As I write this, we’re roughly two hours into tonight’s Game Awards. There have been some major reveals: After two decades, there’ll be a proper return to The Old Republic. We now know that Larian was behind Keighley’s special desert statue. There will be two Tomb Raiders in the next two years.
If all you know about Warframe is that it’s a game with space ninjas, the relentless Wagnerian intensity of a Herzog monologue might feel like a strange fit. But Warframe is beautifully, uncannily strange. As Herzog says during the magnificent work of advertising, Warframe is a story about beings “cursed to walk this senseless universe in living metal, haunted by dreams.”
Warframes are an open question about identity, humanity, and utility. They are a riddle cast in razor iron and warped, quivering meat. They are weapons 3D printed from muscle memory, psychic imprint, and arcane force. They can get pregnant.
Warframe is magnificently, beautifully strange, and yet impossibly human. Whether you’re intimately familiar with it, or just getting your first taste of how mind-melting it can be, Herzog is the best voice you could’ve picked.
I guess Total War doing 40K is pretty good, too, though.
lincoln.carpenter@futurenet.com (Lincoln Carpenter)
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