At PAX East 2025, Digital Extremes hosted its 188th devstream, revealing details about its upcoming Warframe update and progress on its second multiplayer RPG, Soulframe. We then had the pleasure of participating at a press panel with Soulframe creative director Geoff Crookes, Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair, community director Megan Everett, and Warframe principal writer Kat Kingsley to talk about development on the two games.
Warframe highlights included a new narrative chapter coming in June, the 61st Warframe Oraxia (aka Spiderframe), and a Primed version of the existing Warframe, Yareli. However, Soulframe is the big focus right now--the game is entering its 10th playtest, which heavily focuses on weapon customization. (You're welcome to join if you receive an access code from, say, a PAX East promo card.)
The latest Soulframe gameplay reveal includes an upgrade system that Sinclair claims is "not at all like Pokemon." In the new Soulframe: Preludes trailer, you can see an example of a creature you can equip that looks like a googly-eyed spider (similar to the dust creatures in Spirited Away). The trailer also introduces sidearms, which are meant to be used alongside a primary weapon.
Right now, Soulframe is in its 10th "Prelude"--its version of alpha testing. When asked about the focus of P10, Sinclair said, "It's really about weapon customization."
"We're still early in the game. We're changing a lot of things in the game, and I think we spent a lot more time than we expected to on fundamentals, where the game is one-third the speed of Warframe and it's a ton of melee focus, and that really took us a lot longer."
Creatures and sidearms further expand the loadout possibilities, so it isn't just a plug-and-play kind of game. It seems to require some critical thinking and encourages the player to get more creative beyond just hacking or shooting at an enemy to defeat it.
"For P10, you're going to have what is somewhere between a living monster and a mod, if you know Warframe," Sinclair said of the creature-collecting system. "So, you'll be collecting these [creatures] and that will give you a lot of different ways that your sword [could be] different [from] my sword. As you rank it up, it's going to have more things that you can upgrade and you'll be hunting around for these little guys and trying to capture them and put them into your weapons."
You can't have too many pets.
It's similar to the modding system in Warframe, which the team heavily drew inspiration from. However, in the same way Warframe doesn't want to repeat itself and make another time-travel story right away, Soulframe doesn't want to just copy and paste the mod system without thinking it through clearly. DE has already done something similar with its Soulframe Preludes, modifying existing features like factions in Warframe and recreating a similar but different version in Soulframe.
As Crookes put it, "Warframe is just adrenaline. And [Soulframe's] slower, which fits with this pastoral romanticism, right? So we resisted having a secondary for a long time."
Its "pastoral romanticism" ties in with other Soulframe inspirations like Princess Mononoke, which was mentioned briefly in our Soulframe interview from 2023.
"I can't really get distinct with gameplay stuff," Crookes said about Mononoke-related inspirations, "but the animation reference is a big thing that we looked at. You know, like the corruption on [Prince Ashitaka's] arm and the violence that that created, and there's a contrast between those things."
He brought up pacts, Soulframe's equivalent of Warframe's frames, which also drew inspiration from Mononoke. "Pacts are the thing you equip, and it gives you your power set and your class. So we're always kind of thinking about how that theme and that dynamic kind of is specific to the world that it comes from and what the contrast is with that."
In that sense, it's hard to pinpoint the exact idea of pacts from the overall theme of Mononoke's emphasis on the might of nature. "So there's nothing really kind of like that we can rip out from one another. You destroy pollution. You heal the land. Save animals," he said.
Soulframe drops the futuristic frames for the more fantastical pacts.
Digital Extremes hasn't announced the specifics when it comes to the social features in Soulframe, but Crookes did confirm that they aimed to make the game enjoyable for both solo and co-op players.
"Yeah, the co-op is a huge part of it, but I don't think we're going to make it mandatory," he said. "We're putting out a community event now that will encourage collaboration with the community, but a lot of people in the studio call themselves forever-alone gamers. When they play online, they're like...Together alone."
According to Sinclair, about 25% of Warframe's players exclusively play solo and they let them do as they please, so they are taking the same approach with Soulframe. That said, the team encourages players to try co-op when they can. One of these co-op features takes advantage of the theme of ancestry in Soulframe.
"We're trying something really soft [to] push people into the co-op who normally shy away from it. We want to encourage [people to see the] benefits of meeting players in the world," Crookes said. "We have this theme of ancestry in the game that we have in there right now as a light foundation that we want to build on, so that if you have a family history with another player in the game world, there might be certain benefits to share from each other when you play together."
The best of friends.
He also mentions adding message boards in the game, though they realize it's a "brave" thing to do because they need to trust players to give them full freedom over their messages (instead of, for example, pre-set messages). As for other cooperative gameplay features, Soulframe has factions called "enclaves" and hubs that you can join to socialize with people who are in a similar guild.
"We're going to try to reinforce people helping each other out in the game by leaving hints or suggestions or things that help people in certain zones in the overworld," Crookes said.
Soulframe is far from finished, but Digital Extremes has been very open about its development. It credits a lot of the progress it's made on Soulframe so far to the early players that spent hours on the game and gave in-depth feedback on what to improve.
"When we started this game, a lot of people said this can't work again," said Sinclair. "Like the world's different, you can't do Warframe again--[you can't] release a small game, get a community, [and] focus on community rather than focus on having 500 hours of content, and we said, 'No, we think that can work again.'"
"We tend to be more insecure about our product than we should be," he admitted. "So I think, when we were talking about making the intro to Soulframe, we were thinking, 'Okay, we've got to make a two-hour single-player quest to introduce them to the world and get people to understand the setting and the conflicts, and then open the gates for them.'"
However, when the team was actually getting the game live, they realized that this approach wouldn't work. "We [were] like, 'No, we're going to hurt the game if we do this, and we need to kind of embrace what we're doing right with Warframe, but just kind of think about the new player experience a bit more.'"
Soulframe is more than a little different from Warframe.
Soulframe is a much different game than Warframe, so it wasn't always possible to create a rewarding experience by following the same path, like the adjustments they needed to make to game speed early in development. That adjustment continues to be a struggle years later. Sinclair mentions a time last year where they were "torn to shreds" because of a faulty Soulframe demo and decided that they should slow down development considerably to focus on perfecting the fundamentals. Because of that, they've just started to flesh out things like weapon customization and build crafting. The creatures shown in the latest trailer are a part of that.
"Warframe is a huge power fantasy, whereas [in] Soulframe, the time to kill one enemy is dramatically different, which means you can really look at every frame of the animation--the foot clipping in the ground--and I think that's what really bummed me out about last year's TennoCon," said Sinclair.
"I was very proud of what we showed. It's a smaller team, [and they] made it very quickly. The Nimrod, Verminia, all that shit, the dynamic weather things that happen, [all of that] really, really cool stuff… But one enemy slipped through a wall, and it was like, 'This game is jank, right?' It took us a few months to recover from that. Just in terms of headspace and morale."
One of the goals DE has for itself is committing to a structured schedule for Soulframe like it already has for Warframe. As Sinclair said, "We really got a bit of a bad habit last year with our Prelude's updates where we keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. You see what Warframe is doing and how fast it's going."
"It's like, okay, remember, we're still DE. We still have to really make sure we're not biting off too much and getting interesting work."
Soulframe is currently in development for PC. Digital Extremes hints at more to come during TennoCon 2025 in July.
Source
Warframe highlights included a new narrative chapter coming in June, the 61st Warframe Oraxia (aka Spiderframe), and a Primed version of the existing Warframe, Yareli. However, Soulframe is the big focus right now--the game is entering its 10th playtest, which heavily focuses on weapon customization. (You're welcome to join if you receive an access code from, say, a PAX East promo card.)
Gotta catch ‘em all
The latest Soulframe gameplay reveal includes an upgrade system that Sinclair claims is "not at all like Pokemon." In the new Soulframe: Preludes trailer, you can see an example of a creature you can equip that looks like a googly-eyed spider (similar to the dust creatures in Spirited Away). The trailer also introduces sidearms, which are meant to be used alongside a primary weapon.
Right now, Soulframe is in its 10th "Prelude"--its version of alpha testing. When asked about the focus of P10, Sinclair said, "It's really about weapon customization."
"We're still early in the game. We're changing a lot of things in the game, and I think we spent a lot more time than we expected to on fundamentals, where the game is one-third the speed of Warframe and it's a ton of melee focus, and that really took us a lot longer."
Creatures and sidearms further expand the loadout possibilities, so it isn't just a plug-and-play kind of game. It seems to require some critical thinking and encourages the player to get more creative beyond just hacking or shooting at an enemy to defeat it.
"For P10, you're going to have what is somewhere between a living monster and a mod, if you know Warframe," Sinclair said of the creature-collecting system. "So, you'll be collecting these [creatures] and that will give you a lot of different ways that your sword [could be] different [from] my sword. As you rank it up, it's going to have more things that you can upgrade and you'll be hunting around for these little guys and trying to capture them and put them into your weapons."
You can't have too many pets.
It's similar to the modding system in Warframe, which the team heavily drew inspiration from. However, in the same way Warframe doesn't want to repeat itself and make another time-travel story right away, Soulframe doesn't want to just copy and paste the mod system without thinking it through clearly. DE has already done something similar with its Soulframe Preludes, modifying existing features like factions in Warframe and recreating a similar but different version in Soulframe.
As Crookes put it, "Warframe is just adrenaline. And [Soulframe's] slower, which fits with this pastoral romanticism, right? So we resisted having a secondary for a long time."
Its "pastoral romanticism" ties in with other Soulframe inspirations like Princess Mononoke, which was mentioned briefly in our Soulframe interview from 2023.
"I can't really get distinct with gameplay stuff," Crookes said about Mononoke-related inspirations, "but the animation reference is a big thing that we looked at. You know, like the corruption on [Prince Ashitaka's] arm and the violence that that created, and there's a contrast between those things."
He brought up pacts, Soulframe's equivalent of Warframe's frames, which also drew inspiration from Mononoke. "Pacts are the thing you equip, and it gives you your power set and your class. So we're always kind of thinking about how that theme and that dynamic kind of is specific to the world that it comes from and what the contrast is with that."
In that sense, it's hard to pinpoint the exact idea of pacts from the overall theme of Mononoke's emphasis on the might of nature. "So there's nothing really kind of like that we can rip out from one another. You destroy pollution. You heal the land. Save animals," he said.
Soulframe drops the futuristic frames for the more fantastical pacts.
Forever alone gamers
Digital Extremes hasn't announced the specifics when it comes to the social features in Soulframe, but Crookes did confirm that they aimed to make the game enjoyable for both solo and co-op players.
"Yeah, the co-op is a huge part of it, but I don't think we're going to make it mandatory," he said. "We're putting out a community event now that will encourage collaboration with the community, but a lot of people in the studio call themselves forever-alone gamers. When they play online, they're like...Together alone."
According to Sinclair, about 25% of Warframe's players exclusively play solo and they let them do as they please, so they are taking the same approach with Soulframe. That said, the team encourages players to try co-op when they can. One of these co-op features takes advantage of the theme of ancestry in Soulframe.
"We're trying something really soft [to] push people into the co-op who normally shy away from it. We want to encourage [people to see the] benefits of meeting players in the world," Crookes said. "We have this theme of ancestry in the game that we have in there right now as a light foundation that we want to build on, so that if you have a family history with another player in the game world, there might be certain benefits to share from each other when you play together."
The best of friends.
He also mentions adding message boards in the game, though they realize it's a "brave" thing to do because they need to trust players to give them full freedom over their messages (instead of, for example, pre-set messages). As for other cooperative gameplay features, Soulframe has factions called "enclaves" and hubs that you can join to socialize with people who are in a similar guild.
"We're going to try to reinforce people helping each other out in the game by leaving hints or suggestions or things that help people in certain zones in the overworld," Crookes said.
Lessons learned
Soulframe is far from finished, but Digital Extremes has been very open about its development. It credits a lot of the progress it's made on Soulframe so far to the early players that spent hours on the game and gave in-depth feedback on what to improve.
"When we started this game, a lot of people said this can't work again," said Sinclair. "Like the world's different, you can't do Warframe again--[you can't] release a small game, get a community, [and] focus on community rather than focus on having 500 hours of content, and we said, 'No, we think that can work again.'"
"We tend to be more insecure about our product than we should be," he admitted. "So I think, when we were talking about making the intro to Soulframe, we were thinking, 'Okay, we've got to make a two-hour single-player quest to introduce them to the world and get people to understand the setting and the conflicts, and then open the gates for them.'"
However, when the team was actually getting the game live, they realized that this approach wouldn't work. "We [were] like, 'No, we're going to hurt the game if we do this, and we need to kind of embrace what we're doing right with Warframe, but just kind of think about the new player experience a bit more.'"
Soulframe is more than a little different from Warframe.
Soulframe is a much different game than Warframe, so it wasn't always possible to create a rewarding experience by following the same path, like the adjustments they needed to make to game speed early in development. That adjustment continues to be a struggle years later. Sinclair mentions a time last year where they were "torn to shreds" because of a faulty Soulframe demo and decided that they should slow down development considerably to focus on perfecting the fundamentals. Because of that, they've just started to flesh out things like weapon customization and build crafting. The creatures shown in the latest trailer are a part of that.
"Warframe is a huge power fantasy, whereas [in] Soulframe, the time to kill one enemy is dramatically different, which means you can really look at every frame of the animation--the foot clipping in the ground--and I think that's what really bummed me out about last year's TennoCon," said Sinclair.
"I was very proud of what we showed. It's a smaller team, [and they] made it very quickly. The Nimrod, Verminia, all that shit, the dynamic weather things that happen, [all of that] really, really cool stuff… But one enemy slipped through a wall, and it was like, 'This game is jank, right?' It took us a few months to recover from that. Just in terms of headspace and morale."
One of the goals DE has for itself is committing to a structured schedule for Soulframe like it already has for Warframe. As Sinclair said, "We really got a bit of a bad habit last year with our Prelude's updates where we keep pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. You see what Warframe is doing and how fast it's going."
"It's like, okay, remember, we're still DE. We still have to really make sure we're not biting off too much and getting interesting work."
Soulframe is currently in development for PC. Digital Extremes hints at more to come during TennoCon 2025 in July.
Source