I wish I could articulate what it was like seeing two thousand people's heads explode when Warframe developer Digital Extremes showed off their upcoming expansion, Railjack. After a 45-minute-long presentation at Tennocon 2018 demoing the impressive open world zone of Venus, Digital Extremes hoodwinked fans with an extensive, surprise look at Railjack's co-op space combat. No one knew it even existed. People lost their shit. At one point, I was seriously concerned the mob of cheering fans might storm the stage. But the audience wasn't angry, they were just so damn excited. I was excited too. Not because Warframe is adding an ambitious new space combat mode that glues its disparate parts together, but because all of this is coming from a free-to-play game that, four years ago, was completely overlooked.

I mean, who doesn't love a good underdog story?

And that's, essentially, what Warframe is. When Digital Extremes first released it in 2013, people immediately wrote it off because it was a free-to-play game. "It was a cuss word at the time," creative director Steve Sinclair joked with me when we spoke before the presentation. "No one even wanted to talk about it." Today, Warframe regularly sits in Steam's top 10 most played games just under esports titans like Dota 2 and trendsetters like PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. And, as I found out when I reviewed it two months ago, Warframe absolutely deserves every bit of its success.

Aside from the screams and cheers I witnessed sitting the audience of Tennocon, that success has been oddly quiet though. It's not the result of a single big reveal like Railjack, but years of slow growth, honest dialogue with players, and risk-taking development. And it all contributes to why Warframe is the best free-to-play game on PC.

Study the blade 

That moment during Tennocon when community director Rebecca Ford's character piloted a spaceship while her two teammates fired guns, rebuffed invasions, put out fires, and even infiltrated an enemy ship takes context to understand why people lost their minds. For Warframe's long-time fans, the biggest surprises are how dramatically it continues to grow and change.

When it launched in 2013, Warframe was little more than a procedurally generated co-op loot shooter. You played as a cool ninja and ran around cutting up bad guys for resources to craft into gear. That was it. In the five years since, though, Digital Extremes has turned Warframe into what basically amounts to an MMO that easily dwarfs both Destiny games. There's public space stations to hang out and trade items in, customizable dojos for your clan to build, several dozen planets to visit, a massive open world zone to explore—the list goes on.

It seems like there's no idea too big or strange for Warframe. The first half of the Tennocon presentation was a long walkthrough of another open world zone on Venus coming later this year. It started with a two-and-a-half minute musical number, of all things. But when Digital Extremes finally showed off new features, like a hoverboard and giant walking robobugs, people were screaming with excitement. To then cap all of that off with a 15-minute surprise live demo that involved seamlessly flying a ship into space and blowing up an enormous enemy capital ship was almost too much for people to comprehend. Take note, E3 press conferences, because Digital Extremes knows how to please an audience.

I love the audacity. Where many game developers are content with just feeding their players more of the same thing, Digital Extremes constantly changes the shape of Warframe to include new—and often very bizarre—features. You can hatch alien dogs that fight alongside you. One warframe comes with a programmable, in-game synthesizer. There's even a parasite that organically spreads between players. Features that work continue to get iterated and improved upon while those that don't are often abandoned, like Warframe's PvP mode.

Each of these little experiments, successful or not, congeal to give Warframe an absolutely unique shape that is hard to describe. What other game can you fish on a tranquil lake one minute and the next minute bullet-time jump through an enemy spaceship in a suit of armor that punches the souls out of people?

Instead of just striving to give players more of what they want, Digital Extremes endeavors to always give them something different at the same time. And, as I'm quickly realizing, it creates an exciting tension where I cannot wait to see what surprises the developer is cooking up. I'm just excited for the future of Warframe as I am to play it, and that's a rare feeling.

Warframe isn't the most coherent game but it is certainly one of the most recklessly ambitious. And considering how honest and communicative its developers are, it's hard not to find that quality endearing. When talking with their audience, you get a sense that Digital Extremes isn't trying to spin the truth or sell something. Their weekly streams are informal and fun peeks behind the development curtain. Yesterday, I discovered some of Sinclair's archived livestreams where he hangs out with viewers on his day off and talks about the technical nitty-gritty of Warframe's development. It's the kind of stream you see from small-time indie developers, not the director of one of the world's most popular games. During one stream, Sinclair even talked about his decade-old dream of making seamless space battles in Warframe and showed off his work in progress—the seed that would eventually become Railjack.

Sinclair's inviting demeanor is a philosophy spread across the entire company. During the VIP breakfast before Tennocon, most of Digital Extremes' developers were chatting away with fans that they obviously had an established relationship with. Warframe wouldn't exist today without the dedication of a few thousand players who stuck through those rough early years, and in watching these conversations it's obvious that Digital Extremes knows it.

Ninja theory 

Of course, it also helps that Warframe is damn good too. The parkour combat is kinetic and sublime, and there's a sense of depth to each of its progression systems that is, at first, daunting. Once I got to grips with it, though, I began to see why people routinely sink thousands of hours into Warframe. It elegantly solves one of the bigger problems with MMOs' gear grinds by not treating the grind and the reward as two separate concepts.

In Destiny 2, for example, the moment I get that exotic rifle, I immediately need something new to work for or what's the point of continuing to play? Bungie is continually having to move the goalposts back but is, at the same time, creating 'power creep' as players' stats become wildly disproportionate along the way. It's a treadmill that is completely arbitrary.

Warframe, on the other hand, understands the value of horizontal progression—the idea that variety is the spice of life. Instead of always seeking The Most Powerful Gun, I'm building a vast arsenal of wildly different weapons and warframes that each have extremely long progression curves until they reach their true potential. It's a slow process that turns away those who want more immediate rewards, sure, but I love that I've never logged into Warframe and felt like I had nothing to do. And the game is so fun to play that I don't really mind the slowed pace of progression.

Of course, it's to Digital Extremes' benefit that the grind be as drawn out and as layered as possible. It's easier to monetize it that way. Warframe's microtransactions also set a high standard that other games should aspire to, though. Yes, it's possible to pump a ton of money into the game in exchange for blinged-out gear, but Warframe's upgrade system still means you're going to have to spend the time to level it up and make it good.

Even the premium currency, Platinum, can be freely exchanged between players. Warframe's bustling player-driven economy uses Platinum almost exclusively, and it's easy enough to earn it by selling items that others want. That means even Warframe's most expensive cosmetics are within grasp of enterprising players who don't want to spend money.

Warframe feels like a near-perfect symbiotic relationship between player and developer. There are definitely some free-to-play annoyances, like having to wait for items to craft and needing to buy inventory slots, but in exchange I get one of the most robust and distinctive online RPGs I've ever played. And the fruit of that give and take is moments like the Railjack reveal, when the dreams of both Warframe fans and its creators are realized in one beautiful instant.

I've spent nearly 200 hours with Warframe so far, but I can see myself spending many, many more. There's parts of it that I love and there's part of it that I hate, but there's no part that I don't feel invested in. I want to know more about its systems. I want to be a part of its community. And that's because Warframe is fearless in its pursuit of new ways to improve and expand while also respecting its audience.

Warframe's success is already impressive but it feels like a much bigger sleeper hit in the making. I get the sense that this is just the beginning. At the end of the Railjack demo, the spaceship the developers were piloting warped off to parts unknown—an on-the-nose foreshadowing that Warframe's next expansions are going beyond the solar system it's called home for years. And, judging by the thousands of cheers from the audience, I suspect their fans are just as excited about the trip as Digital Extremes is. I know I am.

Warframe has some of the most fluid and fun movement out of any shooter I've ever played. I said as much in my review, but Digital Extremes is taking things in a decidedly more radical direction with the addition of 'Bondi K-Drive' hoverboards. Revealed during a special presentation live from Tennocon, Warframe's annual fan convention, these new hoverboards are going to be a key mode of travel in the new Venus open world zone that is five times larger than the Plains of Eidolon.

But who am I kidding, the real draw is that you can do tricks on these bad boys. While the live demo only showed off a 360 spin, I was told there will be plenty more stunts, like backflips, that players can perform as they jet through the gorgeous frozen mountains of Venus. Sadly, you won't be able to grind on anything because, uh, it's a hoverboard. You can jump on enemies' heads and bounce off of them, however.

Now, Warframe veterans will know that the Archwing jetpack is the defacto method for travelling Warframe's open worlds. Digital Extremes did confirm that those will be available in Venus too, but obviously the K-Drive has its own appeal. While I haven't had a chance to pilot one personally, they appeared to glide through the mountainous environment with relative ease and the sense of speed is great.

Unlike the Archwing, K-Drives don't have any real offensive weapons so they're purely used for zipping around. But creative director Steve Sinclair did say that it's something the team is still figuring out and there's a "heated debate" over whether players should be able to fire their guns while riding them. They will, like everything in Warframe, feature extensive customization options. Sinclair confirmed that there would be different models along with cosmetic upgrades that you can earn in various ways including cool graphics for the underside to show off how gnarly you are. We'll update this post with more details as they emerge.

I'm here at Tennocon in person and will continue to cover all of the exciting news and reveals as they happen. For now, check out our breakdown of Warframe's ambitious as hell expansion, Fortuna. You can also watch the full presentation from Tennocon live on Twitch.

At Tennocon 2018, Digital Extreme's annual Warframe convention, the developer had a huge surprise in store for fans—one that promises a radical change to what Warframe, as a videogame, actually is. A live presentation showcasing the new open world zone of Venus ended with a major twist that I'm still trying to wrap my head around. During the demo, villain Nef Anyo bombarded the player repeatedly from space, but just when everyone thought the preview was over, Digital Extremes showed how players will get their revenge.

A ship descends that the group of four boards and then pilots seamlessly into orbit where they engage Nef Anyo's capital ship directly. Called Codename: Railjack, it's an entirely new game mode where players explore and fight in space from the comfort of their own battlecruiser. It's basically Warframe's take on beloved indie game FTL. Each member of a group will man a station on the ship, like piloting or manning turrets, while simultaneously fighting off enemy fighters, capital ships, and even direct invasions inside the ship. Similar to FTL, players can also divert energy to different systems like powering up thrusters to increase speed and maneuverability. There was even a moment when a hull breach depleted life support systems that had to be repaired.

You won't just be on the defensive, either. At any time, players can depart their own ship and fly around space in their personal Archwing flightsuit to engage enemies more directly. More impressive, however, is the ability to infiltrate enemy capital ships and sabotage them from the inside to weaken them for a killing blow. During one intense sequence, one developer was running through the halls of the enemy capital ship while another was in what creative director Steve Sinclair called "commander mode" which let them hack the enemy ship to open airlocks and assist her teammate.

It's a stunningly ambitious new mode, but it's unclear how this experience will fit into the greater Warframe campaign. During an interview, Sinclair did confirm that these ships would feature a progression system similar to most everything else in Warframe. Players will be able to level them up, upgrade, and modify their various abilities. They aren't just giant boats either, but have special abilities similar to Warframes. Sinclair described one as a "death blossom" of missiles that "destroy everything in sight."

In my review, I said "Warframe is the most Frankenstein-esque game I've ever played." It's a mish-mash of different ideas and systems that don't always work well together, but Sinclair said Codename: Railjack is intended to be the glue that binds Warframe's open-world levels, procedurally generated corridors, and Archwing space combat together. These ships will also be instrumental in exploring space beyond the solar system that Warframe has been confined to for its entire lifespan. Last month, Warframe released a new "cinematic quest" called The Sacrifice that turned the page on another chapter in Warframe's esoteric and wonderful story. The next chapter, called The New War, was also teased at Tennolive and sets up an inter-solar system conflict with the arch-villain Sentients that exist beyond the borders of our star system.

This update "takes Warframe down a totally uncharted path," reads a press release I was provided with ahead of time. It's described as being the next part of a "grander vision." When I asked Sinclair to explain what that meant, he spoke of Dark Sector, the unreleased game that Digital Extremes tried to make before Warframe. In that game, Sinclair says, groups of players would explore and invade ships in procedurally generated sectors of space. It was an ambitious project that Digital Extremes was never able to realize, as detailed in the No Clip documentary. Codename: Railjack is their attempt to finally bring that vision to life. I already have a difficult time explaining Warframe to my friends. I have a feeling it's going to get worse.

Codename: Railjack has no release date, but considering the new Venus open world zone isn't expected until late 2018, I'm willing to bet it's going to be a long wait. Check out our coverage of the new Venus open world zone and the awesome hoverboards you'll use to explore it.

Stepping onto the Plains of Eidolon the first time was a surreal experience. For years, Warframe players had been dashing and bullet-time sliding through the claustrophobic corridors of alien-looking spaceships. Last year Plains of Eidolon ditched all of that, taking Warframe's kinetic sword and shotgun combat into wide open spaces. Now, developer Digital Extremes is taking it a step further. During a presentation at TennoCon in Ontario, Canada this weekend, Warframe fans were shown an extended 20 minute demo of the new Venus open world zone called Orb Vallis, and it already looks like a massive improvement over the Plains of Eidolon.

Forget the auburn—and slightly monotonous—rolling hills of the Plains. Orb Vallis is a stunning alien landscape covered in a light sprinkling of snow, giant mushrooms, sea-like flora, and towering robot bugs that clamber over its mountains (yes, they will attack you). It's five times as big as Plains of Eidolon (which was about 5 square kilometers) and already feels much livelier. It's a vast space where groups of up to four players will explore, complete bounties, fish, mine, and fight.

Orb Vallis is the central addition to Warframe's Fortuna expansion, which will be arriving later this year. Living in this terraformed version of Venus are the Solaris United, a bizarre race of half-human half-robot slaves that are fighting for freedom against their Corpus overlords. It's a cliché-sounding premise that Warframe is adding its own weird twist to as evidenced by the opening cutscene featuring a chain gang humming a solemn tune as they work. They're a people so in debt that they've had to mortgage their own partly mechanical bodies to the Corpus.

The new hub is the underground city simply called Debt-Internment Colony where players will pick up quests, buy Fortuna's new tools, and put together more pieces of Warframe's esoteric lore. Similar to Plains of Eidolon, there is a new weapon crafting system but instead of melee Zaws players will be forging Kit Guns that fill your secondary weapon slot.

At its core, though, Orb Vallis will function the same way as Plains of Eidolon. For the most part that means completing a rotating list of bounties or farming materials for various uses. The bounty system has been greatly improved: now, Solaris United agents will appear at bases that you liberate on the map so you can more easily hop from one bounty to the next.

Mining and spear fishing are two activities that will directly carry over between the Plains and Venus. But one really cool new addition is a unique animal preservation system where players seek out and capture endangered animals for relocation to safer environs. It's keeping in tune with Warframe's often weird features (this is a game where you have a gun that shoots music you create in a synthesizer).

What I love most is how involved it is. While exploring Orb Vallis you might come across tracks in the wilderness that you can follow. If you have the appropriate lure, you can make animal calls to try and lure the beast out. It's a weird call and response mini-game where the animal will make a specific noise that players have to mimic. It's hard to explain, but creative director Steve Sinclair said it was heavily inspired by hunters using moose calls. The animal will make a certain sequence of noises that players then recreate using a user interface element that simulates different pitches. It's weird, so just watch the Twitch livestream to see it in action.

Once the animal is lured out, you'll then have to find a place to hide until it's exposed and then you'll shoot it with a tranquilizer. Animals have different rarities that is partially dependent on how successful you are with recreating their call, with rarer animals offering more Solaris reputation. Once the beast is knocked out, you can extract it with a drone in a way that feels very reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 5.

Not everything living on Venus is friendly, though. Corpus bases are scattered all across the zone, but an even bigger threat is the 'Orb Layers'—giant spider bots that stomp around. Similar to the massive, titular Eidolons, these are essentially endgame bosses that players will have to initially avoid at first. What's cool, however, is these giant spider tanks aren't confined to anyone space and can be constantly seen scaling mountains in the distance. 

In that sense, Fortuna feels like it shares a similar structure to Plains of Eidolon. Players will farm materials, complete bounties, and eventually form groups to hunt and kill powerful endgame bosses for powerful loot. I just hope that, unlike Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna won't be so compartmentalized from the rest of the game. Still, Orb Vallis looks like a promising and ambitious update coming on the back of Plains of Eidolon, which was in itself an ambitious update.

Speaking with Sinclair, he was also able to confirm that many of the innovations of Fortuna will be retroactively applied to Plains of Eidolon. The new bounty system, the K-drive hoverboards, and potentially even the animal conservation minigame will all be added into Plains of Eidolon at a later date.

I'll continue our coverage as more details emerge from TennoCon, which I'm attending all weekend.

Last year, Warframe partnered with Top Cow Comics to produce a crossover comic book series. We spoke to Top Cow president Matt Hawkins at the time about the publisher's relationship with Digital Extremes, and what we might expect from the five-comic run. 

With all five issues out in the wild—and ahead of tomorrow's TennoCon 2018—we caught up with writer Ryan Cady to discuss how the series overlaps with the sci-fi free-to-play shooter, the challenges of creating something new while satisfying a dedicated fanbase, and how the game world's lore complements both the comic and the videogame.  

PC Gamer: What was your relationship with Warframe like before working on the comic?

Ryan Cady: I like working with Matt and I'd played the game a little bit because of a weird thing where some artist I knew had been doing a book. He was worried his designs were too similar to Warframe's designs, and this was like in 2014 maybe. I was like, what's Warframe? I downloaded it and played it. 

The universe is really rich and it's a fun sandbox to play in. I was excited and my mind was excited about the sorts of crazy things we could tell in that world. I remember very distinctly being like: man, action in this game is so fluid, these pages are gonna look so cool. These pages will look so cool. I can't wait. 

Tell me more about the comic itself. 

Our arc is definitely in the prequel category, but it shows elements of the Warframe universe that span from mission one to endgame content. There are locations—like the Orokin voidship, or Cetus on earth—that will mean one thing to a veteran player and something wholly different to a casual reader. While still, I think, preserving the integrity of the narrative. 

With the character of Captain Vor, for example—our main villain and one of the recurring baddies in the game—we’re trying to show a level of sympathy and nuance to his beliefs and motivations in a way that, hopefully, serve to make your encounters with him in-game seem MORE sinister, more dangerous. You understand him, you’ve seen a bit of his journey, but now you’ll fear him more.

And that’s what we’ve tried to do for a lot of game lore, tried to add some colour and nuance to the NPCs and world players would interact with. The humanoid Ostrons of Cetus, the cybernetic labourers of Solaris United, even the mysterious Lotus—“space mom”—we wanted to show them interacting with each other and Tenno in ways that would make players see a little more depth to them when they go back to the game

Have you enjoyed bringing Warframe to life in comic form? 

Oh, it's been a blast. 100 percent, that hope was delivered on. The story they let us tell, that we worked with Digital Extremes on, really brought out the best of that bombastic, crazy, futuristic imagery. All of the fighting scenes you'd expect from a Warframe comic—we got to do them. I was ecstatic about that, that's been a blast. Working with everyone and interacting with the fans has been a delight, it's been a wonderful project to work on. 

Warframe has a pretty dedicated fanbase. You've worked alongside Digital Extremes in this process, but how difficult is it writing new stories that fit with pre-existing player expectations?

We're lucky because we had a long time to clear everything with Digital Extremes and there was a lot of back and forth. There was a sense there of safety and hand-holding. It was like, okay, Digital Extremes has cleared this, so we can't screw it up too much. The players can't get too mad! By and large, a lot of our anxiety started to go away over time. The fans were really positive and they're receptive people. 

I jumped on the subreddit whenever I could, and everyone was very gracious, they liked the looks. They're a very open community. I tell this story a lot on podcasts, but there was this one time in San Diego where this fan walked away from me in the middle of a conversation because I was playing a frame that wasn't in the meta. He just walked away. That's the only bad interaction I've had, every Warframe fan has been really cool and fun and there's a level of enthusiasm that lets people geek about stuff. 

Are there more to come? Is this the beginning of something big? 

We've definitely talked about it, but that's definitely one for the higher ups. I know there's enthusiasm on both sides. I mean, I'd love to. 

One thing that fascinates about Warframe is its evolving nature. The comic series also aims to expand and evolve the Warframe universe—is it possible that the comic's storylines could overlap with the game itself further down the line? 

Absolutely, I would love that. Even with the stuff we've already done, I'm still secretly hoping more and more of it will show up in the game. We have a character that we created, Little Duck, and fans have been really responsive to her, the fans really like her. We really had a blast writing her and creating her. I'm like, oh, they're doing that Venus stuff soon, what if she showed up, that'd be so cool. 

It's a little more, I guess, higher pressure doing future stuff that more ties in directly, but now that we're more in tune and what it means to write these books, what the fan culture is, I feel like it'd be awesome to write a more timely, more tied to what's going on-type series.

Comic and videogames overlap all the time. But it feels like it's happening more now than ever—is that fair to say?

Yeah, I think so. I think it's an overwhelmingly positive thing too. You look at how Blizzard creates those Overwatch comics, it's this idea that: this is a narrative form that videogame publishers and geek culture publishers identify with. There's a synergy there. You can create a comic relatively cheap to the cost of making a videogame—comparatively it's more affordable—and here's a way to expand your narrative and build your fanbase and branch out. I definitely have noticed more.  

Are there any other videogame series you'd like to take on beyond Warframe? 

A lot of the obvious ones jump to mind. Mass Effect, for sure, the first Mass Effect trilogy was so important to me and I'd love to dive into that world. It's weird because it's similar to Warframe and the culture is similar, but Destiny would be a cool series to visit. Much like Warframe, I always thought: here's this big world, with so much lore, and you can only touch upon some of it as a game developer. It'd be nice to play in that sandbox. 

All five issues of the Warframe five-comic series can be purchased separately on Comixology. The full collection, Warframe Vol. 1, is due on July 25.