Warframe’s The New War Expansion Introduces New Playable Characters–Cross-Play Also Announced
At TennoCon 2021, developer Digital Extremes finally revealed more info about Warframe’s The New War story expansion, which was first teased back in 2019. Coming later this year, The New War is a new cinematic story quest focusing on the Tenno and other factions entering a new phase of conflict that was will stretch across the entire star system. This new story expansion will also signal the next phase for the free-to-play action RPG, which will see cross-play for all versions of the game coming at a later date.
During the TennoCon 2021 live stream, we saw over 30 minutes of extended gameplay for The New War expansion. This cinematic quest line sees the Tenno–the faction of Space Ninjas–work with allies from other factions to face off against the artificial life-forms known as the Sentients, who have invaded Cestus on the Planes of Eidolon. According to the developers, The New War will be the longest story quest the game has seen yet. In a similar vein to previous cinematic quests like The Sacrifice and The Second Dream, The New War will take you on different missions with set-piece encounters and bespoke story beats that will reveal new lore about Warframe’s key characters and factions. This new expansion will also set the stage for coming with the following expansions and live events.
The extended gameplay reveal from TennoCon 2021 started off with a bang, showing off the scale of the Sentient invasion. In a surprise twist, we then cut to gameplay for characters other than our familiar Tenno. While your adventures throughout Warframe have focused on the Tenno, The New War will mark the first time players take on an active role as side characters for story missions. In the gameplay we saw during the stream, The New War will feature missions letting you control the sword-wielding Teshin of the Conclave faction, Kahl-175 of the Grineer, and the Corpus engineer Veso. These standalone missions will focus on each character’s particular loadout and skills, making them stand apart from the slate of Frames you’ve become well accustomed to over the years. However, The New War will still focus on the Tenno and their actions during this quest.