiki from their podcast called Roms Over Baghdad where they go over TennoLive.
The video is edited with audio and visuals and screenshots / footage from Tennolive to help with context!
Thouddin and DannyHibiki are members of the Giant Bomb Alliance!
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