Defying recent live service trends in gaming, Warframe has been going strong for 13 years. It’s one of the best space games out there, and it shows no signs of slowing down with the Jade Shadows: Constellations update.
The online sci-fi action RPG has evolved both technically and narratively over the years, changing from a game where the story has blossomed from background to the emotion-driven forefront of every major update. In 2024, Jade Shadows started the process of humanising Stalker – the player’s long-term nemesis – by making him a father.
Jade Shadows: Constellations serves the dual purpose of continuing this story, and taking the first steps down the road of reinvigorating the game’s space-based content.
At the end of Jade Shadows, players chose one of two names for Stalker’s son; Sirius, or Orion. The surprise hook for Constellations is that both came to be… in a way. Bursting onto the scene from parallel timelines, each has come to claim their father for their own. Sirius takes after their mother, while Orion takes after their father. Both are named after notable stellar phenomena: Sirius is the brightest star in the Earth’s night sky, while Orion is one of the most prominent constellations visible from Earth (itself named after the legendary hunter in Greek mythology).
Stalker, when he appears during a mission, will relentlessly chase down the player until he or his target dies. What more appropriate name for the son that takes after him, therefore, than the constellation of the Hunter?
“We thought one of the most impactful ways to end a quest would be letting the player name the child,” explains Creative Director Rebecca Ford, “and we held that close to our hearts […] And these names must come from the cosmos, they must come from space. Then we knew we were going to start going divergent paths pretty quickly.”
Warframe’s missions are spread across the Origin System, which looks very similar to our own solar system. Players jump between planets and moons with real-life equivalents such as Mars, Deimos, Neptune, Mercury, and Earth. The star Sirius and the constellation Orion also exist in the Warframe universe, and factor into the new quest; although exactly how is under wraps at time of writing.
Constellations is also being used as a springboard for refreshing the game’s space battle Railjack content. “I absolutely felt that this update would not work without a Railjack component for the post quest content,” explains Ford.
“It did not feel to me like you could do all of this grand space cosmos-like effort without giving players somewhere to use their Railjack. That is a very, very difficult choice in this line of work, where you need to be able to do things very well and very quickly.
“Railjack [is] such a complicated feature, like the code, and the streaming… everything about it is hard, it’s making Warframe on hard mode,” reveals Ford.
“In this case we said all right, let’s just commit, because we have help from our partners at Sumo, who are co-developing this update, and they love Railjack. So that helped! We just had the stubbornness to say it has to feel this big, it needs this; because it needs to acknowledge that that is how big of an event this quest is.”
For the uninitiated, Railjacks are combat-focused spaceships — interceptors from the Orikin era of technology. They’re equipped with powerful weapons, defensive shields, and Void engines that let them explore… well the void.
Mindful of the fact that not everybody who plays through Constellations will have extensive Railjack experience – or perhaps won’t have a Railjack of their own at all – the space gameplay has been streamlined and tweaked for the quest.
The smaller, jetpack-like Archwings cannot be used, but players use an NPC’s Railjack, so don’t need to worry about having their own being a prerequisite. They’ll be earning Railjack-related rewards along the way however, so if they later decide to get their own, they’ll be well prepared. Making the onboarding ramp wide enough to accommodate everybody is important, because this is just the beginning of bringing ventures into outer space back to Warframe.
“This is like the prologue to Railjack and space content getting more attention,” Ford reveals. This isn’t something related to Tennocon, she stresses, but it is something she hopes to be able to speak more openly about afterwards. “I think [Railjack is] a beautiful and fun system, despite its flawed history. It does not deserve to die for any sins it might have committed a lifetime ago. There’s nothing like it in a pseudo-MMO like ours.”
A new story quest means a new Warframe, and here too the game is breaking new ground. Both Sirius and Orion can be unlocked for play, but as the game’s first dual Warframe. Players can switch between the two at any time, via an animation that sees one warring brother knock the other out of the way. They are individually customisable and have unique abilities. The fourth ability will see them clash in the air, dealing damage by using up motes; the accumulation of which is represented in the UI by a constellation-like indicator mimicking a part of Orion, motes lighting up where stars would be.
On the surface or among the stars — indeed, in a virtual world or the real one — space is awe-inspiring. Astronomer or philosopher, scientist or office worker, looking up on a clear night into the enormity of space evokes a myriad of powerful feelings. Humanity has always had the desire to understand and attribute meaning to this infinite canvas, and this is something Digital Extremes aims to tap into with Constellations, hence the name.
“With all science,” says Ford, “there needs to be a little bit of, I would say, romance to it. Not in the lovey-dovey way, but the romance of looking to the stars 2000 years ago, knowing that those stars were something, but giving them a meaning beyond the fact that they’re just balls of gas in the sky. An ancient Greek from thousands and thousands of years ago, looking up and building a story around, well, what does this mean?
“Why is that star Sirius so bright? The dog star in Orion, the hunter. The constellation is that, right? It is the meaning applied to the stars, and in the case of Jade Shadows: Constellations, it’s exactly that. It’s looking out to the stars and knowing the beauty and the meaning you can add to what, ultimately, ends up being someone else’s story.”
Warframe Jade Shadows: Constellations is available from June 17 as a free update. You can play Warframe on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.