Romance Hot Cyborgs And Dance To ’90s Boy Bands In Warframe’s Most Surprising Expansion Yet

Over the weekend, Digital Extremes hosted Tennocon, its annual convention dedicated to all things Warframe, and unveiled the first extensive look at the shooter’s upcoming 1999 expansion. The free update, which is set to arrive this winter, almost looks like an entirely different game, and will accordingly boast entirely new features like a romance system. Warframe fuckers stay winning, I guess.

During a lengthy presentation at the con, Digital Extremes finally provided an honest-to-goodness look at Arthur, Warframe 1999’s protagonist—voiced by gaming’s new golden boy, Final Fantasy XVI’s Ben Starr—as well as his supporting team, the Hex. The Hex make up what Warframe calls a syndicate, but what we might call a faction. 1999’s “syndicate” consists of Amir Beckett, Aoi Morohoshi, Quincy Isaacs, Leticia Garcia, and Eleanor Nightingale, who appears to be Arthur’s sister.

Onstage, the developers announced that they wanted players to be able to “get a little closer” to this syndicate than they have to others that have been added to the game. As a result, Warframe 1999 is packing an entire romance system, and any of the Hex, including Arthur, can be romanced. Yes, you read that right, you can romance Ben Starr in this game, and maybe even get a New Year’s kiss from whoever you go all in with.

In keeping with its 1999 setting (specifically New Year’s Eve of 1999, leading up to 2000/Y2K), the expansion will convey this romance system via instant messaging. Prior to the meaty action section of the demo, Arthur hops on a PC in the abandoned shopping mall that the Hex calls a base and boots up a chat client called KIM, which is followed by a horribly accurate dial-up sound.

Unsurprisingly, KIM looks eerily similar to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) in its early days, and not only features pop-up chat windows but also usernames and notes that may as well be bios and statuses. When the demo player opened one of the Hex’s profiles, a gift icon could also be seen, indicating that the relationship system may take some cues from games like Stardew Valley, where gift-giving can help endear you to other characters. Otherwise, KIM looks like a carbon copy of the messaging programs of yesteryear, and I swear to god, if I hear the sound of a door closing as someone logs off, I’m going to sue for emotional damages.

After years of AAA game developers and publishers joking about adapting their established franchises into visual novels and dating sims—often around April Fool’s—it’s refreshing to see a game as large as Warframe treat it seriously enough to add it as a feature in an expansion. Though it’s not yet clear how deep the system goes, the pops from the crowd at Tennocon seem to suggest that fans of the game, especially the most devout, really want a system like this. Digital Extremes could’ve thrown some of that Warframe money to outsource a (bad) dating sim, but it didn’t, and I think that’s worthy of being lauded.

The delightfully retro expansion to Warframe doesn’t stop there. Throughout the 22-minute demo, there are flashes of a boy band called On-lyne. The demo literally opens on an On-lyne commercial, and ads for them appear around town as Arthur rides a motorcycle around 1999’s new environment. A banner for On-lyne even makes a brief appearance at the bottom of the KIM client. As it turns out, Digital Extremes borrowed a page from Riot Games and saw fit to make an actual 90s-style boy band and stick them in the game. There’s even a single that’s out right now, called “PARTY OF YOUR LIFETIME,” and you can actually stream it. No shit folks, listen to this thing and tell me it doesn’t sound like Backstreet Boys’ “Larger than Life,” or some cut track from No Strings Attached.

Though you don’t get to see them in their prime in 1999, On-lyne appears to make a greater appearance in the current Warframe timeline. Once the demo cuts forward to a more current Tenno in their ship, they pick up the signal of a concert that seems to be happening smack in the middle of outer space. Once the player reaches the stadium, a host of pods hanging above release a handful of bodies onto the stage, revealing that the boy band have become Infested, one of Warframe’s enemy factions.

Unfortunately the action cuts short just shy of the actual encounter, but I’ve seen enough. I’ve never played Warframe before, and I absolutely do not need any more service games to play, but I want to romance the hot cyborgs, zip around town on a sick motorcycle, and dance with the pretty boys to catchy anthems. Deep down, you know you want that too.