*sort of

Back when Warframe was in closed beta and had a single tile set, wall running was seen as a massive game changer as you could now maneuver the levels unlike before and really made for a much faster game but also made the game really stand out and make you feel much more powerful and badass as a result. As the game continued to develop and grow we got additions such as pets, clan spaces that you could customise, flying through space, raids, whole new environments and cinematic story quests. While that last point may not sound like much, back in 2013, the game looked like this:

And here we are today:

Well, technically not today but soon. Warframe has grown massively over the years to the point where there are now hundreds of weapons, dozens of playable characters and lore that extends outside of the game with a anime short and even a comic book series. The new Plains of Eidolon update looks to take Warframe to yet another level. Unveiled at TennoCon 2017 (yes, they also have their own con now too), the new update takes Warframe open world in a 3km square playable space with caves and camps to explore and a sense of freedom that the game just hasn't had before. While full details of what you can do in this new environment will come nearer to release, side activities such as fishing and crafting your own weapons were shown. This new landscape will also give players the ability to freely fly through the environment at will which was previously relegated to a certain mission type. A day and night cycle is also being introduced which also has gameplay implications similar to Dragon's Dogma where powerful enemies come out at night.

The way Warframe has pretty much worked since its release is that you pick a mission, join with some randos, go on said mission then back to the mission hub once you've completed it. The Plains of Eidolon will be completely different from this and much more standard open world fair. You will pick the location from your map as per but then quests will be taken from within the world and completed there rather than loading in and out like we have now.

While the teaser above gives a glimpse of what's to come, you can see a much longer and in-depth walkthrough in the video below:

If watching this made you go "wow, I'd love to check that out but I don't have any friends who would play it with me" then threat not as Giant Bomb as its own clan that you can request to join here:

Giant Bomb Alliance (PC)

VinnCo (PS4)

@rapid put together a video of the above video with a few extra details if you want to check that out

The amount of updates and huge changes to this game make me wish I stuck with it much longer.

I first tried it out immediately after Jeff originally tried it; I enjoyed Dark Sector so a coop version of it in space sounded like a good time, but it didn't have enough for me at the time.

Tried it again for PS4 launch but there was too many games and it got lost in the shuffle.

I may eventually try it again but I think I need to convince some friends to do it with me.

That looks hilariously similar to Destiny's Earth zone.

Good for them on continually building upon this thing. I had my fun with it I think.

I tried Warframe, but I can't say it stuck to me. It seemed just a little too free-to-play for me.

(Not to mention bloody confusing half the time.)

Here's a recap of the gameplay demo and other reveal trailers

Really interesting but definitely still work in progress. The devs said they have spent the last 3-4 months on Plans of Eldolon. The normal content is not going away. We will see how much content is in one of these open areas. Definitely where the game needs to grow to sustain its playbase and to the game itself.

@wheresderrick: Speaking of Dark Sector they just added in dual wielding a single pistol and Glaive weapons.

@rapid: I heard him say that they spent the last 3 months upgrading their rendering but his twitter indeed confirms that this is just 3 months worth of work. Absolutely astonishing when you think about it and this is just the start. Sounds like this'll be the future for Warframe with more environments with more players in increasingly larger worlds.

I liked warframe a lot, played about 40 hours on pc and probably twice that on ps4, but i am kinda glad i bounced off if going full on MMO is their goal. I think it was a better destiny game than destiny and the quick in and out nature of the missions is what i liked about it. If this just ends up being some added content that may be cool, if it doesn't make getting into matches more difficult.

That's a pretty big departure from the last time I played it. Seems neat. Might get me to play again. I'm worried about how stable it will be on PS4 though. Even the older design had some performance issues.

Looks cool. Last time I played it, though, it felt like too much of a grind to get the things I needed to progress. Think I was trying to get the ability to fly or something to go on to the next mission and it was taking forever to grind the resources.

wow wtf has this game become? I played around 20-30 hours of this around the ps4 launch and havent really played since then. I should maybe jump back and in join the GB clan...

@oursin_360: You have to choose to go there. These zones will be in addition to the standard missions.

Looks cool, but I did laugh when he almost straight up said "See that mountain? You can go there."

It seems like they're shifting this thing towards being more of a Destiny-like - or at least even more of a Destiny-like than it already was.

This is the one game I wish I stuck with from the beginning through the rough times. I remember how bare bones it was and its mundane visual style really turned me away. I'll be damned if every big update they've shown hasn't made me want to play it.

Too bad I just don't think I can get into a grinding game nowadays.

I put in about 250 hours of Warframe and really enjoyed it, but I fell of almost completely the last time they changed the meta and introduced fissures/relics.

The thing I loved most about Warframe were the co-op tower survival runs, but now the end game has been reduced to grinding relics. To be fair, the game was always extremely grindy, but now the grind has no challenge and it's more of a straight slot machine.

This looks kind of interesting, but I'm not sure it'll actually be any fun?

I always wondered if Warframe has any sort of appeal single player, in at least the Diablo/Destiny sort of mindless grind you maybe do while something else is on. Sounds like pub games can be a nightmare as everyone knows exactly what to do right off (like always).

@ripelivejam:If you are curious about the single player as in single story quests different from the grinding missions, Warframe now has a lot of major story cinematic quests. Second Dream, War Within, (warning spoilers) and the recently released Chains of Harrow quests which are actually exclusively solo only.

The difficult part is there's a lot of missions to grind in order to get there. The rework to Starmap will definitely help You will definitely find unlocking planets (progressing through the star map) to get to those big the single player quests a lot easier and faster by playing with a group. If you are planning to play pubs games opt to go into the Recruiting channel in chat and specifically state that you are new and want to seek help on clearing the starmap to see the quest content. Generally the Warframe community is pretty nice if people are up front about being new to the game. A lot of veteran players flock to newbies to help them out.

And of course, the Giant Bomb Warframe clan can help you'll best get a hold of us in our discord or posting on Giant Bomb Alliance thread mrcraggle linked.

@ripelivejam: I play most games solo and had a good time with this one, and ended up putting a little money into it. If you played destiny think of it like doing strike missions, I may be blanking a bit but you get crafting materials and blueprints to build new weapons and warframes. There are also cards that act like gems for weapons and passive abilities, I felt it was a pretty good loot game. It can get a little convoluted but not quite at the levels of most F2P games, but you can earn almost anything except inventory and shaders(if i'm not mistaken it has been a couple years now).

Yeah you grind bosses for materials to build stuff, i used a guide to know where stuff was but i think it may tell you in game now.

Yep, my first thought too. If you had told me that was a trailer for new Destiny content I would have believed you.

http://www.pcgamer.com/warframe-is-getting-an-open-world-mmo-like-area-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/

wrote an article and did a interview that provides a bit more details. The main hub will support up to 50 players in a single instance and the quest where you go out to the landscape is limited to to up to a single squad of 4 for now.

So is it out or will it come out soon?

@forcen: Just an announcement, no definite release date. I don't expect this to come out until late this year if they hit the 2017 date. Chains of Harrow was just released 2 weeks ago, and is not even on console yet.

I too really enjoyed this game at first and had a fun time with the Bomb guild, even designed the first logo, but eventually really burned out on the RNG slot machine nature of it. After grinding the same boss for over two dozen tries and not getting a single blueprint I needed I had a falling out with it. Then they introduced a whole bunch of new mechanics and I just fell off completely. Still nice to see them doing so well.

@chaser324: Funny thing is Warframe predates Destiny. I've always thought of Destiny as a Warframe-like

Eh, warframe is just toooooooooooo effing much of a grind, it's just too much... I played for a good chunk of time with the GB clan dudes, even spent like 10 bucks on it or something, but at some point the amount of things you have to do to get the most basic of equips is ridiculous, then the amount of time and resources you have to spend for making that equip actually good is preposterous, and THEN there are the prime versions of said items...

I might check this out anyway, because why the hell not, but it'll be short-lived for me I'm sure.

I honestly wish I wasn't playing this at the PS4 launch. It seemed so barebones and monotonous at the time that I completely stopped, but each year I keep seeing a post showing how much it's evolved since then. Looks like a heck of a thing these things.

I do always wonder what the player demographics for games like this look like. What portion of the player base is younger kids still in school that almost exclusively play this game and just occasionally put in $10 or so at a time?

Wow, this game looks so different compared to that first beta I played. I may end up checking this out again at some point. I remember I checked this out because Jeff was talking about it on a bombcast back in 2013 or something. Or maybe 2012?

You can easily pub Warframe if you want but there are going to be a lot bigger walls to overcome. Lots of equipment is walled off behind the clan system and a solo player will have to spend exponentially more time to get that stuff. Some of the endgame content is drastically more difficult without extra players to help.

At the end of the day Digital Extremes has incentivized group play and for the most part you can actually count on half the public games to include players with experience and a friendly attitude. Because Warframe has always been, at it's core, a co-operative game the audience trends more co-operative too. That means players who like to play with others and help versus players who are interested in dominating over others. This is why it's best to just throw yourself into public games and roll with it. They will help because it helps them too.

I've been playing Warframe off and on for 4 years now and as online experiences go this is probably the best I've ever seen for public online communities. The game has basically only improved over time and the community has improved along with it. Come for the ninjas and stay for the people.

It's really cool to see how Warframe has changed over the years. Back in the day, I sunk around 80 hours into it and subsequently burnt out hard. All the upgrades up until now weren't enough to drag me back in though this update seems like it might do just that. Looks neat.

Also, anyone else get vibes from this similar to the Anthem E3 demo? I know it's not the same thing but the flying bit, in particular, reminded me of that quite a bit.

@humanity:

Hey duder, the logo is still flying high in the GB Dojo

@fatalbanana:The Archwing has there been for over 2 years now jeff showed it off in the 2nd Warframe quick look back in 2015. But yeah it was always relegated to only closed space missions. Now you have a much more open environment to fly around in.

Been playing for almost the 4 years that its been out. In my mid-20's and have a stable job. It mostly been the Giant Bomb Clan that has keep me playing. The mix of new duders to show and help out and the awesome warframe verterans in the game help keep Warframe still enjoyable. For me, its the game I keep up with like a Dota or whatever. Sunk over 2000+ hours in and lots of money into over the 4 years. (pretty much if I had been paying a monthly subscription) I still play other games, but I will go back to Warframe frequently. say a major other game comes I play that for a while. Then come to Warframe in when the developers end up releasing big updates. It is easy to burn out on the grind, so when that happens you play something and wait for new updates to reinvigorate the game.

I would say with Warframe Digital Extreme is example of Games as a Service done well.

I last played over 3 years ago. I just reinstalled it today. I'm so lost and overwhelmed. It might be impossible for me to get my feet wet again.

Warframe is my guilty pleasure money sink. Glad to see them putting my money to good use.

after hearing this I am thinking about trying it again but I am worrying about the changes since I last played.

The GB Clan has lots of veteran players who will happily answer any questions you have either here, or on our discord. There are few guides online made for people who want to get back into Warframe but as thatonedudenick point out are lost and overwhelmed by the new systems.

• Returning to Warframe? This post covers all changes since Update 8

• Fennyface's Beginners Guide

• DapperMuffin's Unofficial Warframe Handbook

• This progression chart and level infographic (see below)

And a very important helpful infographic of the progression

Always wanted to see a single player story with this game. The world and theme always interested me but the gameplay didn't hold my interest for long. This is looking way cooler than the current short missions it has now. Looking forward to seeing more. I would seriously pay $60 for a full on campaign story mode though. Seeing how there will be no more Mass Effect, if they made an RPG out of this it would be so awesome, and make me not as sad for losing ME.

They added several story single player quests.

The big cinematic being quests

1. Natah: The Lotus Origins Revealed
2. The Second Dream
3. The War Within

and other lore heavy ones like (post Second Dream)

• Sands of Inaros
• The Silver Grove
• Octavia's Anthem
• Glast Gambit
• Chains of Harrow* (newest story quest)

There's others but those are the big meat of the game (SPOILERS!)

With the help of the GB Clan a while back we did a compilation spoiler recap playthrough of the The Second Dream

Wow, I haven't been on since I think the Second Dream or maybe the war within (the one where you got your warframe to rescue your operator from the moon iirc). I might have to check back in on this.

Did they end up doing anything interesting with the dogs? I remember getting them and then pretty much putting them back in stasis right afterwards and going back to my bots.

I had my fun with this game back a few years ago (1000+hrs),but they kept changing the controls making it slower and slower. I still miss starting a wall run and canceling which threw you hundreds of meters at a time. Felt way cooler than just walking around shooting stuff, although that was okay too.

Looks like that old game doesn't exist anymore. Hope people still have fun with the new stuff.

@lanechanger: There are new cat creatures to breed called kavats and you could infect a kubrow egg to make it into a infested called helminths

Man, unreal how this game just keeps morphing. This might be one of the most amazing examples of what you can do when a game is really a "platform". I know that is some cliche shit, but the truth is most of the time we hear about "games as a service" it means adding maps and guns later on or something. Warframe seems like it has just been sweating it out since Day 1, constantly pushing to build entirely new mechanics and wholesale system changes. I always wanted to jump back in since playing it way back near launch, guess I will look back in once this update happens. Have they managed to curtail / obfuscate the grinding at all?

I just wish they would update the launcher so that it would work on my PC. The launcher is so bad. :(

@geraltitude: I hope it actually pans out though. When they revealed the Archwing stuff it looked awesome but it practise it's one of the least fun parts of the game.

More information about Plains of Eidolon

Angry Joe interviews creative director of Warframe Steve Sinclair (@sj_sinclair) at TennoCon after the announcement

Steve also answered questions tweeted at him on twitter. Summary Below! @mrcraggle

What we know:

• PoE will be an addition to regular content in Warframe players will travel to the location on the Star map
• In development for last 3 months, and the map will be 3x3km to start, seamless from Cetus relay and back
• The Landscape Will be available for new players (won't be hidden behind grinding / hours of progression)
• The main town hub will support up to 50 players in a single instance and the quest where you go out to the landscape is limited to to up to a single squad of 4 for now. They will explore having bigger squad sizes after release. (Warframe raids can have up to 8, so very possible)
• You will be able to traverse the space with the parkour movement and your archwing.
• Continuous Day & Night Cycle. (~4 hours) Daytime new players can freely explore and "things will be kind of your level", while Night Time is gear more towards veteran players. New players are "DOOMED"
• New mechanics like Weapon Crafting (Create your own custom melee weapon and name it)
• Fishing mechanic
• NPC will give Quest and offer more cosmetics
• The boss fight against the Big "Kaiju" sized Sentient that emerges at night shown in the trailer will play like Monster Hunter (PAGING @unastrike!) where your squad must defeat it in stages. The Sentient creature will move to different locations as you take it down gradually.
• There will be a new trading system with NPCs for new resources that is gather while in the plains
• Steve confirms you will be able to use Operators while in the Plains.
• When asked if Hidden Easter Eggs (in the style of Oddities) scattered around the map to collect were going to be featured in the plains. Steve replied "Yes"
• PoE is releasing before The Sacrifice
• Release window: "Late Summer" (as a long time Warframe player, expect delays!)

@rapid: I know we were joking about it being Monster Hunter but they really went there huh. I'm glad AJ asked him about how new players will access the new landscape and Steve addressed it though. I was curious if they'd change how you'd get Archwing but that doesn't seem to be the case. The idea seems to be that if you're a new player, you'll play for a bit and learn the game and when you make your way there you'll still be able to play and see the new content but you won't necessarily be able to experience it until its fullest so you will come back to it later on after having gained those upgrades like in a Metroid game.

Steve also Tweeted these out earlier:

I used to play Warframe pretty regularly, but then real life got in the way, and then I found other games... so I basically stopped playing for about a year or 18 months. Then the talk of the open world sounded interesting, and then I saw Rorie play it on UPF, so I thought I'd reinstall and see what was going on.

Holy crap. This is definitely NOT the Warframe I remember.

New gameplay footage of PoE from today's dev steam

I recently got back into this myself after dropping it quite a while ago. Once you wrap your mind around what this game actually is and really nail the movement it is incredibly satisfying. It can not be understated just how freeing and elegant the movement is. That you can shoot and melee during all of it too is just ridiculously fun.