When Digital Extremes first revealed Warframe's Empyrean update last year, it was a transformative moment for the free-to-play game and its community. At the end of a live tour of its second open world area, the on-stage team of developers surprised everyone with a second demo of the then-unannounced update that would let players build spaceships, explore, and fight in space.

I don't think I can fully convey the wave of confusion and excitement that gripped the live audience in that moment. For six years, players had been stuck exploring procedurally generated corridors and a few open world zones, but then a squad of Tenno boarded a Railjack spaceship, flew to low orbit above Venus, and battled a Corpus capital ship. It was an audacious spectacle that had the audience screaming and cheering.

But for the developers at Digital Extremes like game director Steve Sinclair, the quest to create Empyrean goes back decades. It's a story woven into Digital Extremes' own brushes with financial disaster and Sinclair's obsession with realizing a cool fantasy wrapped up in a challenging game design conundrum.

"I just can't let it go," Sinclair laughs. "I have a problem."

Clipped wings 

At Tennocon 2019 last weekend, Digital Extremes gave players their second taste of space combat in Empyrean with a 30-minute live demo. In lieu of a shocking twist like with its initial reveal, Sinclair and his team opted to give players a granular look at how piloting the ship works while still surprising them with fun features like the ability to steal enemy ships or call in a second squad from somewhere else in the solar system for ground support.

You can read about Empyrean in my preview, but the gist is that it's Warframe meets indie roguelike FTL. With four friends, you pilot a spaceship through stretches of open space, manning battlestations and dividing your limited energy pool between different offensive and defensive modules as the situation demands. But the comparison ends there because players can also disembark from the Railjack in their Archwing flightsuits and zip around, invading enemy ships or exploring derelict ruins floating in space. 

It's a mode that Sinclair doesn't like to call an expansion, since it doesn't expand so much as it glues all of Warframe's disparate features together into one cohesive whole. It also brings Warframe closer than ever to the original game idea that nearly ruined Digital Extremes in the early 2000s.

Before Warframe was released, Digital Extremes had made a name for itself developing Unreal Tournament. That success inspired its team to make a game of their own, an ambitious sci-fi MMO called Dark Sector—a vastly different game than the Dark Sector that Digital Extremes released back in 2008. 

"It's probably common knowledge [at this point] that the original version of Dark Sector was hardcore sci-fi, anime, glowing tentacles coming out of your head kind of game," Sinclair laughs. "But I had made the mistake of convincing the studio that we would also write our own game engine at the same time, which is a great way to sink a company."

It's a story beautifully told in NoClip's Warframe documentary, but this gist is that no publisher wanted to fund Digital Extremes' weird sci-fi MMO, and so the studio was forced to do contract work to make ends meet while eventually scrapping many of its ideas or adapting them to make the Dark Sector third-person shooter that eventually released in 2008.

Though the modest success of Dark Sector and the development of games like The Darkness 2 carried Digital Extremes for a few years, but in 2012 the studio needed a new game—and it was abundantly clear that no publisher wanted to fund its original Dark Sector idea. To survive, Digital Extremes was going to have to adapt.

"We had this crisis," Sinclair says. "What are we doing? What are we doing next? Are we going on the road? What's our pitch for our next game? At one point I had written a thing—I'm not taking credit for this—but I had written up this bullet point design document called Tenno. It's was like space-ninjas-slash-space-pirates, and the idea was that we'd make an Xbox Live Arcade game—remember that genre of game?—and I thought, the budget is small enough, the expectations are small enough, the price point is small enough. We could do that and self-publish it."

"That pitch was basically what Empyrean is," Sinclair adds. "You're on a spaceship, you fly over, you board the other guy, you kill the guys, get some loot, repeat, repeat, level up."

Digital Extremes only had enough money to last about a year. While the studio tried to drum up more contract work, Sinclair and a team started building a small free-to-play game out of this pitch. But with limited resources and looming bankruptcy, Sinclair says it wasn't the time to start taking risks.

To help offset the burden on the design team, this new game would use procedurally generated levels and old art assets and features stripped from the ill-fated original concept for Dark Sector. "It was really a function of needing to use all parts of the buffalo," Sinclair explains. "Trying to create a product out of the scraps of the things that you had. And that's what we did."

Of everything detailed in that original pitch that would eventually become Warframe, one feature was left on the cutting room floor: Spaceflight. "The first version of Warframe that shipped as closed beta was only nine months of work from ten people," Sinclair says. "We said, well, it would be cool if we could go into space, but we have no time. Execute on what we know we can execute on, and at that time was procedural levels with Left 4 Dead-style gameplay. We knew how to make shooters so it was like, we have the code, we know how to do this kind of thing, go, go, go."

Though spaceflight was a key part of that original design for Warframe, Sinclair says it created major design challenges that Digital Extremes wasn't equipped to solve at the time.

"You have this problem with physics," Sinclair explains. Unlike most space combat games, Sinclair wanted to create spaceships that players can fight and explore while simultaneously flying through space. To illustrate his point, Sinclair grabs the table we are sitting at and jostles it so the cups of water resting on it almost spill. To get the movement physics of each in-game character to work correctly, the game engine would have to constantly offset the math to stay relative to the movement and velocity of the ship so that the metaphorical glasses of water (in this case, the players) didn't spill as it was moving around. It's a problem that gets exponentially more complicated when you add dozens of enemies and multiple spaceships players can invade and explore all fighting in one shared universe.

Without a practical solution that didn't involve designing a game engine with the mathematical chops to keep up, the feature was quickly abandoned and Warframe became exclusively focused on fighting through procedurally-generated levels. But that dream of flying and boarding spaceships stuck with Sinclair and a few members of the development team, eating away at them until they could find a way to make it work.

Portals solve everything 

Even without space combat, Warframe slowly became a smash hit thanks, in part, to its release on Steam. In 2014, the Archwing update let players to suit up in Gundam-style flight suits that allowed for six degrees of freedom while flying through linear sections of space that still closely resembled the design of Warframe's procedural corridors. But Sinclair couldn't give up on that original idea of letting players fly ships in open space.

In 2017, over a year before Empyrean was unveiled at Tennocon, Sinclair was streaming on his personal Twitch account when he decided to share the problem—and his proposed solution—with his viewers who were unaware that this feature would one day be a part of Warframe itself.

In this stream, Sinclair explained that the Unreal Engine had a trick called 'portal rendering' that was the key to making Empyrean work. If you remember the puzzle game Portal, portal rendering is exactly what it sounds like: You create a "window" to a different area of space that you can see into. "It's a simple fucking trick," Sinclair laughs. "It's the simplest thing."

When you watch that Empyrean demo and you see the player flying the ship, everything you see is an illusion. There's a large portal stretched across the cockpit of the Railjack, and the ship itself isn't moving at all. 

"You just connect the player controls to where that portal is," Sinclair says. "For Empyrean, there's a big 32 kilometer-squared space where all the space combat is happening and you're pitching around and it feels like you might vomit, but [off to the side] there's a little level and that's your actual spaceship. You have a solid, reliable physics system driving what appears to be this six degrees of freedom experience over here [in an entirely separate area]."

"The idea was so sound that last week—last friggin' week—one of the graphics engineers, who is a way better programmer than me, said 'I think this is a problem because the level is rotating too fast.'" Sinclair adds. "And I'm like, whoa, pump the brakes. The level doesn't move. It's fixed in space and we're just moving the backdrop perspective."

But players aren't stuck inside the Railjack. They can also leave via their Archwings and fly around in space. Again, Sinclair and his team devised clever illusions to make that transition feel seamless. "If you pay very close attention to the demo, there are moments of crossfades," Sinclair says. "You're flying in the ship, you're about to jump into the little pneumatic tube that spits you into space, and we play an animation. As you animate, it goes black, and we pop you over here, into the actual 3D space."

While in the Archwing, you're actually flying in space, but because the scale of Warframe's character combat and space combat are wildly different, you're actually shrunk down to the "size of a fairy" to maintain the illusion that the Railjack is larger than your character. Keep in mind, though, that the Railjack you see flying around in space while in your Archwing isn't the same Railjack that your teammates might still be inside of, it's just a model with no real interior.

Using that solution, Digital Extremes is able to create an approximation of space combat without having to tackle the same complications that games like Star Citizen have spent years solving. But at the end of the day, does it matter which approach you take if the end result is the same? "I'm going to fake it because I can make it faster," Sinclair laughs.

Final frontiers 

Though Sinclair discovered the solution to this puzzle years ago, Digital Extremes' brush with bankruptcy meant that the studio had to be extremely careful about where they invested their time. But that's quickly changing. Warframe is a game defined by its audacity—this is a game with a warframe whose weapon is a programmable synthesizer, after all.

Empyrean is different, though. It feels like an update that could see Warframe undergo even more significant evolutions in the future. Sinclair says the team isn't making Empyrean another "island" to grind on (like some of Warframe's compartmentalized expansions), but a way to connect everything—from racing through procedural levels to Archwing combat to spear fishing on Fortuna.

As our time together comes to a close so that Sinclair can prepare to take the Tennocon stage and show Empyrean off to an audience of thousands (not to mention the 400,000 viewers that will watch on Twitch), I ask him how it feels to finally realize a fantasy he's been chasing for so long. His answer catches me by surprise.

"You would have to ask me that tomorrow," he says. "Right now, I'm right on the edge. I have this fear that it's not enough for our audience. I don't want to let them down—that's the biggest thing. I don't want to have a technical flaw that torpedoes the whole thing and let's them down. I feel this enormous responsibility to these people."

But that responsibility was borne from the freedom that allowed Sinclair to experiment in the first place. Sinclair remembers a frigid January after Warframe launched and was successful enough that he didn't have to fear that he'd lose his job and Digital Extremes would go bankrupt. 

"I remember that January I felt like, what do I do now?" Sinclair says. "My whole career leading up to that was the hustle: the milestones, the publishers, the grind, the pitching, the milestone approval—not approved, they're going to cancel it, it's cancelled, start again. I felt lost when I didn't have to be a junkyard dog [fighting for scraps]. That was a really bad feeling. It's one of those weird paradoxes. It lasted a month, just feeling like there was no reason to keep doing this. But Sheldon [Carter, chief operating officer at Digital Extremes] was like, yeah there is, you love this. Geoff [Crookes, art director] would say to me, what do you want to do? Just put it in Warframe. Whatever the hell you want to do, let's just do it. Suddenly it was like, oh, there's creative freedom here, and that is amazing."

Warframe's annual Tennocon conference was this weekend, and despite being about only one game it still somehow managed to pack in enough announcements and reveals to rival an E3 press conference. Not only are there new quests, warframes, and open world zones to frolic around in, but Warframe is also getting an entirely revamped new player experience as well as ship-to-ship combat that looks extremely fun.

The Tennolive mainstage presentation is worth watching (it's embedded above), but if you can't spare the time here's a quick rundown of all the major updates that are coming to Warframe over the next year.

Warframe's ship-to-ship combat looks incredible

Who could've imagined that spaceship combat would be the next frontier for Warframe? When it was first revealed last year, the Empyrean update surprised everyone but didn't offer much in the way of concrete information. During Tennocon 2019, Digital Extremes played Empyrean live on stage for 30 minutes—giving an intimate look at just how this update is going to work and fit into Warframe's already complex ecosystem of looting and shooting.

If there's one thing you should watch from Tennocon, it's this demo. There were so many cool details packed into it. Using your clan dojo (think guild housing), you can build spaceships known as Railjacks that are, like everything in Warframe, modular and customizable. Using the Railjack, you can explore regions of space around the solar system and harvest materials that will, in turn, power up the Railjack's various abilities.

The Railjack can house up to four players and a handful of recruitable NPCs who must man various battlestations to pilot and defend it from enemy threats in space. Players can also exit the Railjack to explore nearby ruins or invade enemy ships to sabotage them from the inside or even steal them. During Railjack missions, special 'SquadLink' objectives let you call on your friends who might be somewhere else in the solar system to complete secondary objectives which will, in turn, affect your mission.

Oh, and there's also a Shadow of Mordor-like Nemesis system where players are hunted by a Kuva Lich that grows stronger and mutates each time you kill it. It's a lot to take in, so read my preview to get more information.

Warframe's tutorial is getting revamped with a new prologue video

One cool surprise out of Tennocon is that it's getting a revamped tutorial that better reflects how dramatically Warframe has changed since it launched six years ago. The director of 10 Cloverfield Lane (and the upcoming Uncharted movie), Dan Trachtenberg, joined forces with Digital Extremes to make a badass new intro video. The special effects are gorgeous, but the video also serves to introduce players to the three starting warframes so they can better decide which one suits their playstyle.

As for the reworked tutorial itself, we don't know much other than it is likely coming at the end of the year. Digital Extremes implied a new series of quests will help guide players through Warframe's complex web of shooting, crafting, and modding—but even veterans will be able to go back and check them out too.

The Duviri Paradox is a surreal open world zone with horses

Warframe now has two open world zones that are both a lot of fun, but its upcoming third zone looks completely different than anything in the game so far. Details are scarce at the moment, but the trailer (embedded above) holds tons of clues—all of which imply that The Duviri Paradox is going to be one weird-ass place to visit.

For one, it looks as if The Duviri Paradox won't allow you to use your warframes and will instead force you to play as your operator but all grown up and without their special powers. The new zone will also have a new faction for players to fight (or befriend?) and implies that, despite lacking your powerful warframes or operator abilities, you'll be able to tame a weird robot-horse and ride it around. All of this is just guesswork, though. Hopefully Digital Extremes shows more soon.

The New War is coming this Christmas

One of my favorite parts about Warframe is its "cinematic quests" that feature long cutscenes, fun boss fights, and hard-won insights into Warframe's esoteric lore and backstory. And The New War quest promises to be its most climactic chapter yet.

I won't go into details at the risk of spoiling some of Warframe's coolest plot twists, but The New War, together with Empyrean, feels like a critical turning point. A mass invasion by the ancient Sentient robot race tied with the ability to finally explore space in the Railjack has tantalizing implications for the future of Warframe. It's also expected that The New War will bring to a close one of Warframe's best and most-intimate character arcs—but we're going to have to wait until The New War releases this Christmas to know for sure.

A closer look at two new warframes

New warframes are always on the horizon, but I'm particularly excited for this next pair, Gauss and Grendel. During a livestreamed art panel at Tennocon, we were given a sneak peek at each frames' idle animations, which hinted at what their play styles would be. Both also made a quick appearance during the Empyrean live demo as members of the SquadLink team that helped the Tenno in space by destroying a shield generator located nearby on Earth.

Gauss is, quite simply, The Flash from DC comics. As Digital Extremes already revealed, one of its abilities is to run super fast, which will be helpful when traversing Warframe's growing list of open world zones.

Grendel looks like a sumo wrestler crossed with a troll, but that's all we know. Digital Extremes wasn't ready to talk about either frame's abilities, and there's no confirmed release date yet.

That covers all the major announcements from Tennocon 2019. There was loads of smaller reveals, like the start of Nightwave Season 2 (which is now available) and also a contest that will send one lucky winner to outer space—yes, you read that right.

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.