Home Gaming First look at Warframe’s new Venus open world map, Corpus spider tanks and more

First look at Warframe’s new Venus open world map, Corpus spider tanks and more

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When Warframe released its Plains of Eidolon update in October of last year, developer Digital Extremes essentially introduced a paradigm shift for their free-to-play sci-fi looter shooter. Instead of just shooting hordes of enemies down corridors, in ice caverns or out among wrecks in outer space, Tenno now had a rolling Earth landscape filled with brand new ways to play the game.

Whether you were hunting ghouls for bounties, clearing out Grineer bases and caves, fishing in lakes, mining for jewels from rocks, or trying to take down the giant Eidolon creatures, there was always something to do. And now, after hearing about it for a while, we finally have a look at another location where we will be able to do a whole lot of new stuff.

During the 107th episode of the regular Warframe Devstream this Friday past, led by Community Manager (and voice of Lotus) Rebecca Ford, the crew from DE debuted the first look at their brand new Venus open world map, including detailing some of the mythology behind the creative and artistic decisions for the alien planet. You can skip to 48:55 in the video above to where the crew start revealing concept art and explaining how Venus is currently controlled by the Corpus faction who have taken over the terraforming activities of the ancient and long-gone Orokin race.

Said technology involved seeding the atmosphere of the super-hot planet with strange orbs which formed icebergs of coolant around them. When fully formed, these icebergs crashed down onto the planet’s boiling surface throwing up steam to cool the atmosphere, while the coolant formed rivers which lowered the surface temperature as well as providing other uses.

Over time though, with the Orokin gone, the terraforming technology ran a bit rampant on its own resulting in some sections of the planet eventually turning into frozen wastelands (“Once an oven, now a fridge,” as the devs put it). Now the Corpus have appeared to revive the old technology and wrangle it back under their control – not too successfully though, as instead of the Plains’ day-night cycle which had ancient towering creatures appearing at night, here you will have raging storms that get whipped up regularly and literally drop icebergs on your head.

Luckily, we won’t be spending all our time on that dangerous surface though. As part of trying to recapture control of the Orokin technology, the Corpus makes use of Solarus United – a newly introduced faction who serve as an indentured labour force – to rework the coolant and build underground hub towns for the Corpus which the Tenno will be able to explore.

It’s one of these Corpus hub towns which received the biggest preview, and eagle-eyed fans already spotted some intriguing details in it, such as what appears to be a weapons shop of some sorts. This has led to some speculation that we may be getting the ability to build customizable modular primary and secondary weapons, much like how Plains gave us the modular Zaw melee weapons.

Along with the first look at Venus, Devstream 107 also showed off plenty of other cool stuff. This included the ability to now equip two arcanes per Warframe right from the upgrade screen, a look at the terrain modelling tech that will make Venus run much better than Plains, and a new look at the Octavia deluxe skin in action. There were also discussions on the faction Kingpin System (still in development but has changed a lot since previous discussions), the Dark Sectors return/rework  has now evolved beyond being a DS successor and instead is its own thing altogether as a standalone leaderboard-based arcade game mode for veterans) and Kuva acquisition (will now actually be on the Kuva fortress, which only makes sense).

The biggest other reveal though – literally – was when Rebecca showed off a room full of new Corpus spider tanks which is sure to give anybody suffering from arachnophobia a bit of a mild attack. That is until they see the giant freaking spider tank lurking in the corner and get a full-blown attack.

All in all, it was a rather great Devstream and has me even more psyched for the Venus open world section to drop. Still no word on timelines yet, but it sounds like the next time we see it, it will be with actual gameplay. If you want to get a detailed breakdown of the entire Devstream, including some stuff I didn’t mention here, then just head on over to the relevant official news page.

Last Updated: February 26, 2018

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