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Since launching in 2013, Digital Extremes has largely been known as the “Warframe” studio. Today, that is changing.
The developer describes its new game, “Soulframe,” as less of a sequel and more of a sister to “Warframe,” the online space ninja opus that spanned countless genres over a decade of updates. Steve Sinclair, who is stepping down from his decade-long tenure as Warframe director to help lead the new project, told The Washington Post that the game will share Warframe’s focus on cooperative player-versus-environment combat. environment and procedurally generated environments, but it will be the “mirror universe version of ‘Warframe.’ “
That goes for the setting: “Warframe” is a unique, flesh-powered mecha spin on the sci-fi genre; “Soulframe” will be an appropriately weird take on fantasy. It will also apply to the gameplay.
“Whereas ‘Warframe’ is focused on shooting, this one is focused on melee,” Sinclair said. “Whereas ‘Warframe’ is super fast and crazy high speed, this one will be much slower and heavy.” But there are still a lot of similarities to the genre we’re experienced in.”
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Even in the era of endlessly updated live service games, “Warframe” is a unique success story. Released in 2013 with little fanfare and middling critical reception, the game still found an audience after Digital Extremes rolled out a slew of ambitious updates to it, creating the Frankenstein’s monster of the online gaming world. Slowly but surely, a humble co-op shooter gained an emotional plot, complex character progression systems, first-person murder mysteries, huge spaceships you can pilot with friends, catchy labor rights numbers, open-world planets, a hoverboard (with tricks), pets and fishing.
Fans have had the opportunity to witness and help shape many of these systems through development streams on Twitch, which have also been running since 2013. The result is a live service driven by the whims of developers and players, with the question “Which is the best possible thing we can do here?” at the heart of countless decisions.
But no game is limitless. After all, developers need a blank slate. For Sinclair and company, Soulframe represents an opportunity to go out on a familiar but fresh limb and see where it takes them.
The world of “Soulframe” as proposed may be the most interesting character. The game will focus on the themes of nature, restoration and adventure inspired by works such as “Princess Mononoke” and “The NeverEnding Story” — specifically, the clash between industry and nature. In service of this, the world will show its displeasure to the players who occupy it.
“The fading [in ‘Soulframe’] is that the world itself is a little angry at what’s been done to it, and the grounds underneath tend to change by the day,” said creative director Jeff Crooks. “So there will be proceduralism in the cave webs and rifts and so forth underworld.”
The hub world, meanwhile, will be open, closer to the recently added open-world planets of “Warframe” than to its early foundation of corridors and space stations. Crooks wants Soulframe to have a focus on exploration that Warframe never had — to feel more alive for players every moment.
“I’m after that ‘short session but heavy immersion,’ where you’re in and out of your yurt and you’re where you last checked out,” he said, “but the world feels like it’s gone by without you.”
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While combat will be slow and focused on melee — and the game is literally called “Soulframework” — Sinclair and Crooks stressed that they weren’t trying to make a game in the spirit of From Software’s genre-pioneering Souls series, which included the 2022 megahit “Elden Ring.” Or rather, they did not enter the project with this in mind.
“I think it certainly wasn’t the inspiration for the original ideas or what we wanted to do,” Sinclair said. “Ironically, other titles that may have borrowed from ‘Warframe’ may have been somewhat of an inverse influence. But the “Elden Ring” was definitely the subject of some conversation – maybe because of the camera, maybe because of their excellent battle pace. And you know, screw these guys because damn [‘Elden Ring’] it was absolutely fantastic.”
Sinclair and Crookes weren’t ready to discuss the exact details that distinguish Soulframe’s melee combat from the Souls games, and there’s a good reason for that: Soulframe is still very early in development. Basic concepts for the game began floating around at Digital Extremes back in 2019, but only a very small team — mostly artists — was dedicated to working on it until this February.
So why announce it now when there’s hardly anything to show from the game? Sinclair admitted it’s become a “meme” when companies reveal games with vague CG trailers and few concrete details, but above all, he wants to be upfront with players.
“Our work has been extremely community-driven,” Sinclair said. “It feels disingenuous not to say [players] about the changes and who leads “Warframe”. It’s too early to announce “Soulframe”, actually! But in terms of transparency and making sure they understand how we think, we’re a lot more open … than most studios.”
But Sinclair and Crooks don’t plan to announce “Soulframe” and then retire to a secret development lab that’s all metal bars and blacked-out windows. After finding success with regular behind-the-scenes streams of “Warframe” on Twitch, they plan to give fans a behind-the-scenes look at “Soulframe” as soon as possible. Ideally, this process will begin as soon as possible, and Digital Extremes supporters will be able to release a version of “Soulframe” within a year.
“The thing we want to try is to do something similar to ‘Warframe,’ which is, ‘Hey, watch us make the game and touch the rough parts and tell us how you feel,'” Sinclair said.
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That strategy might sound ill-advised at this early stage, but Sinclair believes it’s not that far off from what Digital Extremes did with “Warframe,” a game that’s now completely unrecognizable compared to its launch release.
“Making it is kind of a discovery at the same time,” Sinclair said. “In my mind, it’s like, well, if it doesn’t work, you just keep going until you die, or it does. There are a lot of things in Warframe that are just, like, pathetic failures from a design standpoint. And we just said, “Okay, okay, we’re not going to do this anymore. Just fix it and redo it.
“It’s exhausting and difficult. You get this when someone has made a table of promises you’ve broken. But I think with ‘Warframe’ we were able to turn some people into champions [of the game] by speaking to them in a less guarded, less refined manner.’
Sinclair also chose this moment to announce Soulframe because Warframe is about to get a new open-world expansion, The Duviri Paradox, and he wants to demonstrate that the game is in good hands.
“A decade of ‘Warframe,’ all the people in leadership positions have been there for 10 years, there hasn’t been much opportunity for other people to step into leadership roles,” he said. “I wanted to get off the road a little bit and get some fresh ideas — to have a chance for the next generation of our great team to flex.”
However, after spending so many years on the project, it wasn’t easy for Sinclair and Crooks to let go.
“It feels like when you leave home for the first time. It’s exciting, but it’s also kind of bittersweet,” Crooks said. “Even though we’re leaving, I don’t see us completely ignoring ‘Warframe.’ “
“We’ve already had our hands hit a few times,” Sinclair said with a laugh. “I couldn’t help but jump in and it created some conflict.”
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