There’s plenty of news at Wayfinder, because after parting ways with Warframe publisher Digital Extremes, Airship Syndicate has rebuilt the game and is pursuing a new concept.
Wayfinder was actually supposed to be an online action role-playing game with a free-to-play model. The game went into early access last year – with manageable success and rather lousy reviews due to many problems. In addition, Warframe makers Digital Extremes closed their publishing division.
Those were probably enough reasons for Airship Syndicate to completely redesign the game. Instead of an online role-playing game and free-to-play, Wayfinder is now becoming a single-player full-price game under the new title Wayfinder Echoes, the remaining multiplayer component of which is a peer-to-peer co-op mode for up to three players – i.e. purely optional. Any microtransactions or in-game purchases will be kicked out of the game.
Airship claims to have “touched every major system” for the re-release of Wayfinder. Changes include “all weapons become random drops with different slots, armor now has stats and is collectible, thousands of cosmetics and housing items are available to collect, elimination of the grind to get new characters, eased requirements for “Awakening characters, increased housing item limits, four new difficulty levels to choose from, incorporating traditional RPG talents into your progression, and much more.”
It should start soon. There will be a soft launch on May 31st for players who have already purchased the early access version. From June 11th, the game can be purchased again via Steam for a new early access phase (price around 25 dollars). The game is scheduled to leave Early Access later in the year, but not without some new content being implemented first.
The innovations will also be coming to the PS5 version later this year, while the PS4 version will no longer be developed and will be upgraded to PS5 for free. In addition, a version for Xbox Series X/S has now been officially announced, which will be made available during Early Access. A brave step, we can only hope that a usable game comes out in the end and that the effort is worth it in the end.
Level Infinite provides further insights into what to expect in the upcoming Wayfinder in a trailer.
