Warframe’s Iceblade of Narin update - featuring the new female Ice frame - is out now, so I caught up with Digital Extremes to learn more.
Iceblade of Narin feels like a world tour of Warframe. We're headed back to Earth and Yuvan Peak - the snowy mountain where we make The War Within's game-defining choices. Our latest addition to the roster is Narin, an Ice-themed Warframe - the first since Frost himself. Iceblade of Narin acts as a bridge between the classic Origin system and the highly anticipated Tau, which lurks on the horizon. In many ways, it's the meeting point of old and new; it's tinged with nostalgia and the promise of fresh adventures.
Narin herself embodies that temporal meeting point. "Since the dawn of time, Tenno have yearned for the different variants of Warframes when it comes to the element side of stuff," Warframe Community Director Megan Everett tells me ahead of the update's launch. "We have the male and female fire, we have the male and female electric - they're all pretty unique, but they're all centered around that shared element. That's always something that people have asked for: same element, but different kind of thing.
"Frost being literally one of the OG Warframes, dating back to 2013, he's old," she laughs. "As we go into our 13th year of development, it really felt overdue when you took a step back - you're like 'oh my God, he's really the only true Ice frame.' It was just time to bring another Ice frame into the mix. Narin obviously brings that Ice element, but in a much more romantic and beautiful twist on ice."
"Frost is snow globes, snowballs avalanches - he's very much the quintessential frost frame that one would think of," Everett continues. "Then you have Narin, who kind of embodies the spirit of an ice crane, and she's got her ice rapier and she's dancing and killing enemies - she can fly for a hot minute.
"I really do feel like Narin, in a way, kind of represents how [Digital Extremes] has evolved in its design of Warframes," she muses. "You look at 2013 frames - with Frost being a great example of that - and you can see how literal they are in terms of their functionality. Obviously that serves a purpose; people still play them to this day. The OGs still have an absolute place and they're very valued in Warframe because they're icons. But, the 2026 and beyond DE design is really about taking what is a simple idea - a female Ice frame - and really pushing ourselves to produce something that Warframe hasn't touched yet.
"With Frost being an old 2013 frame, we definitely could look at him and be like, 'wouldn't it be cool to have this kind of texture on him?' and now we can do that with Narin. Narin has snow and ice texture on her. We've got all of this new tech and we're able to do things that we weren't able to achieve back in 2013, and really play with it in a more feminine and poetic silhouette.
"You get Frost with his snowballs and that's great; everyone loves Frost and they'll still play Frost. But, maybe you want a more poetic Narin, and you have that now."
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/warframe/iceblade-of-narin-update-live
