TennoCon 2018: Fortuna Update, Switch Version And Other Announcements
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Yesterday was TennoCon, the annual convention hosted by Digital Extremes for its free-to-play online action role-playing shooter Warframe. It was packed with announcements sure to excite fans for the second half of 2018.
The Canada-based development studio went into detail about the upcoming Fortuna Update. It will include two new Warframes, an open world space in Venus, and a new game mode that lets you and your friends engage an enemy ship with your own.
The Fortuna Update
The update is similar to 2017's Plains of Eidolon update, providing an open space to do quests and missions, mixed in with a few features to enhance a player's experience of Warframe and builds on concepts they introduced last year.
The above trailer highlights Venus, demonstrating it as a space with more color when compared to the brown-ish landscape that surrounds the city of Cetus on Earth. The Orb Vallis is the new area to explore, and Digital Extremes says its the biggest location they have ever created so far.
Hoverboards will also be coming to facilitate greater ease of travel, and will definitely be a boon for the larger space provided by Orb Vallis.
Fortuna Update Features
- The Orb Vallis, The New Open World -- Building on the success of Plains of Eidolon's earthen Landscape, The Orb Vallis is Digital Extremes' massive new Landscape. Volatile, mercurial clouds of blue and orange loom over a sci-fi terrain populated with seascape flora, giant mushrooms, alien rock formations, rare creatures, and more.
- Solaris United and Fortuna -- The cyborg Faction Solaris United live in the Blade-Runner-esque Debt-Internment Colony, Fortuna. Similar to the gathering bazaars of Cetus in Plains of Eidolon, Fortuna is an underground hub city that serves as a factory to clean coolant rivers and doubles as a trading hub for the region.
- New Combat Experiences -- The Corpus occupiers, led by the profit-obsessed Nef Anyo, bring new technology and warriors to bear. Alongside new Corpus ground troop variants, monstrous new Spider Bot enemies of all shapes and sizes will challenge players to face their fears when they explore The Orb Vallis and face-off with the prophet of profit.
- Ride a Hoverboard -- Blaze across the wide open Venusian landscape by piloting the Bondi K-Drive. Call up this handy customizable hoverboard and quickly glide, jump, and trick across a variety of terrain.
- Join the Conservation Movement -- Switch your mindset from blast-happy mercenary to friendly savior. The strange, wonderful animals of the Vallis are going extinct. Explore the new world of Fortuna and apply your new skills to track, lure, and capture them for relocation.
- Musically -- The talented sound team at DE has engineered an alien-tech soundscape of eerie effects and ominous music that set the sonic tone for an incredibly rich experience, and they are joined by renowned sound composer Keith Power who has returned with an upbeat, hum-out-loud musical intro of Fortuna unlike anything you have heard before.
Warframe Railjack provides spaceship vs spaceship battles, complete with boarding
Railjack is a fantastic new game mode that makes use of all the gameplay features available in the game so far. In the demonstration above, you see players taking control of a warship to engage an enemy ship bombarding Venus from outer space, and even board it using the Archwing to destroy its systems from the inside. It's insane - to see one player having his own experience within the enemy ship, while others are having their own battle in space - battling the ship itself that's being protected by mini interceptors. Those back in your ship can even provide support to the raiding party by disabling force fields and even converting turrets against enemies.
Warframe on the Nintendo Switch - Tenno on the go
Digital Extremes has partnered with Panic Button to bring Warframe to the Nintendo Switch. The latter studio has previously handled the ports of Doom and Wolfenstein: The New Colossus to the Switch. No release date has been given just yet and it remains unclear how much of the current content will be available when it does arrive. Console versions of Warframe are usually one or two patches behind the PC version, so it's safe to expect a similar arrangement.
New Warframes, plus the next chapter in the game's narration - The New War
Players will be getting two new Warframes: Revenant, the Eidolon-themed Warframe with a deadly affliction, and Garuda, described as "a vicious, gory Warframe that plays with her prey.". Digital Extremes ended their presentation with a teaser of The New War, the next piece of content that will move Waframe's story forward. You can catch that teaser below:
That's a lot to take in. Just when I thought I escaped the addiction that can be found in Warframe, they announced all of these new features coming to the game, and I just might log back in to continue where I left off, and prepare my account for the release of the Fortuna update.
Warframe is free-to-play and is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC and will soon be available on the Nintendo Switch.
