Tau isn't "Warframe 2," but it's a bold new step for Digital Extremes

Published: July 11, 2026

Tau has forever been somewhat of an enigma. An eerie, terraformed star system that acts as the de facto home of the Sentients, it's been referenced many a time over the past few years, but we've never actually seen it. At TennoCon 2025, Digital Extremes confirmed that it'd be taking us to Tau in 2026, setting things up with The Old Peace. 365 days later at TennoCon 2026, we've finally caught our first glimpse of Warframe's new system, and it's a noir-infused nightmare come true.

As Brysko - our mysterious new Chimera Frame - boards a hovercraft and ventures out into the wider city of Fornax, my mind immediately flicks to Critical Hit Games' Nobody Wants to Die. There are, of course, lashes of CD Projekt Red's Night City, and there's a broodiness that L.A. Noire would be proud of. Yet, simultaneously, it's quintessentially Warframe. Drug-riddled Sentients line dark alleyways; ominous, oil-like ooze drips from the rooftops, and black rain falls from the skies. It's not like Deimos with its dark blacks and neon reds - on Tau, there's an eerie green malaise in the air. If LA is, to quote Herschel Biggs at the start of L.A. Noire, "a city of undercurrents," Tau is its galactic sister.

Our mission - given to us by Entrati - is to cozy up to The Hunra, Fornax's premier mob boss. We confront twin Sentients that can fight both as one, fused-together entity, and as separate parts. They're creepy; they screech and warble that they're sick and tired of killing us. Their movements are robotic, yet fluid; it's indicative of the wider feel of Fornax. Even The Hunra's casino, which we're guided through at the end of the demo, feels oppressive in its aliveness.

"One of Rebb [Warfame's Creative Director Rebecca Ford]'s favorite shows is Sopranos, so she took a lot of inspiration from there," Community Director Megan Everett tells me. "There's also a lot of elements in the city that are very mutated and [H.R.] Giger-eque, and that kind of nasty, fleshy route that really fits the Sentient faction as a whole because of just how freaky and put together they are. There's definitely the Al Capone casino route, L.A. Noire route in there - we took very literal things, a casino is a very human thing, and turned it Sentient."

It's a new look for Warframe. The traditional blues, golds, and whites have been cast aside for grit and grime; in some ways it's reminiscent of the Germanopunk feel of 1999, but where there were recognizable human elements there, everything on Tau is alien. In many ways, it's disarming; a roulette table becomes a thinking entity - everywhere you go, something is watching.

It ties into the general "mafia theme" that Everett says the team was going for. "Going to Tau isn't going to be happy," she stresses. "There's no world where what has transpired equals a happy Tau, sunshine and rainbows type of situation."

At the core of 2026's demo, however, is Brysko. As mentioned, Brysko is a "Chimera Frame," a part-Warframe, part-Protoframe created by long-running man of mystery, Albrecht Entrati. He communicates in the form of an inner monologue, which feels like it's ripped straight out of an old detective flick. Voiced by Critical Role icon Matthew Mercer, Brysko's soliloquies are equal parts brooding and gritty: "being beat to shit down at the docks was enough excitement for me," he murmurs, implying that this isn't his first rodeo. There are more curse words than I expected; there's a viciousness, an idgaf-ness. As someone who adores the noir aesthetic and detective feel, I fell in love with him immediately.

We don't see much of Brysko's in-game kit - he uses playing cards in the style of Ragin' Cajun Gambit, and we've seen his revolver-esque gun in action, but that's everything for now. What I do enjoy, however, is his slow, more methodical approach to gameplay. As he meanders through the bowels of Tau, he stops and the screen goes gray. He analyzes the world around him; you can imagine him pinning threads to a corkboard in his mind. It's a slower pace than Warframe's usual gameplay - something that Digital Extremes trialed with the Follie's Hunt mode in the Shadowgrapher update, to a somewhat mixed response.

I ask Everett if this slightly slower pace is intentional or if it's slowed down and more cinematic for the purpose of the demo. "It's definitely intentional," she replies. "If you look at The Old Peace, it's just war, and it was like 'holy shit, go, go go - we're in the trenches, we're at war, we're at battle, oh my God.' Players have been wanting to go to Tau for so long; it would feel wrong for us to rush through it and for them to not experience [it].

"Having those beats of Brysko actually assessing the situation of those Sentients who got their heads busted in; the cards on the ground - he's piecing things together. All of this stuff is very much intended to really slow things down and let the player drink in the environment, because we're finally here. This has been years and years in the making. I don't think anyone envisioned that Tau was going to look like a Sentient, drug lord kind of a city, but we're here.

"You have to have the twin boss fight; you've got to have the peaks and valleys [of action]," she continues. "But because we're going weird and wacky, there's so much to look at and understand the environment. Every drug addict Sentient that you see has a voiceline, and those voicelines matter because they're saying these weird, creepy things. We're finally in Tau; let's take a look."

It's going to be one of the biggest updates we've ever done.

Megan Everett - Warframe Community Director

With Tau, however, comes an entirely new System with its own unique planets and locations. Akin to The Origin System, you'll be able to jump between them, exploring entirely new worlds on your quest to learn more about the mysterious Hunra - which Ford describes as being more of a "title" than a specific race or faction. Everett is keen to stress that this "doesn't mean we're leaving the old Star Chart behind," but agrees that Tau, in many ways, feels like a new chapter for Warframe.

"We would never just be like 'nope, see you later, this is Warframe 2, this is all that you're going to get.' We would never do that. But, it is a huge step. We flirted with that a bit when we did our open worlds; that was kind of our way of being the expansion of Warfame; 'look at these open worlds!' We did three of them - obviously we also went to 1999, which was crazy - but that's the kind of extent as to where we'd say that we grew location-wise.

"This is a separate Star Chart, all-new planets. I wouldn't necessarily call it 'Warframe 2' or anything, but it definitely is its own thing. It's going to be huge; it's going to be one of the biggest updates we've ever done."

Warframe's Tau update is set to launch in 2026. Before then, however, we can expect the 'Unannounced Fall Update,' called the Iceblade of Narin. There's a new, female cold-aligned Frame, Citrine Prime, and Deluxe skins for Banshee and Qorvex. Banshee is also receiving a rework, with more information to be announced further down the line.

Tau, however, is easily one of the biggest things to ever come to Warframe. It kickstarts a whole new era for the game; a game that continues to shatter internal records and lurk at the top of Steam's most-played charts. More than that, however, it's yet another welcome curveball - I've praised Digital Extremes time and time again for its ability to shock me; I think I've seen it all, then DE does something unexpected. The future of Warframe looks bright, even in the bowels of some of its darkest regions yet.