If you’re finding your PC has become overloaded with gigantic game files, the Warframe devs have a nice plan in store for you to free up some space on your hard drives. Next week, Digital Extremes are kicking off a series of updates for the spacefaring shoot-em-up that will eventually reduce the size of Warframe by a very polite 15GB.
Ah, I don’t even need to say it, do I? We’re all thinking it. If only Call Of Duty: Warzone and its monstrous drive space demands would follow suit.
If your hard drive is groaning under the weight of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, then at least Digital Extremes is helping lighten the load - as Warframe is getting some updates to reduce its file size.
Through three "mini-remaster" updates spread over the rest of 2020, Digital Extremes intends to free up at least 15GB of space. The first update rolls out next week on PC and frees up 6.6GB, but Digital Extremes said that most platforms will "see similar improvements".
The updates will change how Warframe's texture data is compressed, using technology called Oodle Texture to roughly halve the size of textures on disk with "negligible" visual differences. The first update will target Warframe's lightmaps, while the second will apply the technology to the rest of the textures in the game.
Warframe's ceaseless expansion continues apace, this time with the arrival of a new - and decidedly hellish - open-world area as part of the game's Heart of Deimos update, which launches today on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Heart of Deimos' new quest line unfolds within the "grotesquely beautiful" Cambion Drift - Warframe's third open-world area, following on from the Plains of Eidolon and Orb Vallis - which can be accessed by first completing Mars Junction on the in-game Star Chart.
Once the path is open, players can take on the task of stemming the spreading Infestation that threatens to engulf the new open-world - a goal that requires them to work with Mother and her "loyal (if a little damaged)" servants Loid and Otak.
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.