When Warframe's developers first revealed the Empyrean update during its annual Tennocon convention last year, it felt like Warframe was evolving. No longer were Warframe players stuck running across procedurally generated hallways or open-world zones like Fortuna—now they’d be free to customize and pilot spaceships in co-op battles inspired by indie roguelike FTL, where each member of your squad can man different stations on the ship or infiltrate the enemy ship and sabotage it from the inside. It was ambitious—seeming almost too ambitious—but at Tennocon 2019, which just wrapped up, Digital Extremes unveiled an extended live demo of the new update. And, uh, it's even more ambitious now.

Apparently piloting your own spaceship with your friends isn't good enough for Digital Extremes. You can now infiltrate an enemy ship, kill its captain, and then steal it for yourself (though you won't be able to keep it for good). That's just one of the new features Digital Extremes showed as it played through Empyrean in front of a live audience at Tennocon.

The video above shows the entire demo and is worth watching because, as a Warframe fan, it's exciting to see how ambitious and transformative Empyrean is. There's too much to cover in just one article alone.

Unlike Warframe's previous updates like The Plains of Eidolon or Fortuna, which game director Steve Sinclair describes as "islands", Empyrean isn't just another new area of Warframe with progression and rewards isolated from everything else. Instead, Empyrean is meant to be the glue that binds all of Warframe together as one cohesive world.

Using your Railjack spaceship, you can visit different locations in space, many of which are located in orbit around the same planets where players take on normal missions. This core concept of Empyrean hasn't changed much since last year: You're still piloting a spaceship with your squad, working together to fight enemy fleets. Like FTL, the Railjack only has so much energy that can be diverted to different systems like shields, weaponry, or engines. And each member of the team will need to work together to divert this resource as needed.

During combat, players can also exit the ship via their Archwing flyer and fly around space independently. This also lets players explore wrecked space stations and ships whose interiors resemble traditional Warframe levels.

What I love is how much flexibility every player has at a given moment. During one scene, a Digital Extremes developer infiltrated a derelict space station and was ambushed by Infested. Instead of watching helplessly, the pilot of the Railjack was able to divert energy to a powerful cannon with a targeting radar that displayed the station map along with friendly and enemy locations. Using this cannon, they could provide artillery support to their allies as they made their escape.

My favorite feature is the Squad Link, which lets you send a distress signal to nearby players in your alliance to have them assist you on your mission from where they are. In the demo, Digital Extremes developers are squaring off against a Kuva Lich, a mutated monster that, similar to Shadow of Mordor's Nemesis System, changes and adapts after each time you fight them. This particular Kuva Lich has secured an impenetrable capital ship, and just as the squad is about to engage it directly the Kuva Lich activates a shield relay located on Earth that protects it.

Sinclair says this is Warframe's Battle of Endor moment, harkening back to Return of the Jedi when the rebel alliance must attack the Death Star while a smaller force simultaneously tries to deactivate its shield generator on a nearby planet.

With the Kuva Lich safe behind its shields, the players are able to send out a Squad Link beacon that other players in their alliance can respond to if they're not busy. In this case, one player is fishing in the Plains of Eidolon on Earth and happens to be right next to the shield generator. After accepting the Squad Link invite, they're given a mission to blow up the nearby generator so that their friends in orbit above Earth can kill the Kuva Lich. To be clear, all of this is happening in real time.

Fortunately for people like me who have no friends, these Squad Link objectives are optional. If no one responds to your request or if they fail, there will be other, more difficult methods to deactivate the shields of the Kuva Lich capital ship. Sinclair equates this to fighting with "one hand tied behind your back."

That covers most of the glamorous bits. The good news is that a Railjack is in reach for most players willing to spend the time and resources to build one—but it will require a Clan dojo (think guild house if you're new) with a Drydock expansion. Each player can have their own Railjack, but only the host-player's Railjack will be used in missions (so you'll have to choose which player gets to play captain). Even if you're new, though, you can always be part of the crew on another player's Railjack.

There's still no confirmed release date for Empyrean, but given that Fortuna released in November last year and was also revealed around the same time, it's a safe bet that Railjack will arrive either late 2019 or early 2020.

For more coverage direct from Tennocon 2019, you can read about Warframe's new intro video by the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane. We'll have more Warframe news soon.

For the past two years, Warframe has been adding open-world zones that are a big departure from its usual claustrophobic corridor run-n-gun combat. Today, during Digital Extremes' annual Tennocon convention, the developers revealed the new zone coming to Warframe at a later date—and it looks like nothing I've ever seen in Warframe.

Called the Duviri Paradox, this surreal landscape introduces a new enemy faction and ages your Operators (if you don't know what that word means it's something I won't spoil) forward to adulthood.

More than that, we don't know. But watch the trailer above to get a better idea for how bizarre the Duviri Paradox promises to be.

We have loads more info coming out of Tennocon 2019, so stay tuned.

Of all of the ways to find yourself on a spaceship, playing a lot of Warframe might be the cheapest. At Tennocon 2019, developer Digital Extremes announced a contest to win $250,000 towards a trip to space.

Contestants can earn extra chances to win by playing Warframe every day. The contest runs until December 31, 2019, so you have plenty of time to grind your heart out to become a true spaceninja. The contest is a pretty clever way to encourage players to jump into Warframe, but I'm curious to hear more details about the prize itself.

The winner receives $250k toward the trip, but does that mean they'll have to pay for a portion of it? Sounds like it could get expensive fast. The contest is currently light on details—the only thing shared beyond the trailer is an official website page, but it's really just an ad for the game. Steven is on location at Tennocon and has a lot of exciting Warframe news to share, so keep an eye on our feed.

During Warframe's annual Tennocon convention, Digital Extremes unveiled a new trailer for the next quest in Warframe's main campaign, The New War. First teased during Tennocon last year, The New War sees the Sentients, an evil alien race that lives beyond the solar system, launch a full-scale invasion on Earth and its surrounding planets.

Among all the other updates announced at Tennocon today, this new quest is one of the most anticipated since it'll expand on Warframe's excellent but obscure story. You can watch the trailer above.

The New War is coming this Christmas.

Despite being one of the best free-to-play games on PC, Warframe is not easy to get into. But during its annual Tennocon convention developer Digital Extremes announced that Warframe is eventually getting an entirely reworked new player experience which includes a brand new intro video by 10 Cloverfield Lane and Uncharted (the movie adaptation of the Playstation exclusive) director Dan Trachtenberg. This new video represents a narrative restructuring that will better introduce new players to the world of Warframe and help them choose their first suit of armor. It's also extremely badass.

The new introduction video is embedded above, and its existence heralds a complete rework of Warframe's intro, which hasn't really changed much since the game first launched back in 2013. Though game director Steve Sinclair didn't say when these changes would actually arrive in the game (it sounds like they're still a long way off), the idea is that Digital Extremes will eventually add new quests that better communicate what Warframe is today versus what it was six years ago.

Trachtenberg's intro is a key part of that. Instead of giving a brief introduction to the evil Grineer faction and then asking players to blindly choose which warframe they want to play as, this new intro does a much better job of establishing the universe, teasing each of the three starter warframes' abilities. It's also loaded with winks and nods for veterans to pore over.

"Because so much of Warframe is just [doing missions], grabbing resources, and crafting, you're not really focusing on the story," Dan Trachtenberg tells me. He's not just a director but also a passionate Warframe fan with a few hundred hours under his belt and a Mastery Rank 17 character. He tells me he first started playing when a friend recommended Warframe while Trachtenberg was filming 10 Cloverfield Lane, and it's been an obsession of his ever since.

As a veteran player, Trachtenberg understands exactly what areas of Warframe's intro needed improvement. "You're so focused on the gameplay," he says. "I really love the idea of creating a context for how you're going to fight and why you're fighting. Those were the primary ideas that I don't know are perfectly expressed [in the current introduction]."

Though it's anyone's guess what shape Warframe's reworked tutorial will take, Trachtenberg's new prologue is as good an introduction to the mysticism and violence that makes Warframe so much fun. In the current tutorial, players are forced to choose their starting weapons and warframe without any clue how each handles itself in combat—just a written overview of their abilities. Trachtenberg's new intro shows each of the frames in action, slaughtering hordes of Grineer using their various abilities.

Keen Warframe players will notice some key differences, though. For example Mag doesn't have an ability to gather bullets fired at her and unleash them back at her enemies—not yet, anyway. I'm told it's one of the new abilities coming in a Mag rework at a later date.

The tone of the intro is also much moodier and more representative of Warframe's universe as it is today. During a special early screening, Sinclair explained that Warframe has grown and changed so much since that initial tutorial, adding more lore, cultures, and characters that aren't explored at all in the current intro. Remember that when Warframe was first released, it didn't have much a story—it was largely just you and three friends bullet-sliding through procedurally generated corridors. This new intro not only teases the major plot twist revealed much later in Warframe's story quests, but it also introduces players to cultures like the Ostram who live on the remains of Earth.  

It's cool to see Trachtenberg join forces with Digital Extremes to create something that captures the essence of what Warframe is all about. This isn't the first time Trachtenberg has adapted videogames to short film, though. In 2011, Trachtenberg directed the fan film Portal: No Escape, which is also pretty cool. He's also directing the upcoming Uncharted movie, based on the hit Naughty Dog series.

You can watch Trachtenberg's Warframe short film above. Digital Extremes won't actually add it to Warframe until late this year or early next year—the studio is always loosey-goosey with deadlines. But it will likely accompany some of the revamped player experience Digital Extremes is planning.

I'm here at Tennocon 2019. It's an exciting show and well worth tuning in, which you can do here.

Warframe's annual fan festival, Tennocon 2019, is kicking off today with exciting reveals and updates on the horizon. The biggest announcements aren't happening until 3 p.m. PST during Tennolive, but there's a whole day of fun stuff happening on the Tennocon stage, which you can watch right now.

You can catch Tennocon 2019 on Twitch, Mixer, YouTube, and Facebook.

For reference, here's the full Tennocon 2019 schedule:

• 11:00 AM ET - 12:00 PM ET — Warframe Partner Stream with Alyek & BackyardisTV
• 12:00 PM ET - 1:00 PM ET — From Concept to Creation: The Art of Warframe
• 1:00 PM ET - 2:00 PM ET — Warframe Partner Q&A
• 2:00 PM ET - 3:00 PM ET — Sounds of the System
• 3:00 PM ET - 4:00 PM ET — Sanctuary Showcase Game Show
• 4:00 PM ET - 5:00 PM ET — 4th Annual Cosplay Contest
• 5:00 PM ET - 6:00 PM ET — Warframe Partner Stream with Bricky & Bast_50
• 6:00 PM ET - 7 PM ET — TENNOLIVE

Steven is also boots on the ground at Tennocon 2019 and has a lot of exciting stuff to talk about in the world of Warframe. Keep an eye on PC Gamer to stay up to date if you can't catch the event live.