Discover Warframe's weird origins in 2008 shooter Dark Sector

The concept for Warframe existed a decade or more before Warframe’s release in 2013. It’s common for studios to harbour ideas for new games that one day—budgets willing—they will have a chance to make. Rarely do entire chunks of those ideas turn up in entirely different games, however. Before Warframe, there was Dark Sector. As a Warframe player, revisiting this 2008 cover shooter has given me a very strange case of reverse déjà-vu.

Dark Sector is a game about a man called Hayden Tenno who throws a homing glaive at anonymous foes. Warframe players will have already flagged that surname: Tenno is the term for the order of mysterious ancient warriors that inhabit Warframes. That seems like an odd throwaway connection until you reach the end of the prologue and Hayden is attacked by a ninja called Nemesis who looks… familiar.

Later in the game Hayden finds a high-tech suit, and basically morphs into one of Warframe’s starter suits: Excalibur.

Once you've seen these fully-formed examples of Warframe's visual design, a lot of other details pop out. The hazmat-suited human enemies you fight don't look too far away from the Corpus you fight in Warframe. There's a strain of infected that rush to engage you in close combat. They are grey, shambling zombies, but not too dissimilar to Warframe's colourful infected.

It's too much of a stretch to suggest that Warframe shares a universe with Dark Sector—it would be a disappointment if the mythical Tenno were actually some leather-jacketed antiheroes from a late-2000s cover shooter. The Dark Sector Digital Extremes released in 2008 was very much of its time: a Gears of War-like with gory executions and a brooding main character. It comes from a vision that was heavily altered by market requirements.

Earlier this week I spoke to Digital Extremes founder James Schmalz about his 25 year career (more on that tomorrow) and Warframe’s long gestation period. “It’s interesting because if you look at the original trailer for [Dark Sector] it’s very much what Warframe is now, " he says. "We had the seeds of kind of what Warframe is, way back then.”

This is an early pitch video from Digital Extremes, and it shows a completely different vision for Dark Sector. The space station looks like one of Warframe's relays. The enemies are obviously the Grineer. Excalibur is there, and the yellow spider robot that shows up is Jackal, the final boss of Venus.

The concept goes all the way back to 2002. “After the Unreal games at Digital Extremes we were really looking to build our own IP," says Schmalz, "Back up in Canada right up after that, right after Unreal Championship came out, we were working on an idea called Dark Sector."

The 2008 game was released during a tough time for Digital Extremes. The studio worked hard to stay afloat doing a lot of work for hire jobs developing aspects of other companies’ games. “It was a bit of a tricky problem because we still wanted to do Dark Sector and do our own products, and have this situation where we’re hopefully two teams where one is a work for hire and it’s the bread and butter, and we’re also trying to create our own IP. 

"It was a very, very difficult position to be in for sure because as an independent developer you can have a project cancelled at any time.”

At that time Digital Extremes also developed Pariah, Warpath, the PS3 port of BioShock, BioShock 2's unusual multiplayer mode and Homefront's multiplayer mode. It wasn't until Warframe's 2013 release that the skintight Tenno suits made a comeback in an online free-to-play game. Today Warframe consistently ranks in Steam's top ten most played games. 

That old Warframe concept video hasn't been forgotten. Warframe's Lex gun looks a lot like Hayden Tenno's default pistol. Warframe's glaive can trigger one of Hayden's close combat finishers, and you can equip the Glaive Proto skin to make it look exactly like the Dark Sector weapon. On the Warframe forums user Cyborg Rox spotted a holographic projection that looks exactly like the spaceship from that early Dark Sector footage. 

The spirit of Hayden Tenno lives on.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.

Latest in Third Person Shooter
Storm trooper hero
Another live service shooter is getting shut down, this time before it even launched on Steam
Marvel Rivals characters - Hulk with his hands out as if he's grabbing the camera.
Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Titus in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 reveal promo image
Praise be to the Omnissiah! Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 3 is officially in development
Marvel Rivals characters - Captain America running towards the camera.
All Marvel Rivals characters - current and upcoming heroes
Marvel Rivals Human Torch
Marvel Rivals is carrying on the tradition of chaotic patches after buffing two of the most annoying heroes, but I main one of them, so I'm not complaining
Mech in dry dock with person standing on catwalk underneath
How long can a live service game last? Theoretically, 'forever,' says Mecha Break developer: 'The last game I was in charge of has been alive and well for 16 years'
Latest in Features
Alligator skull with glowing eyes on human body and cords coming out sitting at piano with "The Norwood Etudes" ready to play
My new most anticipated RPG let me be a kleptomaniac gourmand set loose in a noir city on a quest to make 'the perfect sandwich'
Monster Hunter Wilds' stockpile master studying a manifest
Monster Hunter Wilds' new gyro controls are a fantastic option for disabled and able-bodied players alike
Manhunt 2
I played the notoriously ratings-board-ravaged Manhunt 2 and was quite glad for the censorship actually
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
Marvel Rivals characters - Hulk with his hands out as if he's grabbing the camera.
Marvel Rivals' growing roster of heroes scares me, but the game's director seems sure that all is under control: 'Everything is progressing smoothly'
Rainbow Six Siege year 9 season 2 key art - two Rainbow Six Siege operators facing each other
'Siege 2 was never on the table': Rainbow Six Siege X director explains why the 10-year-old FPS doesn't need a sequel