Soulframe - Fantasy Multiplatform MMO by Digital Extremes

Dre Space Age

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Fantasy action game from the creators of Warframe. Definitely Multiplatform. Probably an MMO. Steve Sinclair not even trying to get involved with the headache of turning Warframe into Crossplay so he moved on. Smart man.


This is a spin-off thread from Warframe | PC/PS4/Xbox One

More details from here: An Open Letter from [DE]Steve

Tenno,

Digital Extremes has been my home for my entire game development career. 20+ years for those counting (I try not to). Over 10 of those years have been on Warframe as you know it today, but in truth the Warframe story started much earlier. Warframe once existed as Dark Sector in my mind in the early 2000’s. Turning that seed of ‘Dark Sector’ into ‘Warframe’ has been a life-defining accomplishment for me and the Digital Extremes team. I feel like I can say: We did it. And in some ways, I thought it’d be the last thing we’d do as a team. But we want to tell another story.

Soulframe development has officially just begun. We hope you follow along. It’s only possible because the community believed in Warframe to allow me 10 beautiful years in the Origin System. Further still, the Warframe team believed in me, but more importantly, I believe in them. I know they can do great things with the story of the Tenno. And now, a group of us have set our sights on the Fantasy genre to tell the story of Soulframe.

I want to have Fantasy & Science Fiction as a part of Digital Extreme’s legacy. I want to spend as much time with Soulframe as I have with Warframe. My beard only has so much black left in it.

Envoys, see you in the future.

We all lift together - and always will.

- [DE]Steve
 
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Dre Space Age

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This looks fire. Got Faith in Steve but game probably won't be out until 2024
Steve said it will be playable within a year.

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’s come to span countless genres over a decade’s worth 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 the game will share “Warframe’s” focus on cooperative player-vs-environment combat and procedurally generated environments, but it will be “the mirror universe version of ‘Warframe.’ ”

This applies to setting: “Warframe” is a unique, flesh-mech-powered spin on the sci-fi genre; “Soulframe” will be a suitably strange take on fantasy. It’ll also apply to gameplay.

“Where ‘Warframe’ is focused on shooting, this one’s focused on melee,” Sinclair said. “Where ‘Warframe’ is super fast and crazy high-speed, this one’s going to be a lot more slow and heavy. But it still has a lot of similarities to the genre that we have experience in.”

Eventually, developers need a blank slate. For Sinclair and company, “Soulframe” represents an opportunity to go out on a familiar yet fresh limb and see where it takes them.
“Soulframe’s” world, as proposed, might be its most interesting character. The game will focus on themes of nature, restoration and adventure as inspired by works like “Princess Mononoke” and “The NeverEnding Story” — specifically, the collision between industry and nature. In service of that, the world will show its displeasure toward players who occupy it.
“The conceit [in ‘Soulframe’] is that the world itself is a little angry about what’s been done to it, and the grounds underneath tend to shift throughout the day,” said creative director Geoff Crookes. “So there’s going to be proceduralism within the cave networks and crevasses and so on underneath the world.”

The hub world, meanwhile, will be open, more akin to “Warframe’s” recently added open-world planets than its early foundation of corridors and space stations. Crookes wants “Soulframe” to have a focus on exploration that “Warframe” never had — for it to feel more alive to players on a moment-to-moment basis.
“I’m chasing that 'short session but high immersion’ thing where you sign in and you come out of your yurt and you are where you last signed off,” he said, “but the world feels like it’s been going on without you.”

While combat will be slowly paced and melee-focused — and the game is literally called “Soulframe” — Sinclair and Crookes emphasized that they’re not trying to make a game in the vein of From Software’s genre-pioneering Souls series, which includes 2022 megahit “Elden Ring.” Or rather, they didn’t go into the project with that in mind.

“I think it certainly isn’t an inspiration for the initial ideas or what we wanted to do,” Sinclair said. “Ironically, other titles that were maybe borrowing from ‘Warframe’ might have been some sort of reverse influence. But ‘Elden Ring’ has absolutely been a subject of some conversation — maybe to do with camera, maybe to do with how excellent their combat pacing is. And you know, screw those guys, because damn, ['Elden Ring'] was absolutely fantastic.”
Sinclair and Crookes weren’t ready to discuss the exact details that set “Soulframe’s” melee combat apart from Souls games, and there’s a good reason for that: “Soulframe” is still extremely early in development. Basic concepts for the game began floating around at Digital Extremes back in 2019, but only a very small team — largely artists — had been dedicated to working on it until this February.

After finding success with regular “Warframe” behind-the-scenes Twitch streams, they plan to give fans a look behind the curtain of “Soulframe” as early as possible. Ideally, that process will begin ASAP, and Digital Extremes die-hards will get to play a version of “Soulframe” within a year.
“The thing we want to try is to do similar to ‘Warframe,’ which is, ‘Hey, watch us make the game and get your hands on the rough bits and tell us how you feel,’ ” Sinclair said.

There’s more in the article, just posted some key points https://www.washingtonpost.com/vide...ulframe-warframe-digital-extremes-elden-ring/
 

Dre Space Age

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I’m still laughing at Rebecca’s letter. It’s like Steve left the playground and took his GI Joes with him. She bout to make them all focus on making Warframe, Fashion Frame. She said it’s Barbie Time bytch!
 

Dre Space Age

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Looks like it’s gonna have the gameplay loop of what they originally promised with Deimos. Isolation Vaults were supposed to have procedurally generated tunnels but they couldn’t do it in time so it just cycles through established tile sets. With Soulframe they can finally make do on their promise of a hub that has procedurally generated tunnels.
 

Romell

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I'm interested. They eventually started doing some cool shyt with Warframe, but I could never get into it. Need to see some gameplay.
 
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