Warframe 1999 Is About Time Travel, Love and Eldritch Gods – and It’s Fantastic
For years, free-to-play space sci-fi shooter Warframe has been a game about child soldiers carving their way through the universe, desperately trying to do the right thing, even if it’s not obvious what that is.
Lately, Warframe’s story has shifted toward exploring themes of forgiveness, love, and maturity—many old enemies have become allies during the new war against the Sentient threat, and Warframe is more respected than ever in the Origin System. This is the start of Warframe 1999, the game’s latest expansion, and it’s free to play today.
When the threat comes from outside this reality, learning to break the cycle of violence perpetuated by the old masters won’t save the Tenno (the faction of heroic warriors to whom players have sworn allegiance). Void entities known as “The Man in the Wall” threaten to break the veil between worlds, heralding disaster.
There is only one person who can help prevent the end of the universe, and he is MIA. It’s time for a time heist.
From now on, this article contains spoilers for the Warframe 1999 story.
Let’s time warp again
An insidious evil is knocking on the door of the Origin System, and if the Tenno want to save their homeworld, they need to find the brilliant scientist Albrecht Entrati.
The thing is, the Man in the Wall trapped Entrati in 1999, just before the turn of the century. As we all know, the Millennium Bug caused a nuclear explosion at this time that wiped the city-state of Hovania off the map, spelling the end for the famous inventor.
Of course, the only conclusion is to send the castaway (that’s you) back in time through void magic shenanigans to ensure this doesn’t happen.
Drifter and Arthur soon get into a scuffle, because who would trust a killer robot ninja that appears out of nowhere?
This is how you meet the new Alliance Syndicate, the Hex – a group of six prototypes (humans only partially engulfed by the Warframe biological infection) who are attrition against techrot and Scaldra armies that threaten innocent civilians war.
Teaming up with a new crew, a race against time begins to save Entrati so he can eradicate Y2K and stop a nuclear explosion – which is all well and good until you find the scientist’s secret tape informing the two of you that you need to exploit The energy from the explosion leads out of 1999 and back to reality.
At its core, Warframe is a game that rejects the cycle of violence and does it better than its predecessors. Suffice to say, no old man is asking you to sacrifice your new friends and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to escape.
Major Neci Rusalka leads the Scaldra, the military group that blockades Holvania. Her intentions are not pure.
Both Entrati and the terrifying Man in the Wall attempted to break the Drifter’s will and allow the events to occur, leading to Hex’s downfall during the failed Reactor mission.
Rather than drawing energy from the past, the Drifters chose to perish along with their allies, forcing Entrati to reset time once again. The castaways’ time loop now covers the entire year of 1999, giving them plenty of time to prepare for a siege of the nuclear reactor before Y2K blows it into the sky.
After escaping the Duveri Paradox, you might think the last thing the castaways want is to get stuck in another time loop. 1999 was a real breaking point and history can be changed. The Tenno’s actions from now on will determine the fate of Hex and the greater Origin System.
Warframe 1999 is gaming’s greatest experiment yet
Warframe 1999 introduced Atomicycles, which you could ride through the streets of Hollvania. Unfortunately, you can’t do Akira slideshows.
Digital Extremes has never been shy about pushing Warframe in strange new directions. This inevitably means that some content releases, such as Railjack space combat and the Duveri roguelike mode, will be considered disappointing (and problematic) releases by many players.
Warframe 1999 isn’t one of those disappointing games; Absolutely not.
The ragged but capable Hex members are all excellently voiced, and I particularly like the tired combat medic Letty and the energetic mechanic Aoi.
The Hexes are a group of people who definitely have personal reasons for risking their lives to try and save a group of civilians who want nothing to do with them, and with that relationship beginning to unfold in the coming weeks as more chapters of the Warframe 1999 story are revealed release.
As new conflicts with the men in the wall intensify and the stakes get higher, Digital Extremes does a commendable job of making the personal conflicts feel important as well.
Leticia “Leti” Garcia has been pretty rude to me so far as she runs around patching up wounds, but I like her no-nonsense attitude.
It’s clear that the studio is using the expansion to re-examine why and for whom players fight. The Tenno are becoming their own people. They are no longer weapons with which to tell whom to kill and whom to spare. Risking everything for six good (super strong) people doesn’t feel like a stretch at all. I’m also willing to put the fate of the universe at risk to save Letty.
We’ll have to wait and see how Warframe 1999’s larger story unfolds, how we’ll stop a nuclear explosion, and whether we can bring back Hex to help us fight the Wall Men in the Origin System in the game, but update 38.0 is A solid foundation has been laid for a new era of Warframe.
New Warframes, Weapons, Missions and More
After finishing the 1999 story, there’s still plenty of new content to explore.
Cyte-09 is the 59th unique Warframe. He’s a stealth guy who prioritizes using his noble weapons to deal high critical damage.
Completing Hex missions will unlock the blueprints for building the new Cyte-09 Warframe – Based on Hex’s Quincy Isaacs, this new frame uses the noble sniper rifle to deal massive damage with bullets ricocheting between enemy heads.
The AX-52 assault rifle returns for players who missed out on the Twitch drop, while the Vesper-77 pistol makes its debut in players’ arsenals. Cyte-09’s signature weapon, the Reconifex heavy assault rifle, is also available through Warframe 1999 bounties.
New elimination and assassination nodes have been added, allowing players to fight Scaldra and techrot infestations across the Hollvania map set.
The H-09 Efervon tank is one of Scaldra’s secret weapons. If you can take it down, your arsenal will get a boost from one of the new arcane spells.
A new survival mode variant, Hell Scrub, ups the ante by having players defend their life support pod even more fiercely (lest it turn against them), while a new EverQuest variant, Legacy Harvest, lets Players capture increasingly dangerous variants infected with the high-tech virus.
Digital Extremes finally gets back into the PvP action with Stand-Off mode, in which rival squads of players race to complete objectives while presenting each other with hazards, enemies, and other obstacles. Warframe is getting closer to Destiny 2 in this mode – it plays a bit like that game’s PvPvE Gambit mode, only without the player invasions.
There’s even a romance system that players can play through with weekly resets. If you date a Hex member at the end of the season cycle, you will be able to get a New Year’s Kiss.
Like I said, love is what Warframe is really about.
2024-12-16 20:47:00