Warframe 1999: Techrot Encore comes out today, a much-anticipated follow-up to the weird and wonderful 1999 expansion which added romance, grunge, and a tank with tentacles. As those who’ve played Warframe 1999 will know, protoframes – human precursors to the beloved frames we’ve been messing around with for years – have gone down especially well among the community.
I wanted to find out more about the community reception to 1999, how it’s impacted the development on Warframe: Techrot Encore and beyond, and whether or not we can expect to see more protoframes in the future. To help me learn more, community director and head of live ops Megan Everett sat down and provided some insight into how protoframes went down, and what we can expect in the coming years.
VG247: What was the team’s response to the feedback to Warframe 1999?
Everett: “The feedback was amazing, as we weren’t sure how players were going to react to 1999. It’s such a different vibe to what we’ve built going on 12 years now nad it was a risk going that route. For the Protoframes we’ve said for the longest time, and were serious, that there were no humans under the suits! Now, we’ve done a version of it that’s kind of different. But once players saw Arthur at Tennocon years ago we knew we were on the right track, that we could do the romance system.
“It was all such a risk with 1999, as we had never done romance before, never done such an era themed update where people have lived through that time, with people knowing what instant messager and boybands were, and make it Warframe. The response was beyond our wildest dreams […] and it’s why this echoes update is the biggest we’ve ever done.”
VG247: Were you not expecting a positive reaction?
Everett: “In terms of expectations you hope and you dream players will like it obviously, but we didn’t expect players to connect with it as much as they did. Like, I have never seen an update produce as much fan art as 1999 has, and how much people have very passionately and personally connected to the stories of these characters. We’ve been doing lore and narrative writing for years now, trying to make characters cool and interesting, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt this much care from a player about a character from a game before than we’ve seen with protoframes. It’s a testament to being risky and getting weird with it.”
VG247: Has the positive reaction to the protoframes effected the team’s mindset in regards to future updates? Has this changed plans you had in mind?
Everett: “I think it effected our mindset in that we’ve set the bar very high for ourselves for protoframes, and in Technrot Encore, the four new protoframes are not romanceable. That was a decision that we had to really talk about honestly with ourselves. You see the reception from the romance in 1999 protoframes and it’s clear that players want that and they like that, and are excited for more. But it was realistically not going to happen with these protoframes. So it’s up to us seeing that feedback to make sure that the relationship that you do get to have with these new characters is going to make you love and care about these characters as much as the original protoframes were.”
VG247: While you’ve gotten good feedback surrounding 1999 and protoframes in particular, I imagine given the development time of creating these characters you’ve not been able to expand on their presence in Tehcrot Encore. That being said, will we see more protoframes in the future? Perhaps more than originally planned?
Everett: “I think we’ve come to this cadence of a big update and then an echeos update after that, and we’ve been cooking on these protoframes since last year, so we knew they’d be coming in the echoes update. But, we do know the roadmap for the next year or two. So I do want to set expectations that there is not a protoframe in every update. It has to be appropriate, it has to fit somewhere, and as you said it takes a lot of work. It depends too on the level in which you react with them. Is it romance, is it the kin system, is it something else? It’s a lot of work, but it has to be the right place and time.”
“But seeing the reaction to protoframes it’s clear that players like them, and we’d be remiss to not act on that in some way going forward. It just has to be the right time, and has to fit the story we’re progressing through. If it doesn’t fit in an update we’re cooking in this year or next year, it won’t have a protoframe. But if it does fit, it does.”
VG247: That’s make sense. I imagine with protoframes being linked quite firmly to the 1999 setting it would be hard to through them into the modern setting, lounging around on Mars or whatever.
Everett: “Even the Techrot Encore ones, when you talk to and come to understand them you learn where they were even when the events of 1999 were happening, because those are players want to know! They’re thinking I went through all this stuff with the original protoframes, where were these four, what were they doing? So we have to expand the world a bit to make it make sense. But yeah, it’s very – at this current time they’re beholden to the 1999 universe. So if and when we do other protoframes, how do we make it make sense? That’s TBD right now (laughs).”
Check out Warframe 1999: Techrot Encore today and meet these protoframes yourselves. Let us know which is your favourite.