Digital Extremes has revealed Warframe: Tau, a second solar system for its long-running free-to-play shooter, during a presentation at TennoCon on July 11. Tau is the home system of the Sentients, the faction Warframe's story has circled for years, and follows the flashback tour players took in last year's The Old Peace expansion.
The studio screened a first look at the system's opening region, a ringed city called Fornax, which Rock Paper Shotgun described from the presentation as heavily noir in tone. Fornax is one of two areas Tau will ship with initially. Its residents are biomechanical, and the city is built around a substance called the Bloom, to which much of the population is addicted; a corrupting rain falls over the district.
A new frame, and Warframe's first card game
Fornax is divided into three hubs and introduces Brysko, a new "Chimera Warframe" cast as a trenchcoated detective and voiced by Critical Role's Matt Mercer. Brysko throws explosive cards in combat and carries a grappleshot that can be fired at both enemies and the environment.
The city's upper levels house a casino that hosts Portau, described as Warframe's first in-game card game and compared by Rock Paper Shotgun to poker. An introductory mission built around Brysko has players sit down to a hand against the Hunra, the crimelord who rules Fornax. Digital Extremes told the outlet in a separate interview that Fornax's design draws on real-world addiction and gambling.
Tau is not a standalone entry point. Digital Extremes said newcomers will need to work through Warframe's existing story and progression before they can reach the new system, keeping it gated behind the same long onboarding the game has accumulated since 2013.
The expansion arrives alongside a set of smaller changes, including adjustments and additions to the existing Origins system, new mission types and new enemies. Digital Extremes has not given a firm release date beyond a window of later this year. TennoCon is the studio's annual expo for Warframe and its in-development sibling Soulframe.
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