There’s a lot to get excited about in Warframe’s Isleweaver expansion — which is free to play today on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. The update links the time-lost Warframe 1999 and the timeless islands of Duviri, pushes the Void War narrative arc forward and gives tight-knit player guilds a new large-scale operation to contribute to.
The biggest allure of a new update for many players will always be the shiny new toys, and Isleweaver has tons of those too. A new whip and throwable clustered barbs will make a fine addition to any stealthy player’s arsenal, while endgame builds will benefit from a new Incarnon weapon that’ll evolve and gain special abilities in the heat of battle.
But the most impactful addition to every Tenno’s toolkit is Oraxia, the 61st unique Warframe that players can pilot. She’s the culmination of a years-long community meme about adding a Spider-Frame into the game, and you’ll soon get a chance to scuttle around on spindly legs, summon an army of multilimbed children and assassinate enemies from above.
But it turns out that deploying extra legs and climbing on walls took an immense amount of effort to make work in Warframe, another challenge for a team that continues pushing itself to make wild fantasies playable in the game.
Oraxia «was definitely something that we only did because we’re crazy,» Warframe Design Director Pablo Alonso joked. «Honestly, we shouldn’t have done it. But at the same time, I’m happy we did, even though it pushed the team a lot to get this done.»
I spoke with Alonso and Warframe Creative Director Rebecca Ford to find out more about how Oraxia evolved from concept to reality, the stresses of modeling a completely new type of Warframe ability, and the challenges of creating this fearsome arachnid’s boss fight.
A skittering threat stalks the shadows
Warframe is all about empowering players to pick a power fantasy and live it out on the galactic stage.
Whether you enjoy playing more traditional roles, like a hack-and-slash knight or a damage-soaking tank, or you get your kicks from playing more unorthodox characters, like Sun Wukong or a walking nuclear reactor, there’s a frame in the game for nearly everybody’s favorite play style.
Each Warframe has to widen the net a little more, doing something completely different from the previous playable characters. The vision for Oraxia was actually quite simple: Like Spider-Man, she does whatever a spider can.
«She’s a predator,» said Alonso. «She lurks, she strikes, and she has her little army. That’s the core theme we were going for with her.»
Unlike in-your-face tanky frames, stealthy Warframes strike from the shadows, going invisible or lulling enemies into a deep slumber. When you play with Oraxia, you’ll skitter on walls with her ultimate ability and engage with your foes from above — they’ll become your prey.
«The walking with the elongated legs is the most exciting part of her kit,» said Ford. «Her ultimate move set is so cool, I feel like it’s unlike anything we’ve ever done before.»
«Especially once you start web whipping between walls and stuff, it makes the game feel very different and it’s a lot of fun,» Alonso added. «It almost makes you think of the game in a little bit of a different way, which is what we want.»
Alonso explained that gameplay diversity is one of the most important design pillars guiding the Warframe team, and that Oraxia already feels like a success because there’s nothing else in the game that compares with the feeling of popping out extra legs and web-swinging around the map.
«It’s very satisfying,» Ford said. «It’s a testament to not only the mechanics that were put in, but sometimes you just see the sound team hit with a small WAV file that makes all the difference. The sound for the web is excellent.
«All those little pieces come together when you have people working in their craft so excellently to create that satisfying button click,» Ford said. «Because at the end of the day, that’s all we’re doing, right? We’re putting together buttons and dressing them up in a way that makes it feel like something that’s never been in Warframe before.»
More legs meant more design challenges
Believe it or not, Oraxia existed far before the Spider-Frame meme took root in the Warframe community. Ford said the Warframe team wanted to piece this frame together as far back as 2023.
While developer Digital Extremes has a very close-knit relationship with Warframe players, Oraxia’s development process was largely unaltered by the memetic feedback the team was constantly bombarded with.
«For us, this was always a character that needed the whole treatment,» Alonso said. «There are memes that can be hard to overcome — think ‘Hydroid trailer‘ — but this one wasn’t much of a problem because we had so many cool concepts for what the Warframe was going to be. The meme of it being a secret was just kind of fun for us.»
What made Digital Extremes hold off on Oraxia for so long? Understandably, bringing this frame to fruition was something of a design nightmare.
«The perfect summary is that this was the ‘Oh, god, what have we done?’ Warframe,» said Ford.
Alonso explained that Oraxia was far more complex to create than the average Warframe because there were so many considerations that needed to be made regarding the legs that appear during her ultimate ability.
Every Warframe team needed to work in tandem to smooth the kinks with the latest frame. Oraxia required new model rigging, animation trees, animation tweaks and complete animation overhauls for how the frame’s legs move and react to the environment around them.
The unique shape of the frame meant collision hitboxes had to be tinkered with, and the player camera needed to be pulled back away from Oraxia because her legs were obscuring the aiming reticle.
There was a cascading series of issues that made the Spider-Frame a tough character to integrate into the game. But seeing the frame in action for the first time validated the team’s decision to commit to it.
«There were just so many things to fix with Oraxia, but the frame ended up being really cool,» Alonso said. «That’s the thing that always catches us: We want to make something cool, and it can be painful getting there, but it’s worth it in the end.»
From foe to friend: Creating a Warframe’s boss fight
Before you get a chance to try out Oraxia for yourself, you’ll have to challenge the sticky seamstress on a newly revealed island in Duviri.
This isn’t the first time players have had to fight another Warframe, of course. Solar rail specters have historically gated every new planet on the Star Chart, and the Stalker’s Warframe acolytes routinely show up to threaten you if you’re bold enough to walk the Steel Path.
Kullervo, one of the other Warframes featured in Duviri, has a boss fight of his own, where you challenge the tortured soul in his gladiatorial arena. But Warframe’s design team has had a lot of practice with boss fights since his debut, learning lessons that will apply in the battle against Oraxia.
«We’re getting better at telegraphing moves and being more careful explaining how things work,» Alonso said. «You know, we have a few bosses within Warframe that — even people that have been playing for years don’t really know how they work. They just know ‘shoot them until it dies’ and they don’t know why. So we want to find where those communication breakdowns are happening and fix those.»
Perhaps more importantly, Alonso explained that traditional boss fights really don’t work in a game like Warframe, so it’s up to the team to find fun new ways to make things challenging, without creating bullet-sponge enemies.
«We’re also trying to have more mechanics rather than just making bosses that essentially soak up damage. When it comes to just avoiding damage or dealing out damage, Warframes are so good at those things that fights become a DPS race,» Alonso said, referring to damage per second. «If it’s just a survivability race, you just subsume Mesmer Skin and stand there — there’s no problem in your life, right? So we’re basically trying to find those spots where there are interesting mechanics.»
Oraxia’s boss fight will include movement mechanics at different intervals, forcing you to avoid hazards in the midst of tangling with your venomous foe.
«In this one, we have some tunnels between boss stages, where you have to dodge some lightning,» Alonso said. «It’s not a complicated thing. It’s not a hard thing. But it’s fun to dodge, jump and slide under it. It adds a different beat of gameplay that feels very Warframe.»
If you’re looking for a model of what the Warframe team believes a good boss fight should feel like, look no further than the Technocyte Coda enemies introduced in Warframe 1999, Alonso said. You might not battle the same infested lich every time, but the stage hazards, like laser lights and explosions, anchor the fight.
«I think that shows a little bit of what we like, which is a bit of combat, then some kind of mechanical component before you’re back in combat again,» he said. «That flows really well, and we’ve found that it has a good rhythm to it.»
The Isleweaver update is available for free now on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. You can dive into the Duviri invasion, help Dominus Thrax retake his throne, and battle Oraxia at her island lair next time you log in to Warframe.
