Warframe’s upcoming Jade Shadows cinematic quest update looks to be a pivotal moment for the game’s narrative by bringing the focus back to the enigmatic Stalker and his tragic origins. Voiced by prolific actor Gianni Matragrano, players will take full control of the Stalker during this chapter to experience events from his point of view. The expansion also introduces Jade, an elegant, musically-themed frame with an arsenal of support abilities and soaring flight movement.
Game Rant sat down withWarframecreative director Rebb Ford to discuss Jade Shadows, particularly about the Stalker and how this expansion is the culmination of over a decade of Stalker buildup. She also detailed the team’s approach to character design, how they navigate tricky narrative moments, and how Digital Extremes keeps track of its ever-expanding lore.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Bringing Back A Fan-Favorite Warframe Character
Q: The Stalker is a fan-favorite character, but we haven’t seen him narratively in a few years. Why is that, and why now?
Ford:Bringing Stalker to life with a story follow-up basically boiled down to, “What story is there to tell about his character and when will it happen in the timeline?” We went back and forth for a very long time about, “Should we start telling the Stalker story right after The Second Dream?” Where he ended up in The New War and what happened there. When the themes of the story that we aim to tell in Jade Shadows started getting really mature and really consequential for him as a character, we felt that the best way to give a player a real Stalker experience was for it to be after The New War, and we need to invest a lot of time into it.
The New War shipped in December 2021and we spent the next year rebuilding the team with the role changes. I think as early as 2022, I knew I wanted to do a post-New War Stalker quest. Then in 2023, we put the pitch together and we got everything going, then 2023 kind of went a little crazy.
We had Duviri and Whispers in the Wall in the same year, so it didn’t fit. Now we have the resources to do it, so it’s been cooking for the better part of two years. Though, in terms of ideas, we really only started getting the main content built for it this year, but concept art and writing were all iterated on over the past year and a half.
Q: When Stalker was introduced back in 2013, he was mostly just a game mechanic. Was it the plan all along to develop him narratively like this?
Ford:I can say for sure that what we’re about to release, we never thought would happen back in 2013. Respect to the team at the time: the community fell in love right away and it was really easy to justify investing in the intrigue. He was one of the first characters to get a custom codex entry, which is sort of a signal.
Generally speaking, if you pay attention to the way we developWarframeas alive-service game, when we start leaving breadcrumbs about certain characters, that means that someone at the office really sees a future for them or we’re really interested in them. Stalker has had the longest tenure as the character everyone loves to work on or be involved with. This is a love letter to 10 years of Stalker intrigue.
Q: Speaking of plans, what was the longest period between coming up with an idea and execution? Were there any story or character moments that didn’t happen until five or six years after they were conceived?
Ford:Not related to Stalker, I know that Pablo and I have had some notes to ourselves that we’re getting to get through but nothing particularly complicated. We’ve had some random ideas that have just been on the back burner for so long, likethe Ghoulsaw weapon. That was something that the enemies got to use since the Ghoul Purge in 2017 and then we released it to the players in 2021, so there are some long-standing content types that players have really wanted.
With this Jade Shadows moment, it was sort of like a perfect touch point on a lot of really experienced staff members hitting an idea that just worked with what we were doing. For instance, Mike Skyers, who created Jade, was like, “I have this idea for a Warframe. Here are some sketches.” Then we looked at it internally and suddenly the lines started connecting to the Stalker story.
For us, I think the thing I’m most grateful for in Jade Shadows is Mike Skyers throwing his character concept into the pile in a way that said, “Here, I have this idea, I have this really prominent inspiration, can we make this frame?” It was the best way to get the Stalker story told with Jade and Jade Shadows. Shout out to Mike Skyers entirely for making the Warframe that supports the story we’re going to tell because I don’t think it would have been possible without Jade, which is codenamed “Choir” internally.
Q: What can you tell us about this new Jade frame?
Ford:I can say that Jade at a concept level again came from Mike Skyers and there’s one detail that we haven’t shared about Jade that we intended to keep completely private until release. We knew the Jade Light was very important to her, and her angelic theme and choir theme and wings just felt like such a natural opposite to Stalker in so many ways.
We’ve recorded over a dozen people to do choir for her sound; she’s really musically involved with the choir theme. Then the design team just went and said, “Okay, so we have an angelic theme and Jade Light. Let’s work out on paper something that touches all those themes in a way that feels unlike any other Warframe.”
She has these areas of support: she has this ability to debuff enemies and then her ultimate—which really surprised me when I hit the four button the first time—is she just takes flight and it’s so liberating and freeing because when you go through her quest and you start actually flying around the level of attacking from the air, it’s just a very different way to pilot a Warframe.Hildryn is a tactical airborne unit, Titania is a little bug, and Jade is this graceful and glorious creature that can rain down from the skies.
Q: It must be difficult having characters like Stalker that are fan favorites but you don’t necessarily want to overplay your hand. How do you decide when it’s time to bring some new attention to a character?
Ford:In doing the quest for Jade Shadows, I think we had a couple of core rules for this character. There’s a couple of little twists in here that we’ll talk about without spoiling too much, and that is speaking. You’ve known the Stalker to torment you with a couple of lines like, “Your Tenno powers are useless.” Those are just lines we put in back in 2013 to have that sense of antagonism.
For the quest, we wanted to make sure that he’s not a poet; you’re not going to get an inner monologue moment with him. It’s not like he is sitting on his lonesome speaking to himself. He’s very much a man of few words. He’s not clever. He’s not Kahl. He’s a stalker and you’ll learn about what drives him.
We wanted to make sure that it felt authentic, so we did recast the Stalker character—all props to George on the sound team—but we hired an extremely talented voice actor to bring together those single-word lines and everything. He is a longtimeWarframefan, he’s been a part oftheWarframecommunityfor a long time, so I’m really excited to work with him. It’s Gianni Matragrano. You might know Gianni from Twitter. He’s a fun guy. He does a lot of good meme videos, but he’s just awesome.
It must be such a cool feeling to be a longtimeWarframefan and end up voicing Stalker. Props to him!
Ford:I know! It’s a big win for him and a big win for us.
How Warframe Keeps Its Story Interesting After 11 Years
Q:Warframe’s narrative and characters have gone in a lot of interesting directions over the years. Dominus Thrax was pretty crazy. How do you keep things fresh with each update?
Ford:We kind of look to where we haven’t tended in a while and think, “Okay, we haven’t paid attention to the Corpus lately,” or “We haven’t paid attention to a given character” and we try and develop antagonists out of our natural pool of characters we can work with. I think the stressful and exciting thing about havingsomething like TennoConis you’re sort of forced to make decisions about the future in quarterly cadences. You actually have to have a plan and you have to stick to it, and the completion of something like The New War is really a good way for us to say, “Okay, we wrapped up a lot there. What can we stay away from for a long time thematically and character-wise?”
It’s crazy to me to be sitting here in 2024, and start thinking that, “Oh, maybe it’s time to visit Lotus again,” because the last we heard from her was 2021, with The New War, so you kind of have to go back to these characters. luckily, just because of our writing team, our design team, and our narrative team, we have a lot of—oh, God, I don’t know what metaphor even works, I don’t want to say “troughs to eat from” because we’re not cattle—extremely deep sources to tie into the future ofWarframe.
We know we want The Man in the Wall, Albrecht, all these characters to be a really long-term thing, and there are so many characters that need to be involved in that along the way. That all kicked off with Whispers in the Walls. We had Necraloid, and then Loid, and then from there it’s going to go a little crazy this year. We have more story content coming than I think people realize this year.
It’s all planned out. There are a lot of unfinished stories out there, and some are already in development for next year.
Q: You mentioned Lotus. Since you are the Lotus, how does portraying the character factor into your approach to her characterization? Does it give you a different perspective?
Ford:I try and say, “As a character, this is what she wants right now.” Like last we saw her, this thing happened at the end of The New War, she was a little bit involved in Angels of the Zariman, and then, “Where is she and where has she been?”
Thanks to the team, the longer we work together, the more we bounce off each other. They know that I’m never going to make a call on the Lotus’ final state. I make jokes aboutkilling her offall the time, like, “No more Lotus!” but we know that there’s something that’s very important that she still needs to… I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll try and dance around it, but the base point is I have separated her completely. Sometimes the only thing I do is nitpick, “Well, she wouldn’t really say it like that,” or some other type of correction. Who knows what the future holds for her?
Q: Jade Shadows is shaping up to have some pretty big character moments. Was there anything you felt was really important to “get right” going into it?
Ford:I can’t say too much, because it’s such a huge spoiler, but I think the one detail that we didn’t share on the dev stream but will become fairly obvious as we start ramping up the launch is that this is actually a quest that is about 25 minutes or so, but we do intend for the player to be locked in it similar to The New War.
In The New War, you had to type “The New War” and agree that you were ready to play and not have access to anything else, and this is a similar one. We wanted it to be played uninterrupted. We didn’t want people to do a missionon the questand then go do something that wasn’t touching the themes we were going for. That was a very conscious choice for having this story play out as the Stalker would want it to be played.
Q:Warframe’s story and characters are constantly being speculated about by fans. Have you ever changed plans on something because you noticed players might be expecting it?
Ford: Not really. I don’t really find any joy in throwing them off. If they guess something and it’s on the right track, good for them. There’s not a lot I can do for myself or the team to change direction just because players guessed something. It’s not really part of our operations. We go too fast for that, and I think for now that’s our philosophy.
Q: Are there characters you feel fans should pay closer attention to?
Ford:I think Ordis is going to have an interesting role to play in Jade Shadows and specifically the post-Jade Shadows content. There are going to be fun twists there that people have been asking for, so it’s kind of the opposite of what you said. Not that we do fan service, but there’s some unfinished business with Ordis I think since The New War. For Ordis enjoyers, especially if you play the event operation after the quest, there’s some Ordis exposure there that hopefully people like.
Q: With Jade Shadows, what are you trying to evoke emotionally from players? Is there an overall theme that you’re trying to touch on?
Ford:I think thematically this is a very, very deeply personal story for the Stalker. This story evokes themes of, “What does it mean to have your world flipped upside down?” Of beingtypecast as the villainversus perhaps being the hero for once. “What motivates you to do anything? Are you always justified in your choices?” I hope that comes through.
Q: We’re getting “full control of the Stalker” with Jade Shadows. What does that entail? Will he be in the Arsenal?
Ford:I wish! The quest is played from the Stalker’s point of view. He’ll still be visiting you in Duviri as a playable character if you have that unlocked. There is an Easter egg in the event that you may discover by playing as Stalker, but he’s not going to be available as a full frame after this quest.
Q:Warframe’s lore and worldbuilding is approachingLord of the Ringslevels of complexity. How does the team keep track of all the characters, timelines, and technologies? Is there a “Warframe Silmarillion” the team references?
Ford:Because you said it’slikeLord of the Rings, amongst the narrative team and the team at large, we have people that are really good at very specific things. Adrian, our lead writer, knows every piece of lore we’ve ever put in the game and he’s the go-to for a lore check. Then you have people like other folks on the writing teams who are just so character-voice-driven that they know what anyone would say in every given scenario.
Adrian’s our Legolas: he’s timeless, graceful, and also British so he knows everything. Then I am Elrond: I was there when the fires were forged. I’ve been on the team the longest, so I have this Elrond-esque, “You don’t need to lecture me on how that was integrated, I wrote that patch note, I know what happened.”
Then we have our narrative designers and our other writing staff who have made up this Fellowship with so many different strengths. We have our Gimli that knows how to cut through and make anything work and hook up, and then our hobbits are certainly the community that is so pure of heart and just takes us to the promised land.
How Warframe Manages Its Complex Lore
Q: Looking back, are there any story moments that you perhaps would have liked to have played out a little differently for any reason?
Ford:I think the one thing that we probably will struggle with the most over long periods of time is story moments that are just no longer playable likesome of our original events. A lot of players will mention something like, “Well, in 2015, you had the Eyes of Blight event and players lost lore with relays being destroyed,” et cetera. It’s very difficult to decide when and how to best bring that back because nothing is as simple as just adding it to the Codex and all of a sudden it’s there, so figuring out those things I think will have a long tail of, “I wish we handled it differently,” and thinking about how to get it in-game for anyone to be aware of.
Q: I can think of some that are probably big ones, but were there any character or narrative moments that you felt were particularly challenging to navigate?
Ford:Oh for sure. I think that the character and the moments for someone like Erra—who’s now known as Pazuul—is going to be tricky, but I’m really looking forward to exploring that more in the upcoming updates. It’s those types of things. When do you decide when a character is written out explicitly or not? This is a very difficult decision people have to make in these ongoing games because in 10 years we could be the nextYoung and the Restlesswhere it becomes a soap opera and Ballas’ brother Rallas comes and it’s all a scandal.
We know we’re a little bit of a soap opera in some ways, butisOne Pieceany different? It’s been going on for over 20 years. It’s about sustaining a meaningful human story with the cast of characters we have along the way. Knowing when and when not to end a given character’s chapter is hugely important.
Q: Earlier you mentioned having some internal rules for handling the Stalker. Do you have any other internal rules for characters or Warframe’s universe?
Ford:One of the most highly controversial things right now as we’re developing1999is, “IsWarframeallowed to drop F-bombs?” We officially have never said the F-word anywhere, but we’re like, “This character would really say it.” It’s 1999, he’s pissed off, it’s the ’90s, he’s going to drop the F-bomb—but we’re like, “Can we? Should we?”
Warframehas skirted not having the F-word in it for so long. It seems crazy to add it now. Those are some weird rules we really do need to ratify because you’ll start writing transmissions or story beats for a brand-new character and of course it makes sense in your head that they’re dropping really contemporary profanity, but as a rule, we’ve never done it, so none of us want to be the first to break it. That’s just more of a fun one.
You could always go the Battlestar Galactica route and call it “frak” or something!
Ford:Yeah we had “fuzz” and other things, so we’ll see where it ends up.
Q: Is there anything about Jade Shadows that you’re most excited for fans to experience?
Ford:I think that for this particularcinematic quest update, you know, players will hop in—of course, they have to be finished with The New War to play it—and they can jump right into the Jade Shadows quest, but I don’t think I’ve ever been more on edge for how players are going to receive a quest. This is likely going to evoke some of the strongest feelings and reactions of any quests we’ve ever done if I had to guess, which is saying something.
Q: Was there anything about the Stalker that you really wanted to explore? We haven’t really seen things from his perspective.
Ford:It really came down to if this character experienced everything they have inWarframe—they face off against the truth about what Warframes are, operators, they endure The New War, Hunhow has clearly taken Stalker under their wing for whatever reason and clearly something is going on there—we need to see from Stalker’s perspective because we are not welcome in Stalker’s world and that’s been made clear.
Clearly Stalker is willing to help us. He gave us the Archon Shards after the fights with the Archons in The New War. There’s clearly something he wants, we just don’t know what it is until Jade Shadows.
Q: Is Jade Shadows more of a self-contained quest, or is this a narrative thread we might be following throughout the year?
Ford:This is not the end. If anything it’s a new beginning, but I can’t say where we’re going to go from here. It’s certainly not a closed book by any means.
Q: Anything else we haven’t touched on that you’d like to mention?
Ford:I just hope people really dig the quest and the story. There’s going to be a lot of spoiler courtesy we ask from our players. If you play it, and you have thoughts, please spoiler tag. We don’t want secrets being broadcast.
[END]
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