With Warframe: 1999, the action shooter gets a huge update. In addition to story content, there are also some innovations. Including a syndicate whose members you will be able to chat and flirt with in the future. The developers took the romances of Baldur’s Gate 3 as a model.
What romances are they about? In the new update, there will be a new syndicate in Warframe: The Hex. Consisting of six Protoframes, this elite fighting unit is your central point of contact in Warframe: 1999. And you can date these fighters – any of them, regardless of their gender.
You can chat with the members of the Hex via KIM (Kinematics Instant Messaging) and get to know them better, become friends with them or even start a romance. At certain points you have the opportunity to withdraw your inclination if you are not satisfied with it. This gives you the freedom to choose which Protoframe you like, even if your opinion of them changes.
It was particularly important to the developers that each of them is unique and requires different approaches to gain their trust and affection. They particularly liked the romance system in Baldur’s Gate 3, which they used as a model for Warframe’s own system.
Warframe shows new trailer for the upcoming expansion “1999” at Tennocon 2024
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“All the best from Larian rethought”
To what extent did the developers use BG3 as a model? In an interview with PCGamesN, creative director Rebecca Ford and lead writer Kathryn Kingsley shared their idea behind the romance system. They cite Larian with Baldur’s Gate 3 as a great inspiration for their own system.
The team “took the essence of what Larian did right and reinvented it for their own multiplayer game.”
The fact that Warframe is a live service shooter and not a single-player RPG posed a particular challenge. Nevertheless, they want to realize the depth of the romances in Baldur’s Gate 3 in their own Warframe universe. You want to create characters and relationships that seem as real as possible and have meaning for the player.
Particular attention was paid to ensuring that the protoframes with which one is allowed to enter into a relationship should be particularly individual. It is particularly tricky in terms of making the system as a whole appear as real and natural as possible. In the interview, Rebecca Ford said:
“You’re trying to express something very non-analog in an analog way – with a score from one to 100, or with hearts, or you earn it [Liebeslevel] in a sort of automaton way. I think romance in games is still in its early stages.”
Great importance was also placed on the intensity and length of the conversations with the protoframes. The total length of all possible dialogues is around 140,000 words. Each of the characters can develop a relationship with their own drifter either in the form of a friendship or romance, so care must be taken to keep the balance.
Warframe: 1999 is scheduled to be released sometime in December 2024. An exact date is not yet known, but Warframe is scheduled to be part of the Game Awards on December 12, 2024, making it likely that a date will be announced there. You can currently get the prequel to Warframe for free on Steam until December 4th. You can read what it’s all about here: A really good action shooter is currently free on Steam – an interesting insider tip for Warframe fans