Rebb Ford and Megan Everett talk about Warframe 1999 Romance, what's next, and reading "over 150 romance books last year" (Exclusive)

Ahead of TennoCon, I had the distinct pleasure of speaking to Rebb Ford (Creative Director) and Megan Everett (Community Director) for Warframe. Since it would undoubtedly be too hectic during the Digital Extremes convention, we spoke ahead of the event, about all things DE. It’s so fascinating to see the growth of Warframe, especially as someone who has covered the game on and off since its initial launch back in March 2013.

Rebb Ford and Megan Everett are both incredibly passionate about Warframe, and TennoCon just in general. While chatting, we discussed not just the upcoming Warframe 1999 update, but what makes the game so special, and the possibility of certain quality-of-life updates hitting the game sometime in the future.

It’s such an exciting time to be a Warframe fan, that’s for sure. Whether you will be in attendance in person, or watching on Twitch to get a free copy of Saryn Prime, TennoCon will be filled with content for fans of all of Digital Extreme’s upcoming projects.

Rebb Ford and Megan Everett open up about Warframe, Romance Novels, and much more

Q. Warframe is such a fascinating game - I remember back when I first started, when I was writing for MMOHuts, and the community was so helpful and positive. It's a rare thing to see in an online game. What's Warframe's secret sauce?

Megan Everett: Well, we are pretty saucy… [laughs]. I mean, we’ve got a lot of sauce! I feel Rebb said this a lot lately and it's like been burned in my brain, but she loves to say that we're Wayne's World-esque and just like how we approach things even publicly like on our we're very goofy and silly but serious when we have to be.

And I think from the get-go, you know when Warframe was in its Founder's Program kind of lifespan and hoping that people support the game and want to see where it goes, it somehow hooked those super passionate players and they saw the game we were making. They're like, “I'm into it”.

And honestly, a lot of them, they take breaks, of course, but we still have founders to this day that have remained with us. And I don't know. I mean, obviously, they enjoy the game, which is great.

But I also think that we've just fostered an incredible dev team around this game that is very transparent with the community. We're silly with the community. We're honest with them.

I feel like they see us as humans, which I think is pretty rare in the gaming industry, especially as frontward-facing people. And, you know, we've obviously had our ups and downs and our oopsies and our learning experiences, and we've learned along the way. And we're here, you know, 11 years later and still cooking and you know, trying to raise that bar more and more and more.

I don't know if it's a secret sauce. I just think we knew what we wanted this game to be back in the day. And we tried a lot of different things and saw what stuck and what didn't.

We always kind of refer back to Second Dream of really understanding that our players wanted that narrative lore kind of push in the game. I feel like that really shifted where we took Warframe, you know, to this day of really expanding on the story. And we've gotten, at least I feel, we've got a good balance of your updates that are super lore-heavy.

And then we have some big quality-of-life chunks. We kind of have this cadence figured out a little bit. And we've been kind of cooking with that for a while. So I know that was a long-winded answer. But I feel like we just had hopes and ambitions. And people were along for the ride back in 2013, or late 2012.

And they've just stuck around. I think it is a true testament to our dev team that is so outwardly passionate about this game and making it bigger and better than it's ever been 11 years later. And we're in it as long as the players are in it.

So if they want us to keep cooking, we will cook until we can no longer cook.

Rebb Ford: Yeah. All I have to add is it's an easy secret sauce recipe of being desperate for your entire livelihood to not go out of business, make a PVE game, and have no idea what you're doing. Those are very important parts of any recipe.

Q. Warframe 1999 establishes basically the earliest point of the lore. Binding the original Infested - I’m assuming that’s what the Techrot is - to the y2k was also very cool, and it just makes sense. So my question is, how long did the idea spend on the drawing board? Like, is this some eureka thing that came to the team, or have you known for years?

Rebb Ford: This is the drawing board! And I don't think you can see the words 1999 there, but I wrote 1999 on that board, in early 2023. So this was way before Duviri was even launched.

Because at that point, so what we knew, I think we got “board approval”, I'll call it for 1999, which was really just my way of saying Jeff and Steve were like, “yeah, that sounds cool, do it”, like, really early last year. So this is a real answer because I'm looking at the drawing board. So we wrote Duviri, Duviri 1.1, Red Scars, which became Jade Shadows, Entrati,1999.

So those beats in sequence have been on my board since 2022. We've kind of known, like, the Entrati Arc was going to kick off as a part of all this. And then 1999, props, and all these things were integral to the Entrati update early on.

We knew that the Entrati Labs needed a CRT monitor. I even drew a CRT monitor, if you believe it. So yeah, I would say, like, from the end of 2022 to the start of 2023, it was like, we had it there. And then it's really turned into something showable this year, of course.

Q. We remember playing Warframe in 2013, just after the new Corpus ships got added. The game used to be a LOT slower then. There are a lot fewer enemies, and you take cover and shoot around the corner and all. We were actually a space ninja for real, like from the original 2005 concept trailer. These days, we are canonically war machines, one-man armies. With Duviri, you kind of tried a whole new thing, with much lower enemy density and so on - but that’s again its own thing. In a future update, can we have something that is closer to old-school Warframe? Is there any chance a new Warframe player could get to relive that eerie, slower, more atmospheric side?

Rebb Ford: I think it's kind of incumbent on us to try it in 1999, as part of the quest, considering the setting. And I'm sure the tone you got from the 1999 preview was, I don't want to say it was slower, but it was a bit more tactical, a bit, I'll say, for the Arthur gameplay segment.

And currently, in the quest outline, there are some moments that would lend itself to that as a story beat. But I think, depending on how far we go into the pacing, it always risks kind of throwing out player investment, which is something that we just can't do. We would need to do it in a way that makes sense for the story, which we can do in 1999, and we are really going to try.

But as a core mission, bringing Spy back, let's just pretend that we make Spy 2.0. So we redo Spy. It's a mission where you have to kill people undetected, and you have to break all the vaults without triggering them. There's just so many tools players can do that with that makes that so easy.

But I think it's kind of, it's going to be one that if we do it, we'll probably do it story first, and then I could see us figuring out a way to leverage 1999 for that mood because Warframe updates are better when they're different than what came before it with core Warframe gameplay. So if there ever was an opportunity to do it, it's staring us right in the face, so.

Q. You teased that Warframe 1999's main story is going to be a lengthy one - can we expect even more updates to see more of the ‘old world’?

Rebb Ford: Yeah. Yes, you can. We've tried to build ourselves like a pretty sustainable dev model where we do a major update, and then we do a thematic follow-up. So we did that with Whispers in the Walls. We had Whispers in the Walls, then Dante Unbound. And we did it with Duviri, and then we had the Seven Crimes of Kalervo. So I think you can expect a similar idea in our 1999 arc, so to speak. No further comments on that right now, of course. It’s a secret!

Q. Is there any specific reason Arthur looks just like Hayden Tenno? And Technocyte is also a big thing in Dark Sector? Just throwbacks, or is there more?

Rebb Ford: Let's just put it this way. The person who provided the Arthur you know right now did not work on Dark Sector and did not use it as a reference. So something about Excalibur's anatomy just naturally led this person to that water, and we just made him drink.

So I'm just saying there's like a sleeper cell in everyone's brain when they see Excalibur. They just picture a brooding, dark-haired guy. So we can't help that.

Q. The Gemini skins are an amazing concept - having the ability to swap cosmetics mid-mission is a very cool thing to see. The gameplay we saw today had six of these ‘proto-frames’. Do you have plans for more down the line?

Rebb Ford: I wonder, if in the immediate follow-up to 1999, we would see even more Proto-Frames. Wouldn't that be cool? And that's all. I'll say on that. But okay, so that's what I'm saying from what we'll call... Yeah, we'll just leave it there. Stay tuned.

Q. I believe this may have been answered during the preview, but are you able to play the non-Proto Frames during 1999? Or is it confined to those characters?

Rebb Ford: Well, the implication and truth I'd like to leave you with is you as a player have to make your way there with all your stuff. So you saw the Arthur segment of the 1999 quest, which I think I will say is basically... Well, I don't know how much I want to say because I want people to dive in and be surprised.

But the intention with Arthur's setup is that you make your way there with your gear. And how the hell are you going to solve that problem? So it is not a quest that is dedicated to keeping you away from your stuff at all.

Jason Parker: When you switch to a Proto-Frame, do they change their abilities, or is it the same kit?

Megan Everett: I believe it’s the same kit, yeah. It’s really a cosmetic on cotton candy. There you go. A sugar high, if you will, where you essentially... I think what's really important and special about these is the VO work that has gone into these characters just in general, not for the quest and beyond. And we wanted to maintain that and respect that with these Gemini skins.

So you'll hear those voice actors if you have those Gemini skins equipped on. And then it's a completely optional feature to do. If you have the Arthur Gemini series skin and you choose to go back and forth, you can do it willingly and however many times you want, or you can not do it at all.

You could play as Arthur and never go back to Excalibur. That's up to you. But going back to what Rebb said in terms of not taking away the investment people have done, you wouldn't necessarily get rid of all your powers and not be slash-dashing with Arthur and such.

Q. It's wild to think of having "Romance Options" in Warframe 1999, but here we are. Was that a major player request - given some designs of Warframes dropped into the game over the past few years - or just something you wanted to explore?

Rebb Ford: The answer is both. Players have always expressed a desire for a deeper relationship system in some way in Warframe. They've kind of joked about it.

Some people have been more serious about it. And then when we took a bird's eye view of 1999 as the Proto-Frames were getting developed, there were a lot of influences that just pushed us over the cliff committing - and commit we did.

There was initially in these early sketches of Arthur and the gang, we were realizing like, oh, let's really achieve an aesthetic here that feels like they're all peers in the same peer group, like the same place, same time. And let's push ourselves to make them really interesting characters that would represent a Syndicate.

So if players are familiar with Syndicates, we do have... like when you have an open world Syndicate, there are many characters that make up that syndicate. You can go visit all your friends in Fortuna from Eudico to Rude Zuud.

And with this Syndicate, we said, okay, so we have this opportunity to use a computer. What if they all had a chat room? And what if that chat room had individual messages? Well, so many people have relationships that start online. So let's go there and see what happens. And we committed. I would say reading... Megan and I, I think combined, have read over 150 romance books last year. Then the two of us did that.

Jason Parker: [Laughs] That’s so great!

Rebb Ford: And then yeah, oh, yeah, I read like three a day on the weekends. And then obviously played Baldur's Gate 3, which was a huge... that was the cliff push. But what really kind of made it all crystallize is I read about 20 books from one author in particular.

And at the back of her books, it always said she was a game designer. And I was like, oh my god, writing romance books and being a game designer, that's the dream. So I just crept her on LinkedIn.

And she was looking for work. I was like, oh, “you want to join the team and write a romance system for Warframe?” And she was like, “Sure.” So now she... so we really committed. Like someone joined the team just to contribute to this. Miss Kat Kingsley, she's incredible.

Q. On that topic, are there any boundaries on these romantic relationships (Same gender, etc)?

Rebb Ford: Yeah, what you'll see. So I think I want to approach this in two ways. The first is the Lotus Eaters update we talked about. That will set the tone for the maturity because from the way we're designing this and the lore implications, there's only one character and Warframes to go with and that can go back. Lotus Eaters will establish who goes back and why. For instance, if you've played New War and if you've played Second Dream, there is an Operator and there is a Drifter.

So only the Drifter is involved in what we're talking about. For obvious reasons with romance. Obvious reasons. And then in terms of the flexibility and the preferences, we're really treating it like an open scenario. So no one will be locked out to you based on gender or anything. Because we think Operator, or in this case Drifters specifically... Well, Drifters represent a sort of eternalism type of identity.

You couldn't really lock down what makes the Drifter a Drifter. Male, female expression. The Syndicate is game for anything. So there's no locking out.

Jason Parker: Okay, good. I knew that’s a thing that people would 100% want to know about.

Rebb Ford: Yeah. And no one should feel that they have to change their Drifter to fit a relationship. Your Drifter is your Drifter and you're good to go.

Q. In about a year’s time, we have already had three updates focused on quality-of-life stuff. Now we know there’s another one coming this fall. Any specifics you can share at this moment?

Megan Everett: Well, I think the Caliban rework is something to definitely be excited about. He's needed it. I think our lovely Pablo is very, very transparent about which Warframes are doing the best. I remember when we were having to do Wukong nerfs, he posted on Twitter about like, these are the legit stats, and this is our reasoning behind it.

And that's great. And I think even when we put out usage stats of the year for 2023-2024, it's very blatantly obvious. Caliban's in the bottom barrel. And we aim to fix that. We want to fix that. We have a lot of player feedbacks over the years about Caliban because people want to see him raised up.

And we want to raise him up as well. So first and foremost, Caliban rework, I think it's something to be very excited about. The team has a laundry list of things to do. And Pablo is definitely going to talk about it a little bit more on TennoLive when we unveil that beat for sure. And he'll go into his Pablo rant probably.

Rebb Ford: No, no, no ranting this year!

Megan Everett: One-minute rant. I don't know. He's gonna have a little video. We got stuff prepared. But anyway, Caliban rework for sure. And we mentioned we have obviously that Fall Unannounced Update that we're going to be unveiling at the Tokyo Game Show.

Sorry. And this one's going to be very different from ours in the past. And I really just think that in terms of quality of life, it really depends on what it is that we're updating. We know we have to, you know, do Companions 2.0 Part Two. I always slip up when I say that sentence. You know, we have some backlog stuff that we have talked about but haven't done just yet.

So we want to get those out of the way and, you know, look towards the future and see what we can do. We are having very serious conversations about new player experiences as well, which is something we always strive to do when we do any kind of update. You know, let's look at the path. The path to get there because as an 11-year-old game, the path gets longer and longer.

And we want obviously people to experience this new crazy stuff that we're doing. But it has to be appropriate. And how do we get people there? So that's always a very important conversation for us.

The team is taking the new player experience very seriously. So you can definitely expect some quality of life there as well along the way with these updates. But yeah, Rebb, I don't know if there's anything else really on your radar other than what we've already talked about.

Rebb Ford: I think it's kind of a mix. Like we do, we try to maintain the farm that we feed them from. So it's a health thing. We do intend to; I think you mentioned or at least I said in my head, like Trinity and Nyx are getting a light rework as well with the 1999 launch just to give everyone a little bit of sheen.

Q. Speaking of quality of life, can we have a higher FOV or a more zoomed-out exclusive to melee? Not that I’ve seen a lot of demand for it or anything, just something on my wishlist for a long time now.

Rebb Ford: Oh my god, Steve was talking about this yesterday. Someone yesterday or on Tuesday in our chat wanted 120 FOV, like “120 FOV When DE?”. And we increased the FOV in 2019.

I think we increased the cap, but there are some like, we have a proprietary renderer. We kind of do our own thing. And I think there are some uncomfortable bounds depending on how much we show in this screen space.

So if we did extend it, we would need to make sure that our world is at peace with how we do our new lighting system and everything, because there's a bit of a bigger tax on screen space rendering with GI lighting and stuff. So you know, it's not impossible. If anyone should try it right now, it should be SoulFrame. That's what I say. It’s not a “no”, I’ll just have to talk to Steve.

Jason Parker: Gotcha! It was something my manager was very keen to know about.

Rebb Ford: That makes sense.It’s a maybe! Tell your manager it’s not impossible. It certainly is not impossible. I think it'll just be a style choice as well. At some point we have to say like, oh, we don't want like, yeah, it's possible.

Pablo even did a top pivot camera to make it play like Vampire Survivors and it worked and it was hilarious. You walk through Warframe with a top-line camera and just catch your Melee and it literally plays like Vampire Survivors. It's amazing because the enemies still storm you and you can see from above. So it's awesome. So anything’s possible.

TennoCon takes place between July 19 and 20, 2024, making it the first two-day TennoCon for the game developers. Fans can look forward to updates on Warframe 1999 as well as Soulframe.

Edited by Jito Tenson