Digital Extremes’ MMO shoot-em-up Warframe gets a meaty and, well, pretty gross-looking expansion today. It’s called The Heart Of Deimos, and it plops you Tennos onto the titular Martian moon to kill some Infested aliens and figure out what they’re up to (you know, aside from making everything look plague-ridden).
This expansion is introducing a big new open world area, as well as Warframe power customisation, new K-Drives (which you’ll be able to shoot from!), new story missions, and loads more good stuff.
You could accuse Digital Extremes of being a bit on the nose with their latest Warframe expansion. The world is in the grip of a pandemic and up they pop at their annual TennoCon convention (now streamed, for full social distancing) with Heart Of Deimos: a gooey, pulsating update revolving around a trip to a moon in the grip of a parasitic infestation. But unlike real life, on Deimos you can distract yourself from lockdown woes by riding a giant dragonfly. Imagine steering one of those bad boys to Durham Castle.
This year's TennoCon presentation was a little different to normal, having fully migrated online due to COVID-19, but there were still plenty of changes announced for the Warframe universe, including a big new open-world area, a Warframe ability transfer feature... and mechs.
Releasing on all platforms simultaneously, the Heart of Deimos expansion is set to land on August 25th, and will introduce players to a new open world centred around the Infested faction. On the second moon of Mars, players can discover more about the Infested faction's origins, "unveiling the lost Entrati family and the marvels of technology and horror it left behind". There's also flying fish and two giant wyrms, with the latter locked in an eternal battle for power (and with one wyrm causing a "surge" in Infested power to keep players on their toes). Underground, players will find an area created from a series of procedurally-generated networked tunnels and vertical spaces to explore.
The K-Drive hoverboards introduced in Fortuna are getting a re-skin on Deimos - literally - as they appear as insects called Velocipods which you can ride over the hellish landscape. You can take them into combat, too, as the Velocipods will allow you to shoot while riding them, creating a "whole new combat dynamic". Or, if you need something with a little more firepower, you can try a Necramech: a pilotable suit of armour that comes with its own abilities, and is particularly effective when it comes to dealing with waves of Infested. They also appear as enemies within the Heart of Deimos expansion, and look pretty terrifying.