"We’ve sat on Warframe design ideas for years": [DE] Megan talks the future of parkour, tileset vs open-world, and The Old Peace

Warframe is wrapping up 2025 suffering from success, as an unprecedented player surge threw servers into instability after the recent release of The Old Peace. This update sets up the open secret of some game-changing expedition into Tau in 2026, but also pushes the envelop with some bold new things (including a quest-skip-rebranded-into-mission-unlock).

Ahead of Devstream 191, which disclosed the final bit of content in The Old Peace, we got to fire a round of questions about it Community Director Megan Everett's way.

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Warframe Community Director Megan Everett answers five questions (and one unwarranted freebie)

Open-world content islands could be a thing of the past, in more ways than one (Image via Digital Extremes)

Q1. The last proper open-world we had in Warframe was Duviri, and even though we’ve ventured to many new places (and times), we’ve stuck to good ol’ tilesets (Entrati Labs, Hollvania, and now Tau). Are open-world bounty rotations a relic of the past developmentally, or have you thought about doing open-worlds to eventually find tilesets to be the superior option?

One rule for Warframe we have is that nothing is ever going to be a relic of the past; we always end up returning to an old area, mechanic, or Quest in some way and iterate on it for the future. When it comes to new areas and environments, we are, transparently, going to be springing off of what players are being drawn to right now. Lately, that seems to be some of our newest approaches to tilesets. The city of Höllvania and the Deepmines, while still a tileset randomly spliced together, are much more open and have a lot of explorability, I think, when compared to some of our earlier tilesets. Now that being said, who knows what the distant stars will bring when we reach towards Tau in 2026.

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Q2. Warframe has, in my experience, the most incredible Music and Sound design team for a live-service game, putting out bangers after bangers. Now, for this question, I’m particularly looking at two things: beat-based frames like Temple and Octavia, and the 12-minute tailored orchestra for the timed Perita Rebellion mission. Is there any chance for a Crypt-of-the-Hi-Fi-Rush-dancer game mode?

Not everyone seems to know this, but we actually have our own rhythm game similar to Guitar Hero already in Warframe, the Shawzin! We’ve definitely thought about branching out more into that space with how much emphasis we’ve been putting on our music lately, which is how Temple came to be. We’ll never say never, we’re open to anything if it feels right for the update and moment, but for a new game mode focused on it? I’m not sure if that’s a check I want to write if we can't cash it. If we ever do it, though, I promise there will be a lot of noise around it.

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Q3. Are we getting more Incarnons in 2026? If yes, then is it more in quantity than what we got in 2025? Since these are yes/no questions, here’s another one, looking at the Bayonet: what would say to the idea of an Incarnon weapon transforming between melee/primary/secondary?

Well, don’t hate us for not providing a yes or a no at this stage, but I’ll give you a solid maybe! Everything we add to Warframe in an update serves a purpose, whether it’s narrative, discovery, or just to up the fun factor, so I can’t give you a firm commitment at this stage, but I also don’t feel comfortable just saying no because we’re going to add things that feel right at the time we implement them. As far as Bayonets, I would say that idea is WILD but also very fun to consider. I think we’ll see how players engage and respond to this new weapon type before we consider building on its style, though.

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There's a lot of Warframe backlog the design team can flesh out later (Image via Digital Extremes)

Q4. This one’s also a two-parter. In one recent interview, you said there’s four Warframes planned in the queue that you already know about. Is it the first time that Digital Extremes has four Warframes batch-cooking concurrently? The back-to-back-to-back cinematic story updates since Whispers in the Walls also appear to be planned well ahead of time. Did Warframe always have multiple years worth of story updates planned for the future (at least vaguely), or has this been the case more recently?

It may seem like we make things up on the fly, but that is only half true. The real answer is that, yes, we plan ahead, but frequently will pivot in new directions. The Old Peace wasn’t originally in our plans; we were going to go straight to Tau at first! As plans progressed, though, we realized we didn't have the emotional foundations built that we felt were needed to make that return to Tau feel impactful and grandiose. So we pivoted to The Old Peace, and I feel so strongly about that decision. It mainly boils down to what feels right for Warframe in its current state and what the community is clamoring for. We’ve sat on Warframe design ideas for years because we wanted to wait for a moment that felt perfect for that Warframe to shine. Bringing up Temple once again, that was a Warframe we had on the shelf for years, and Techrot Encore couldn’t have been a better moment to finally bring them to life. We’re lucky to have a backlog of ideas and themes we can pull from to shape around where the story of Warframe is headed!

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Q5. We finally have grappling in Warframe after 12 years. Can we expect it to become a staple of Warframe parkour going forward, or is it going to be just a Perita thing? Speaking of, how different will parkour feel once we return to the roots™ with wall-running?

I can't speak to the future of wall-running yet, but our goal is that we want it to feel like that missing piece of fluid movement that you didn’t know you needed until you got it. Ideally it seamlessly meshes right into your gameplay and becomes second nature. We’re proud of Warframe’s movement system within the action game universe, and we don’t intend to stray far from where we are today. Grappling will likely remain just on Perita for now, but as we continue to prepare for our return to Tau in modern day, who knows… we have been known to make features permanent if people like them enough.

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Q6. Will Dr Albrecht eventually breadcrumb us to the year xx99 BC, xx being 70 million, and that’s where we’ll find the Dino-frame(s)?

Ah, yes, Dino-frame is the new Spider-frame! Who knows what rabbit holes Albrecht will lead us to? But rest assured, that when the time is right, everything will make sense and be innately Warframe.

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The Old Peace update went live on December 10, but it's only a precursor to the Tau content coming next year. Stay tuned for more Warframe news on Sportskeeda!

Edited by Sambit Pal