Warframe's latest update is a horror story hidden in a rough tabletop campaign
Warframe's newest update includes a tabletop campaign that goes off the rails in a terrible and fascinating fashion
Warframe is a wonderfully weird game that’s so jam-packed with features, it's easy to lose sight of some of the more interesting game modes. For instance, The Hex main quest opens up a whole alternate timeline, set in the year 1999. You go back in time and befriend Protoframes, an experimental variant of Warframes with human-like features. The Protoframes are a very interesting addition to Warframe – you can chat with them at length, build connections, and even date them. In the game’s latest update, the Hex gets together to play a game of Fables & Frontiers, a tabletop game.
Everything starts out all fun and fantastical, but the DM is under stress, and things quickly begin to fracture. It’s a tale told through the lens of a failing D&D game, and as someone who’s sat at their share of dysfunctional tables, I found it to be a really effective framing for a horror story.
Wait, you might be asking, how on earth do you play a tabletop game in Warframe? Well, once you complete the Hex’s story quest, you’ll notice an old-school PC set up in the cockpit of your far future space orbiter. The Kinemantik Instant Messenger lets you chat with your space pals, and it's how the game pulls off its dating simulator elements. The KIM is a great system for worldbuilding and roleplay. It also allows the player just to hang out and shoot the shit with their supporting cast.
As my player character, the Drifter, built a rapport with each member of the Hex, one character in particular seemed a little left out. Amir, a speedster, isn’t a soldier or a medic; he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when the apocalypse hit the Hex’s home city of Höllvania. Not only is Höllvania overrun with a corrupt military and an infested space virus, but the city and the Hex are both caught in a time-loop that constantly resets the clock back to 1999 every New Years Eve. It’s stressful for all six members of the Hex, but Amir in particular seemed to be struggling with his circumstances.