After three years of invite-only playtests, Soulframe is opening its doors to everyone next week on November 6. If you've been waiting to see what the developers of Warframe are doing with a fantasy action RPG, you'll finally be able to jump in and see for yourself.
The transition to an open alpha will be followed by a massive transformation to the structure of the game later in November. Midrath, Soulframe's big open landmass, won't be the verdant, almost chill, place it used to be: The entire area will be corrupted and it's your job to bring it back to life. "You're going to enter a game that is much more unforgiving and harsh at first glance," creative director Geoff Crookes explained in a recent presentation attended by PC Gamer.
This update, Prelude 17 or Verse of the Veillands, is a huge shift for Soulframe, but an important one that will help new players acclimate to the world. Crookes said the goal is to improve the onboarding experience and to give players "much more ownership" over their decisions early on. It won't be fully finished yet, however, so what's in there today is just "the functional bones" of what will come in the final game.
Feedback from players who struggled to reach the point of the game where they could freely explore the open world convinced the team there needed to be a more direct intro. In Verse of the Veilands, the main quest will teach you how to stop the siphons draining the world of its color. Enemies and resources you encounter will change as each zone is restored and side activities, like fishing, will become available. You'll also be able to raise a wolf pup into a full-on mount.
"The system is also helping the worldbuilding," Crookes said. Pages and pages of new writing for each faction leader will be added and you'll start to hear them radio in and fill you in on the history of the world. The team said it wants them to have a more "integrated" role in your journey as you work to cleanse Midrath of the corruption.
A new Pact, Soulframe's equivalent of a class (or a Warframe), will be added, too. The name of it was still undecided during the presentation, but the developers described it as a "hunter, poacher-type Pact" related to the alien Ode race. Equipping it will let you tie enemies together with a sci-fi bola, pierce them with a cone of spikes, and send them flying away by attaching a giant balloon to them à la Metal Gear Solid 5.
The developers stressed that there's a lot packed into Verse of the Veilands, so much so that they were still tweaking things days before the presentation. Crookes and McGregor nervously expressed that it would "hopefully" be done in time for today, but it seems it won't quite make it in time. That said, the plan is for the update to be out before the end of the next month, so new players might want to wait until then.
"I think this is probably one of the biggest, most violent changes we've made to the structure of the game in a long while," lead designer Scott McGregor said. "Paired with open Preludes is nerve-wracking and we hope players and the feedback stays positive."
The final (final_vfinal_finalfinal.exe) version of everything in Verse of the Veilands will be shown during a stream later today on the Soulframe Twitch channel.
