James Lynch 
If you haven’t played Warframe yet, then stop what you’re doing and download it now. The free-to-play third-person shooter is often cited as pulling off what Destiny, and its much maligned sequel, should have, offering detailed crafting, PVP, PVE and a host of hugely engaging storylines. Despite a rather tepid reception on its launch, regular updates and some fantastic story-based expansions have cemented the game as one of the most played on Steam, with a very active daily community. Finally The Sacrifice, the third cinematic quest, has arrived and, as the first release of this type in over a year, it has a lot riding on it.
So, what can players expect from this latest update? In terms of story, and this may be slightly spoiler-y so be warned, The Sacrifice draws heavily on the history laid out in the first two story expansions, The Second Dream and The War Within. They tell the story of the Orokin, an ancient civilisation locked in an unending war with machines. It is because of this conflict that they deploy the Warframe’s players are familiar with before, as is often the case with these things, they are destroyed by their own creations. The story is then picked up in The Sacrifice untold amounts of time later, as one of the creators of the Warframe’s, and all round badass Orokin, Ballas returns to the fray.
Talking to PC Gamer, the game’s community producer, Rebecca Ford, detailed what the return of this specific Orokin will mean for the game:
“What we’re going to see is Ballas and his past, present, and maybe his future,” before adding “He snatched the Lotus away, right? So Ballas comes out. You think he’s dead. You’ve only heard his voice in the game up until this point.”
Since the, frankly ginormous, Plains of Eidolon update, developer Digital Extremes has been somewhat quiet in terms of content updates, but this mark a return to the well-loved story arc which has been developing for a number of years. There are also promising signs that this expansion will delve deeper into the Umbra Warframe variant, which was previously only available in the Chinese build of the game, with Ford going on to say:
“There’s this sort of mystique around ‘What is an Umbra Warframe? That’s something that’s huge for the allure of this quest, regardless of a player’s investment in the game or not. Just because it’s sort of reached mythical status. What is Umbra and when is Umbra coming?”
With Warframe continuing to produce quality content updates, it’s fairly safe to assume that this effort from Digital Extremes will maintain that good form. The Sacrifice does look darker and more foreboding than its predecessors, however, so we will have to see how the game carries off this latest development.
