At its TennoCon 2024 fan occasion earlier at this time, Digital Extremes introduced us a brand new have a look at Soulframe, its upcoming medieval fantasy “sister recreation” to Warframe. Like Warframe, it is an “action-RPG, MMO-lite” free-to-play recreation, albeit with a slower, extra deliberate tempo to its melee-heavy fight in comparison with Warframe’s area ninja acrobatics. Oh, and you may make your mother in it.
In a sophisticated press preview of this 12 months’s TennoCon demo, DE confirmed off the introductory part of the sport’s opening story quest, throughout which you may create your character. A cutscene follows a chook flying in a rainstorm over a sprawling fantasy battle at evening, the place a military is besieging a fortress with catapults and battle magic. A narrator recites the story of the battle in skaldic verse, and because the chook flits in by way of the fortress window to point out a girl cradling a child in her arms, the sport enters the primary section of character customization: momcrafting.
Evidently, in Soulframe, you may decide your character’s look by first selecting what your mother and father seemed like. In at this time’s TennoCon demo, we solely see the mother portion: as you select her options, the narrator’s poetry reacts to replicate your selections, selecting applicable metaphors for her hair and eye colour. Theoretically, these choices will inform how your character finally ends up trying, however we do not see the complete course of. As soon as your mother’s locked in, she passes the newborn—you, presumably—to a handmaid to be carried away from the battle.
Past the customizable mothers, this TennoCon’s have a look at Soulframe does extra increasing on what we have seen in earlier previews than offering new particulars. After the mother creation, the demo jumps forward previous the remainder of the intro quest and character creation to provide us a style of questing and fight, nevertheless it’s a shorter sampling than the 30-minute gameplay overview from TennoCon 2023.
Soulframe will characteristic a big, open overworld, which you may transfer by way of to entry procedurally-generated dungeons, just like how Warframe’s mission layouts are randomly stitched collectively from tilesets. Everytime you’re away from enemies, you’ll be able to warp at will right into a pocket dimension known as the Nightfold, a private hub space equal to Warframe’s Orbiter.
As you play Soulframe, you may collect spirits of your ancestors, who’ll hand around in the Nightfold to deal with your development, gear, and—most significantly—trend choices. Through the preview demo, revealed a brand new ancestor: Verminia, the Rat Witch, an alchemist who’ll assist craft elixir consumables whereas providing her personal set of beauty unlocks. Additionally within the Nightfold? An enormous, pleasant wolf who’ll function your mount.
Along with weighty sword-swinging, fight in Soulframe will make use of your Pact—your cursed arm, and Soulframe’s model of a personality class. As a substitute of swapping between Warframes, you may swap out your horrible nightmare limb, which can give you totally different units of core magical talents. Within the demo, the character may fling their halberd and recollect it at will, Thor-style, offering some ranged versatility to Soulframe’s meaty melee battles.
Soulframe Preludes, which DE calls its “pre-pre-pre-alpha,” began invite-only testing in December 2023. Through the press preview session, DE stated it hopes to “get Soulframe in additional public palms” this fall.
