TennoCon's Warframe: 1999 demo reveals '90s instant messenger clients, motorcycle stunts, and an Infested space mutant boy band

TennoCon is upon us once again, and the Digital Extremes fan event's brought us an extended gameplay demo for Warframe: 1999, Warframe's next major story update. When Warframe: 1999 was first teased last year, I'll admit I was skeptical about how on-board I'd be for the space ninja game's dabbling in CRT-era nostalgia. But when this year's TennoCon gameplay demo kicked off with an original single from On-lyne, an alt-universe NSYNC knockoff, I knew I was wrong to doubt.

Warframe: 1999 will pluck players out of Warframe's far future setting and place them in an episode from its history: the final New Year's Eve of an alternate 20th century, where they'll hunt named Albrecht Entrati as an outbreak of a biomechanical Techrot infestation is corrupting the world's computers and machinery. While hunting Entrati, you'll get to explore city streets littered with alt-history '90s ephemera and Techrot monsters, drive high tech motorcycles, and—prepare yourselves—dabble in Warframe's first romance system.

During the 1999 story quest, you'll track Entrati as Arthur Nightingale, squad leader of the Hex: a six-person unit of operatives equipped with Protoframe exoskeletons that each, conspicuously, seem like an early version of Warframes we've seen in the game's current-day. The Hex operatives will be Warframe's latest faction, with its own reputation progression like the Solaris United or the Ostron.

The Hex will also be Warframe's first romanceable characters, as Arthur will be able to flirt with them through conversations on KOL Instant Messenger. If KOL and On-lyne don't communicate how hard Digital Extremes is leaning into its late '90s parallel reality, I don't know what will. Maybe the deeply Rob Zombie-coded music that plays during a boss fight later in the demo?

Arthur himself is an extremely late '90s idea of cool, being a guy who has both a katana and a motorcycle. In 1999, you'll be able to freely ride through the Techrot-infested city of Höllvania while drifting, bullet-jumping, and stunting with a high-powered Atomicycle, which you'll eventually be able to use in Warframe's other open world areas. Arthur's story seems like it'll also shed some light on the Warframes themselves. During the demo, a Techrot creature vomits out a faceless entity mimicking the superpowered sword abilities of Arthur's Protoframe, and it's none other than Excalibur—the game's mascot Warframe.

DE closed out its 1999 showing with a sequence back in Warframe's current-day, where a surviving strain of Techrot has spent the centuries producing my new favorite Warframe foe: a mutated, biomechanical incarnation of On-lyne themselves. After finishing Warframe 1999, you'll be able to hunt the space zombie boy band as the long-awaited Infested answer to Warframe's Grineer and Corpus revenants, offering endgame weaponry through nemesis system showdowns.

As expected, Warframe: 1999 will also add a new Warframe for players to assemble in Cyte-09, a beret-wearing sharpshooter. The update will also bring new weapons like the Kalashnikov-ish AX-52 rifle, and new "Gemini skins" that'll let you play as one of the Hex operatives if you're using their associated Warframe. The Gemini skins are fully voice acted, and they can be customized independently of the base Warframe.

Warframe: 1999 is set to release in Winter 2024. Before then, Warframe will be getting a smaller update in August to add The Lotus Eaters, a short quest that'll bridge the gap between Whisper in the Walls, the previous major story chapter, and 1999.