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Watch Warframe’s new intro cinematic, by Uncharted director Dan Trachtenberg

Digital Extremes hopes the trailer will help introduce newer players to Warframe’s complicated world

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Warframe’s sci-fi world is wonderfully complicated. Throughout its seven-year lifespan, it’s ebbed and flowed with numerous expansions, additions of in-depth lore, and specific narrative-focused quest lines. The problem with all this, however, is that the game may appear daunting to newer players.

As part of Digital Extremes efforts to remedy the problem, it’s created a new introduction cinematic that it hopes gives newer players a friendlier introduction to Warframe. The visual is crafted by Uncharted director Dan Trachtenberg, who you may also recognise as the director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Black Mirror’s Playtest episode, and a short animation based on Portal.

The cinematic takes place in the Orokin Era during the Old War, which sees the original Warframes rebel against their Orokin masters. The unfurling story is primarily told through flashback as you see the first choosable Warframes – Excalibur, Mag, and Volt – battle against Dax Warriors in action scenes with proto-Grineer soldiers looming in the background. The new cinematic is about six minutes in length, and Digital Extremes hopes to implement it in game late 2019/ early 2020.

Speaking during a press briefing before TennoCon, Trachtenberg explains that he came together with Digital Extremes around the idea of doing something for newer players. That’s not to say that there isn’t anything there for hardened pros, as Trachtenberg also explains there are some nods he hopes Warframe’s more experienced fans will appreciate.

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He also says that the trailer is a way of showing everyone something that they had only heard about through the game’s lore. Digital Extremes didn’t go into it much further, but the developer mentions that the new cinematic is part of its ongoing pledge to make the game more accessible to newer players.

Get a look: At the new Warframe Grendel suit

Alongside the new opening cinematic, we also got a glimpse at some Warframe Empyrean gameplay. Previously known as Railjack, the expansion is Digital Extremes hopes of connecting all the worlds it has introduced, from Fortuna to The Plains of Eidolon. It takes the game’s sci-fantasy and places it among the stars, where you pilot a ship and assault and ransack the ships of other foes.