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Warframe's spaceship combat is now live with the Empyrean expansion

Surprise!

While most announcements at The Game Awards focus on games months and years away, this one relates to something you can play right now: Warframe just launched its latest expansion, live on stage during the show. Empyrean is the expansion which lets crabmen pilot their own spaceship together with up to three pals, blasting through new spaceship missions. It is wild how much Warframe has grown from its humble beginnings as a third-person shooter.

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With Empyrean, the wee crabmen can pile into Railjack spaceships for new battles, missions, and quests. Up to four players can fly a ship, taking on different roles. Man the guns! Patch the holes! Launch yourself into space with an Archwing suit to board ships and blow their reactors! Fight off enemy boarding parties! That's pretty ridiculous considering how small the game started. Ships can also be upgraded with new special abilities, new components, new weapon types, and such - plus you can make 'em pretty and name 'em, obvs.

Developers Digital Extremes say you'll want a full crew for the full Empyrean experience and that's what they've balanced it around. Solo spacecrabs can still blast off, mind, and the devs do note they have plans for "enhanced solo capabilities" next year.

Warframe is free-to-play through its own client and Steam.

Here, our vidman Matthew has more to tell you about spaceships:

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Check out the night's other announcements and trailers on our Game Awards tag.

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