Warframe 1999’s romances are written to defy video game expectations

War Armor It is a game full of surprises. At first glance, it looks like the team at Digital Extremes is just making a free-to-play space ninja game. Once I started digging beneath the surface, I was continually surprised by some of the new features: fighting gameplay, a new form of character creator, or different game modes with deep progression trees and unique rewards.

next big War Armor expansion, Warframe 1999will bring bigger changes, like a climactic battle with a boy band in space. But the new feature I’m most excited about is the romance system. As the protagonist of the game, the Drifter, explore the world 1999they will encounter hex. The Hex are six original Warframes that live in the ruins of an abandoned mall, and if you play cards in a series of IM conversations on an old CRT monitor, you can kiss one of them on New Year’s Eve.

“We’ve always wanted to have a deeper relationship system in the game — not necessarily romantic, but something that immerses you more,” said creative director Rebecca Ford. War Armorin a call with Polygon. Ford then provided examples of developer inspiration: Stardew Valley, Baldur’s Gate 3and Fire Emblem. in early stages Warframe 1999the team realized that the framework would allow for contextual romance systems.

“Just during the COVID-19 pandemic, I read about 25 [Kathryn Kingsley’s] Books,” Ford said. “On the back of all her book covers it says she’s a romance author and game designer. I wanted to know if she’d give it a try, so I just messaged her on LinkedIn, and Kat immediately said, ‘ I joined.

After joining Digital Extremes, Kingsley turned to her own Discord community for help. this War Armor Fans in the Discord gave her a crash course on scenarios such as the identity of the Drifters, the secrets of Warframe, and the political factions vying for the galaxy. Writing around a classic of an 11-year-old game is a daunting task, and Kingsley likens it to balancing a Jenga tower.

So the castaways arrive in this alternate timeline, meet six members of the Hex, and start chatting. Each member of Hex has their own typing style, interests, and sense of humor. “We want to make sure these characters are identifiable, even if you can’t remember whose username is whose, just by the way they speak,” Kingsley said. “So one of the first things we thought of was a style guide on how each character types.”

Players can revisit and redo events Warframe 1999meaning that while one decision may determine the events of a particular campaign, players are not locked into any permanent choice. “No matter what happens, if you choose not to make it permanent, it’s not permanent,” Ford said. “When we started designing the experience, we looked at other live-service games with romance systems and quickly discovered, oh, there aren’t any.

“We quickly understood that we needed an easy way for players to scroll back through selections, allowing them to explore freely and feel safe enough to click through without having to Google the answers to all their questions.”

The relationship between Hex and Castaway isn’t all sweet and light. The Drifter bursts into their lives with some heavy dose of parallel universe knowledge that makes everyone question everything they know. “We really tried to make it a relationship system that parallels the romance system, so you can experience it completely platonic and get just as much lore and dialogue without having to flirt with or date the characters,” Kingsley said.

Hex maintains a group chat where players can find a recognizable progression system. But separate instant messaging windows offer their own possibilities, allowing players to ask each character about lore, ask probing questions, or try to pique their interest through flirtation. There are no romance-related cosmetics or game rewards through the IM system, but after the New Year’s Kiss, your lover will live with the castaway and provide some custom dialogue.

The impermanence of this opt-in means that the developers at Digital Extremes are happy to give players some chance to take a stand or say something downright rude. “You can definitely be a jerk. I’m ashamed of some of the things I’ve said about the character,” Ford said.

“I think of these six characters as little stand-alone romance novels — not about video game characters, but about real people. So sometimes you can say some really mean things to them,” Kingsley said. “Sometimes it’s the right thing to do, sometimes it’s the wrong thing to do. You have to know these people well enough to know if it’s the right decision. But the first time [Ford] Show one of my conversations to anyone on the team and I swear I thought I was fired.

“This is no ordinary video game,” Kingsley continued. “If you ask a character in your first conversation with him to tell you his backstory, it’s not going to go well. I was told that, and that’s fine. I recovered. It’s just one of my thriving romances. An obstacle in the road.

Warframe 1999 There is a demo available via War Armorand will be released for free on all platforms this December. Developers at Digital Extremes also continue to work on soul framean open world game with a similar structure, slower combat speed and larger game scale Eldon Ring Atmosphere.