During last weekend’s annual TennoCon event, Warframe developer Digital Extremes was on hand to unveil a brand new expansion for the game called Fortuna. Among other things, Fortuna will include Warframe’s second open-world outdoor area, a massive region on the planet Venus called Orb Vallis.
Last year, Digital Extremes broke out of the corridor-based shooting which had defined Warframe since the game’s launch when it introduced the Plains of Eidolon, an open-world area on the planet Earth that included plenty of combat along with more passive activities such as mining and fishing. With Fortuna, players will be able to explore a similarly structured area on Venus, though Orb Vallis will differentiate itself from the Plains of Eidolon in several significant ways.
For one thing, Orb Vallis is going to be a lot bigger. The Plains of Eidolon are about five square kilometers in size, and Digital Extremes says that Orb Vallis will be roughly five times bigger, so there will be plenty of ground for players to cover. Not only that, but Orb Vallis will also feature more varied terrain types, with bizarre alien flora and giant mushrooms intermingling with snow covered fields and mountains. There will also be large roaming bug-like robots that will attack players on site, reinforcing the idea that Orb Vallis is as deadly as it is beautiful.
Much like with the Plains of Eidolon, groups of up to four players will be able to explore Orb Vallis, and along with completing bounties and fighting enemy roamer groups they’ll be able to fish and mine for resources if that’s more their preference. Orb of Vallis will also have a brand new activity type where players must lure out, tranquilize, and capture endangered animals so that they can be transported safely to sanctuary zones. As part of the lore that surrounds Orb of Vallis, players will mainly be assisting a new faction of cyborg slaves called the Solaris United in their efforts to break the yoke of their Corpus overlords.
Digital Extremes says that the Fortuna expansion should be launching sometime in late 2018, with a specific launch date still being nailed down. Meanwhile, in other sci-fi gaming news, it looks like Overwatch’s newest hero, Hammond, has already been nerfed, while Cyberpunk 2077 got a new blog post exploring the game’s nightlife.