Ahead of TennoCon 2023, Digital Extremes kindly invited me and other press colleagues to check out some of what they have in store for attendees when it comes to Soulframe and Warframe reveals. Soulframe, as you may recall, is the new game announced by the Canadian studio at last year’s TennoCon. Another slice of prototype gameplay was shared back in March.
For the TennoCon 2023 preview, Chief Creative Officer Steve Sinclair quickly recapped the basics: it’ll be a free-to-play live service game like Warframe, though it does differ in some regards, being a slower game that is set in a fantasy setting instead of sci-fi. Most of the game will take place in a large open world island area, but there are also Warframe-like procedural dungeons; more on that later.
Players are outcast soldiers of the Ode, the big bad faction. They’re also Envoys capable of traveling to the plane of Souls, where over time they’ll build a village inhabited by the various Ancestors. They’ll also get to build a foundry, an armory, and so on.
Soulframe is a roleplaying game. It features a straightforward attribute system with the three Virtues: Spirit, Courage, and Grace, each corresponding loosely to the Fighter, Mage, and Assassin archetypes.
That’s one part of the progression system. Another is gathering the Souls of the Ancestors; attuning with them allows access to their skills, such as Archery, Blades, Arcanic, and Athletics to name those shown in the demo. The Ancestors will also offer lore tidbits here and there to explain this mysterious world to players.
Finally, there are different Pacts to choose from, which were likened to classes and have three abilities each. These can be switched freely at any time. The Fey Pact is the default one, but the developers then switched to the Ode Tempest Pact. Each class will be leveled separately through the Bond.
At the beginning of the showcase, the player character interacted with an NPC and was offered four options to get the required information to complete the mission: either pay an amount of Dracs (presumably, the currency of Soulframe), or select one of three persuasion/intimidation options, each with a dedicated icon, presumably linked to the currently equipped Pact.
The demo then moved to the Dermak Undercity, one of the game’s procedural dungeons. The lore explanation for the shifting dungeons is that the world is angry because of what the Ode is doing, and the frequent earthquakes cause different paths to appear.
The Wandering Souls (Fenn Jotar, Erlane the Mad, Witch O’Maren) are another twist to procedural dungeon runs. They’re wildcards that randomly appear at a dungeon, constituting a fourth slot that players can access in addition to their actual three-Souls loadout.
During the brief dungeon run, Sinclair noted that Soulframe will use physics more, employing traps and implementing breakable items like wood crates. The player character could throw their sword to activate a trap and make it fall on top of an enemy. The sword can then be recalled Mjolnir-style. Graphically, the game looks pretty good, and it was confirmed it would utilize the new Global Illumination system coming with Warframe’s next update.
In a press release shared by Digital Extremes, Steve Sinclair said that the team will have ‘a lot more to talk about’ in 2024 regarding Soulframe. While it may be premature to expect a launch next year, if Digital Extremes is indeed preparing an info blowout in 2024, we could be looking at a 2025 launch. Either way, count me intrigued.
