For three years, getting into Soulframe meant waiting for an invitation. On November 6, the fantasy action RPG from Warframe developer Digital Extremes opens its pre-alpha to all PC players. Yet the timing comes with a twist: the game’s next major update is set to make its world more dangerous just as newcomers arrive.
That update, called Verse of the Veilands, is planned for later in November. It will reshape Midrath, the game’s large open region, turning a landscape once described as verdant and relatively peaceful into a corrupted place players must work to restore. The contrast is more than a change in atmosphere. It points to a new way of teaching players what they are doing in Soulframe—and why.
Learning the world by bringing it back
According to creative director Geoff Crookes, players will initially face a world that feels “much more unforgiving and harsh.” In the revised structure, the main quest will guide them toward stopping siphons that drain Midrath of its color. As zones are cleansed, the enemies and resources found there will change, and activities such as fishing will become available.
That gives the opening a clearer cause-and-effect than simply sending players into a sprawling landscape and expecting them to find their bearings. Exploration becomes a record of recovery: a place changes because the player has acted, and new opportunities appear as a result. Even raising a wolf pup into a mount is tied to the broader sense of gradually making the world livable again.
The redesign follows feedback from players who struggled to reach the point where they could freely explore the open world. Digital Extremes wants the early hours to offer a more direct introduction, while giving players greater ownership of their early decisions. Faction leaders are also due to receive substantial new written material and a more active presence, with dialogue helping explain the world’s history as players work through the restoration.
A more guided beginning, with room still to grow
There is a balancing act here. A guided quest can make an unfamiliar world easier to read, but too much direction can make exploration feel like a checklist. Soulframe’s proposed answer is to make the guidance part of the fiction: stopping the siphons is both a practical objective and the reason Midrath’s character, resources and activities change. Whether that gives players enough freedom without leaving them lost is something the newly opened pre-alpha will help test.
Verse of the Veilands will also add a new Pact, Soulframe’s class-like choice. Its name had not been settled during the developers’ presentation, but the team described it as a hunter or poacher type associated with the alien Ode. Its abilities sound deliberately unruly: binding foes with a sci-fi bola, striking them with a cone of spikes, or attaching a balloon to send them flying—a comic, physics-driven flourish reminiscent of Metal Gear Solid 5.
That playful combat sits alongside the update’s harsher world, suggesting Soulframe is not aiming for grimness alone. Still, the developers cautioned that the overhaul is a major structural change and was being actively adjusted during the presentation. Lead designer Scott McGregor called it one of the biggest and most violent shifts to the game’s structure in some time. The team described the current version as the functional bones of what it ultimately wants to build.
The update is planned to arrive before the end of November, but it will not be ready for the November 6 opening. Players who want the redesigned introduction may therefore choose to wait; those who jump in earlier will see the pre-alpha before this transformation. Either way, Soulframe’s next test is not simply whether its world can hold attention. It is whether a world that teaches through its own recovery can make getting lost feel like part of the journey.