For years, the free-to-play space sci-fi shooter Warframe was a game about child soldiers carving a warpath across the universe, desperately trying to do the right thing even when it’s not obvious what that is.
More recently, Warframe’s story has shifted to explore themes of forgiveness, love and maturity — many old enemies became allies during the New War against the Sentient threat, and Warframes are more respected in the Origin System than they’ve ever been before. This is where the game’s newest expansion, Warframe 1999, opens up — and it’s free to play today.
Learning to break the cycle of violence perpetuated by their old masters won’t save the Tenno — the heroic warrior faction to which players pledge loyalty — when the threat originates from outside of this reality. The void entity known as the Man in the Wall threatens to breach the veil between worlds, promising catastrophe.
Only one man can help stop the end of the universe, and he’s MIA. It’s time for a time heist.
From here on out, this article contains spoilers for Warframe 1999’s story.
Let’s do the time warp again
With an insidious eldritch being rap-tap-tapping away at the door to the Origin System, the Tenno need to find the brilliant scientist Albrecht Entrati if they hope to save their home.
The catch is that the Man in the Wall has Entrati trapped in the year 1999, right before the turn of the century. Famously, this is when the Y2K bug triggers a nuclear explosion that wipes the city-state of Hollvania off the map, spelling the end for the famous inventor.
Naturally, the only conclusion is to send the Drifter (that’s you) back in time through void magic shenanigans to make sure that doesn’t happen.
The Drifter and Arthur get into a quick scuffle, because who would trust a killer robot ninja that drops out of nowhere?
That’s how you meet up with the new allied syndicate, the Hex — a group of six protoframes (humans who have only partially been subsumed by the Warframe bioinfestation) who are fighting a war of attrition against the techrot and Scaldra military that threaten innocent civilians.
Teaming up with the new crew, a race against time starts to save Entrati so he can put a kibosh on the Y2K bug and stop the nuclear explosion — which is all well and good until you find a secret tape from the scientist that informs you that the two of you need to ride the energy produced by that explosion to make it out of 1999 and back to your reality.
Warframe is, at its core, a game about rejecting cycles of violence and doing better than your predecessors. Suffice it to say, no old man is getting away with demanding that you sacrifice your new friends and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to make a clean escape.
Major Neci Rusalka leads the Scaldra, a military group locking down Hollvania. Her intentions aren’t exactly pure.
Both Entrati and the eldritch Man in the Wall attempt to break the Drifter’s will, letting the events play out that lead to the Hex’s downfall in the failed reactor mission.
Rather than ride the energy out of the past, the Drifter chooses to die with their allies, forcing Entrati to reset time once again. Now, the Drifter’s time loop includes the entirety of the year 1999, giving them ample time to prepare to siege the nuclear reactor and prevent Y2K from blowing it sky-high.
After escaping the Duviri Paradox, you’d think the last thing the Drifter would want is to get trapped in another time loop. 1999 is a true point of divergence, one where history can be changed. The Tenno’s actions from here on out will decide the fate of the Hex, and the greater Origin System.
Warframe 1999 is the game’s greatest experiment yet
Warframe 1999 introduced Atomicycles, which you can ride through the streets of Hollvania. Sadly, you can’t do the Akira slide.
Digital Extremes hasn’t ever been shy about pushing Warframe in strange new directions. That inevitably means some content drops like the Railjack space battles and the Duviri roguelike mode are written off by many players as disappointing (and buggy) launches.
Warframe 1999 isn’t one of those disappointments; not by a long shot.
The members of the ragtag but capable Hex are brilliantly voice-acted, and I especially liked the jaded combat medic Lettie and the peppy mechanic Aoi.
The Hex is a group of people who definitely have personal reasons to be risking their lives trying to save a bunch of civilians who want nothing to do with them, and I’m excited to explore their stories more as the relationships begin to unfold over the coming weeks as more chapters of Warframe 1999’s story release.
The stakes are rising higher as a new conflict with the Man in the Wall ramps up, Digital Extremes has done a commendable job making personal conflicts feel important too.
So far, Leticia “Lettie” Garcia has been pretty rude to me 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 are fighting. The Tenno are becoming their own people. They’re no longer weapons that are told who to kill and who to spare. Putting it all on the line for six good (super powerful) people doesn’t feel like a stretch at all. I’d put the fate of the universe in jeopardy to save Lettie, too.
We’ll have to wait to see how Warframe 1999’s grander story unfolds, how we’ll stop the nuclear explosion and if we can bring the Hex back with us to help battle the Man in the Wall in the Origin System back in the game’s present, but Update 38.0 laid a strong foundation for this new era of Warframe.
A new Warframe, weapons, missions and more
After blasting through the 1999 story, there’s still plenty of new content to explore.
Cyte-09 is the 59th unique Warframe. He’s a stealthy frame that prioritizes high critical damage with his exalted weapon.
Completing The Hex mission will unlock the blueprint to build the new Cyte-09 Warframe — based on Quincy Isaacs of the Hex, this new frame uses an exalted sniper rifle to pump out massive damage with bullets that ricochet between enemies’ heads.
The AX-52 assault rifle returns for anyone who missed its Twitch drop, and the Vesper-77 pistol makes its debut in players’ arsenals. Cyte-09’s signature weapon, the Reconifex heavy assault rifle, is also available to earn through the Warframe 1999 bounty missions.
New extermination and assassination nodes have been added allowing players to fight the Scaldra and techrot infestation across the Hollvania tileset.
The H-09 Efervon Tank is one of the Scaldra’s secret weapons. If you’re able to take it down, your arsenal will get a boost from one of the new Arcanes.
A new survival mode variant, Hell-Scrub, raises the stakes by having players more fiercely defend their life support capsules (lest it be turned against them), while a new endless mission variant, Legacyte Harvest, sees players capturing increasingly dangerous variants of the techrot-infested.
Digital Extremes is finally reinvesting in PvP action with the Faceoff mode, which sees opposing squads of players race to complete objectives while sending each other hazards, enemies and other obstacles. Warframe grows ever closer to Destiny 2 with this mode — it plays a little like that game’s PvPvE Gambit mode, minus the player invasions.
There’s even a romance system that players will be able to play around with each weekly reset. If you’re dating one of the members of the Hex when the seasonal cycle concludes, you’ll be able to get a New Year’s kiss.
Like I said, love is what Warframe’s really all about at the end of the day.
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