We're getting "a little bit more" of Warframe's Jade Shadows, as Digital Extremes knows Constellations "didn't give players as much as they wanted"

Jade Shadows is, perhaps, one of the best videogame quests ever made. It's a Warframe story, and thus it takes place in a world far different from our own. We're in outer space, dashing around as The Stalker, a relentless, vicious hunter intent on spilling Tenno blood. And yet, somehow, Jade Shadows manages to be wonderfully human. It's a story of loss; it deals with a mother's passing during childbirth; a forbidden love shrouded in mystery. It's perhaps one of the only quests that I've ever seen tackle feminine trauma well - it's beautiful and impressively fearless.

Jade Shadows: Constellations, then, was highly anticipated from the get-go. "It really was our first attempt at a true sequel to a quest," Community Director Megan Everett tells me. "Obviously, the Warframe storyline is a continuation of where the story gets left off, but we've never done a 'part two, serious, true to story' sequel.

"Rebb [Warframe's Creative Director Rebecca Ford] always knew that, when we finished the original Jade Shadows, and there's obviously that choice at the end, that that [decision] was going to do something later on. We didn't know what that something was; we didn't know when that something was going to happen. But [Rebb] always felt, in her heart, that she wanted to do a part two."

"When we knew we wanted to do Jade Shadows: Constellations, we did take a different approach - you could say they're both two very different stories and different quests," Everett muses. "Jade Shadows 'One' scratched that emotional itch, whereas Jade Shadows 'Two' had a moment of that as well, but it was more of the fighting and the violence that people are used to with Warframe."

She notes that the team wanted to go the "anime route" with the "two brothers fighting in the sky; eternal conflict and war. We got a lot of love from that quest as well for how crazy we went with Sirius and Orion and how their kit works. Players appreciated that."

If you haven't played Sirius and Orion yet, they're effectively two entities in one Warframe. They have their own unique skills and abilities, effectively giving you a two-for-one deal; it's certainly ambitious, but ambition is what I've come to expect from DE.

"Obviously [the duo, or 'duoframe' as I'm coining it] had some hiccups, because our entire game runs on the code philosophy that you are one entity doing a task - you are one Warframe picking up a data mass; you are one Warframe hacking a console," she says. "Then we were like, 'what if you were two Warframes?' Our game was like, 'What the hell?' We did that to ourselves, introducing some bugs in that realm."

"But, from a quest reception standpoint, while we got a lot of feedback like, 'I wanted more, give me more,' that's also a good thing, because it means people liked the story and engaged with it enough that they're like, 'I'm hungry! I wanted more than that!' It's unfortunate that we couldn't give them as much as they wanted."

While Jade Shadows' sequel was woefully short, and as a Garuda lover I felt like her Protoframe, Vena, didn't quite get the screentime I'd hoped for, Everett highlights that Constellations dropped just before TennoCon, Digital Extremes' annual Warframe and Soulframe festival. "We kind of put ourselves in a situation of, weeks before TennoCon, let's put out a quest and a crazy Warframe - we did that to ourselves!" she laughs.

"But we've also committed to saying, as of recently, that we are going to add a bit more lore for Vena and Ryoku [Garuda and Ash's Protoframes, respectively]; they didn't really have their time to shine in Constellations. So, we are going to add a little bit more later in the year, and honestly, that's because that's what the players wanted. They really resonated with that, and they want that, and we're willing to make the time to continue that story for them."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: while Warframe is undoubtedly a bit of a slow-starter when it comes to the overarching campaign, when Digital Extremes is left to cook, it creates some wild, wonderful things. Warframe does quests in a way that no other multiplayer game does; it explores darker themes with confidence, and it touches on aspects of real life that I can't ever see Fortnite, League of Legends, or Minecraft doing.

Jade Shadows and Constellations are a testament to that creative thinking, and proof that we need more female leads in videogame development as a whole. With Tau on the horizon and Ford highlighting its overarching themes of "addiction," I'm intrigued to see how Digital Extremes handles what looks to be one of Warframe's darkest chapters to date.