While Warframe is developer Digital Extremes’ core focus, it’s also steadily working away on Soulframe in the background. During TennoCon 2024, fans were shown a brand new slice of gameplay featuring some updates and new features coming to the game’s early access program, Soulframe Preludes, later this year.
Soulframe is a wonderful title that puts players in the role of an envoy in a world inspired by folk stories and tales of fae. It’s an ARPG with some of the soulslike mechanics you may expect from the genre, but Digital Extremes has put its own strange twist on not only the genre, but the game’s entire world to make it feel fresh, vibrant, and full of life.
TennoCon 2024’s Soulframe demo explored a new portion Soulframe Preludes that showcases a brand new NPC for players to collect and progress with, as well as a piece of the game’s new opening sequence: Warsongs Prologue.
The demo began with a new introduction, one that’s heartfelt emotional drive is impossible to avoid through the swell of the music, the landscape turning from a wet first into a medieval siege with metal-clad soldiers and colossal laser cannons.
Inside the castle being sieged, we meet the Envoy’s mother, and customize her appearance while the narrator recalls it with a poetic cadence. This initial section will be more fleshed out further down the line, but it demonstrates how you’ll completely customize your character at the game’s start.
The demo proper then kicked in, with the Envoy awakening to a similarly drenched forest as they click their fingers and follow their summoned bird along a path to their next objective. However, despite the beauty of Soulframe‘s world, it’s far from safe.
As lightning flashes overhead and thunder claps, Nimrod, a giant armored figure with an imposing lightning rod, which looks a lot like a giant steampunk fork, teleports through the lightning to appear and confront the Envoy. The battle is brutal and one-sided because Nimrod can heal itself by calling down a lightning bolt and effectively recharge itself. It doesn’t help that it has powerful stabs and AOE electricity attacks in its arsenal as well.
We follow the Envoy and see them battle Nimrod a couple of times before succumbing to it. As those who have played Soulframe Preludes know, you then need to use your bird to fly back to your empty frame and refill it so you can rise and fight again. But Nimrod disappears. For now.
The Envoy then hears a voice, and moves towards it. After playing a short sequence on a musical instrument, reminiscent of Ocarina of Time‘s Ocarina mechanic, a rock moves out of the way to reveal a basin in the landscape filled with water. Here is where we meet Verminia, The Rat Witch. After a brief introduction, the Envoy reduces her and is given an Elixir of Drought just as Nimrod cries out for battle once again.
When the Envoy encounters Nimrod this time, they launch the Elixir into the sky to burn off the clouds and change the weather entirely into a scorching, sunny day. Nimrod hates this because his power to heal is now gone, and as a result he can be debuffed by all the Envoy’s abilities.
The fight is frantic but much less one-sided as the Envoy launches its shield to batter Nimrods head, swipes at his knees with a sword, and fires an arrow at its head to finish it off. Once conquered, we’re taken to the Nighthold where the Envoy can retreat to change their armor and weapons, a space beneath the world.
This space is where the Ancestors that players collect come to live, each with their own workstation, be it a library, a tent, or a blacksmith’s forge. Verminia’s is a brewing station where players can bring resources to craft helpful Elixirs.
We weren’t shown how this Elixir system will work, but we were shown a vague overview of Verminia’s other ability, the power to change your Envoy’s appearance. There were quite a few different appearances, customizations of armor, on show, and Verminia reacts to them all.
Finally, Verminia’s little rat launches at the Envoy to inform them of something dark lurking in the world. What is slowly revealed is a colossal bear-like creature with two heads where ears or horns might be, and a mighty bell hanging off the end of a protrusion that looks very much like a skull.
This is a new boss coming to Soulframe Preludes in the near future. Digital Extremes has been working on a fairly regular monthly update schedule and plans to keep that up with new content like this being added slowly over time.
The developer revealed right before this demo that Soulframe Preludes would be opening to everyone, so anyone who wants to can ask for access, jump in, and play. Fans at TennoCon 2024 were incredibly excited by the demo and this news because they’ve been waiting patiently while the team crafts a fantasy follow-up to Warframe.
In discussions around Soulframe, the team explained how scary it was approaching building any new game while Warframe is so well received but also so much work. Those working on Soulframe have restarted the entire game development process, but with hindsight, it looks like they’re doing the right thing and building the game alongside the community.
After all, this is how Warframe was largely improved, with fans explaining their feelings about certain systems and Digital Extremes reacting with updates. Soulframe is a much more positive and brighter game than Warframe, with so many fantastic elements that can bring out an emotional reaction through little more than a visual cue and some music. I can’t wait to see where this game goes, and the Digital Extremes community is very much here for the journey alongside the developer.
Published: Jul 20, 2024 01:30 pm