First announced earlier this year , developer Digital Extremes has revealed first details about its free-to-play online third-person shooter Warframe , which will deliver procedurally generated challenges meant to be played co-operatively. It also has space ninjas with machine guns, which certainly doesn’t hurt.

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You play as a member of the near-extinct Tenno race and tap into the power of upgradeable exo-skeletons called Warframes to take swings at your former murderous masters, the Grineer. Creative director Steve Sinclair provided more detail.As an idea this is something we've had in our minds for many years. The agile power-armor, ancient feeling of far-future technology. That Arthur C. Clarke saying about technology and magic. We used it as the basis for a tech demo ten years ago. We shed a lot of blood to create the world and the visuals - a mash-up of manga, eastern philosophy and Roman mythology. It was very personal, it still is.When we tried to get the game made as a console game reality spanked us: they said we wouldn't own the idea, they said sci-fi was dead, they said we needed to change things. We were on the verge of signing it with one of the largest publishers in the world but we just needed to give the character "one last tweak" (No joke: 'Add an eye-patch, make the cod-piece larger').So that's why "this kind of distribution model." Freedom. A chance to find an audience for our ideas without a Death Star aiming at our planet. Some may fear this direction has diminished what was cool about the original single-player idea. Certainly it has changed it - but we're still trying to pull in those players that crave the immersion of narrative. We're trying to build a framework where they can pull it out of the world, guide it with their friends, rather than it being imposed on them.The Warframes are ancient artifacts from an era of technology now lost. Although there are great combinations, traditional class-based design is the furthest from our minds. Yesterday Scott (Designer) showed me what he was working on and I was flipping out, shouting, "If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed!" (Geoff our Animator did not get this reference and has had his geek card revoked.)We want player stories. Possibilities that surprise. Interactions between the squad, their powers and the opposition of enemies and environment. We want players when pushed to the brink of death to stop and shout: oh wait! I have an idea!As for customization, Warframes and weapons have slots for the Artifacts scattered through the game. You could play for weeks and never find the same one. These Artifacts do not give the marginal stat bonuses. They change your strategy. If your upgraded Warframe discharges an energy blast when you're hit by Grineer Melee attacks, you begin to view certain enemies as opportunities instead of targets.Play-test story: the "Loki" Warframe has an ability called "Switch". It unlocks at level 5 and it’s very simple. You target an enemy and when you activate it you trade places. It's awesome because it confuses the enemy and lets you leap around using the enemies as the pivot. While the QA guys were testing the game they entered a bug - that Switch works on other players, not just enemies. Normally we'd fix this bug but Warframe is about keeping the possibility space open. The next week during play-testing Geoff (Animator) got downed by a Heavy sub-boss and we couldn't get to him to revive him... he was bleeding out. Scott had Loki. He kept trying to Switch the Heavy but kept getting a rocket in the face trying to lock on. That's when he had an eureka moment... he waited for full shield charge, got himself to a safe position with line-of-sight to Geoff and switched with Geoff! Dave (Producer) was waiting, revived Geoff seconds before the bleed-out expired while Scott sprinted away dodging rockets.Warframe is a fast, FPS-y feeling game (albeit in third-person). It's very aggressive. We want players to move as freely possible without getting hung up on cover objects.It's all pay-to-win. You start off as a skinless pile of meat until you max your credit card. Then you send us your used jewelry and gold teeth. At that point we give you a BFG, but it only has one shot. Each time you want to reload, you must fill out your verified by Visa form, which is actually a texture with normal maps in every level to make micro-trans as smooth as possible.Seriously, we're entirely focused on making an awesome, fun game that you can enjoy without spending money. You'll have to actually play it and smash bosses and run raids to get the best gear. It's like middle school: If you want to look cooler or get an extra hand in some subject we hope you'll spend some money and support us.This is probably the coolest part of the game right now. We’re calling it our Automatic Mission Generator. It's never the same. The convoys and cargo ships you raid are procedurally constructed from a set of rules. So the flow and placement is different every time, more than ten-thousand permutations right now with just the basic set. What we wanted to avoid is seasoned players stagnating themselves. They get so damn awesome that they 'solve' levels - they play to a pattern without having to think. They get super pissed off when team members break the pattern and then kick them. What the hell? We want to surprise ourselves, and those seasoned players - we want them to keep thinking and not play repetitive solutions.Certainly you will see the constituent parts of the themes - we want it to look awesome not random and chaotic. So we have another set of conditions that can layer on top - is the ship near a Dead Field that screws up technology? Has the ship already been sabotaged and now environmental hazards are more of a threat than the enemies left on board? These possibilities are like [Unreal Tournament] Mutators that force players to switch it up while breathing new visual interest into areas you've come to recognize.There are standard things like containers and drops from enemies for low-end gear and consumables. The end of mission rewards are based on performance - they focus on credits. The best loot, Artifacts, comes from tackling tough missions. Difficulty plays a part in this - in many ways you might want to hold off taking a mission until you're more powerful and then come back and kick its ass to earn an awesome rare upgrade.Closed beta starts end of summer - depending on the feedback we get from our beta-testers and the features they feel are ready we'll be launching near year's end.

Expect more details about Warframe to emerge in the coming months. For now, what do you think? Worth signing up for the beta