Warframe's next big expansion Whisper in the Walls gets weird with Necramechs and retro Earth tech

27.08.2023 - 09:57 / eurogamer.net

As part of its big TennoCon 2023 fan convention news blowout, developer Digital Extremes has pulled back the veil on Warframe's next big expansion, Whisper in the Walls, as well as detailing the free-to-play sci-fi shooter's mid-term future as its celebrates the big one-oh — including perhaps its wildest expansion yet, in next year's Warframe: 1999.

Whisper in the Walls, though — which was revealed with the huge 20-minute chunk of gameplay you can see below — is certainly no slouch on the wild front, continuing Warframe's wonderfully weird streak by folding in mysterious multi-storey men, instantaneous dimensional shifts, and even brief glimpses of extremely out-of-place retro Earth tech — 80s mobile phones and beige PCs to name a few — in its arresting unveiling.

As explained by Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford in a press event prior to TennoCon, Whisper in the Walls — which introduces new missions types, NPCs, bosses, and factions, alongside a new hub and procedural tile set — is all about going back to the familiar and re-contextualising everything players have seen so far in their ten-year Warframe journey.

It's a whisking back of the lore curtain that begins with players returning to Deimos' Necralisk for a conversation with delightful floaty head-thing Loid, who says he's been hearing the name Kalymos in his dreams. After a bit of walk-and chatter, the opening eventually leads the pair down into the bowels of the Necralisk, where it transpires strange machinery has started some unstoppable process. Here, the preamble reaches its climax, and the walls of the room slide open revealing previously uncharted fathoms beyond.

From this expanded hub, players can venture forth to Whisper in the Walls' new procedural dungeons in a quest that'll see them attempting to awaken a mysterious «Sleeper». It's a journey that'll take them down into the long-abandoned laboratory of Albrecht Entrati, fashioned from a striking gold and purple tile set (lit with new global illumination tech Digital Extremes says will eventually expand beyond the new zone and Necralisk) that's part faded splendour and part 'mad scientist', with its crackling lightning punctuating the gloom. There are tight confines and huge sweeping vistas to navigate, the latter spreading out into impossible spaces beneath the skin of Deimos, and here players will fight a much-expanded Necramech faction in a experience aimed toward higher-level players.

Its gamplay reveal is a deliciously atmospheric thing, but it's around the 13-minute mark that things start to get really bizarre. Suddenly, as the player explores a shadowy underground champer where an unknown character stands frozen to the spot, the walls wrench outward, shifting the