Warframe Devs Tease Open World Content in Venus

Photo Credit: Digital Extremes

October 12, 2017 marked the Warframe team’s first attempt at open-world content with Update 22.0 or “The Plains of Eidolon” update. Located on Earth, the Plains of Eidolon gave the game a new lease on life, as eager Tenno roamed the lush landscape running and gunning during the day, fishing and mining in the afternoon, and hunting down ancient hulking beasts known as Eidolon at night.

With the goal of adding one open-world map for each planet in the star chart, Digital Extremes is pushing through development for Venus’ yet unnamed open world area. Explaining a bit of the backstory behind Venus Art Director Geoff Crookes states “The Orokin had tried to terraform Venus, but never really got to finish before they fell, and the Corpus kind of discover the ancient Orokin Tech and jury rigged it to get it working again. The idea was that these giant golden orbs; the orokin would shoot into orbit; it would freeze; build glaciers on top, and the weight of those glaciers would come crashing back down to the surface and explode.  The water you see down there isn’t actually water, it’s a coolant. That gets pulled in by those towers called “weeping posts”, and they kind of  the refrigeration (for the planet)”.

Creative Director Steve Sinclair goes on to say “We’re also fraught with weird choices we made very earlier on in the game, where the Venus levels were snowy, and we always thought that that was because the idea “if you want to terraform Venus, you have to cool it down” and if you left the fridge on (because the Orokin left) it would continue to get colder and colder”, explaining why Venus in Warframe is an icy wasteland as opposed to the actual Venus.

While Earth had The Ostron interacting and guiding The Tenno, Venus will also have it’s own unique faction in The Solaris United. Geoff goes on to explain “The coolant that we talked about...Because it gets old and as it gets used, it gets thick and goopy, so we were thinking that there would be this society... The Solaris United, they are kind of a labor force for the Corpus, and they  process the coolant. They clean it, refine it, and bring it back to the surface, so when you go down to the town, you’ll actually walk through canals of the coolant...”, implying that the new hub city will be subterranean.

We wouldn’t suggest holding your breath for the Venus update though, as Digital Extremes and the Warframe team are quite known for their delays and “Soon ™” moniker.