Warframe developer Digital Extremes is hard at work making its first game in nearly a decade, Soulframe , alongside the community in its early access “Preludes” form. To write the Soulframe cover story in the May issue of Game Informer , I traveled to Digital Extremes in Ontario, Canada, to learn more about the game, and it’s there that I learned this fantasy MMO is a response to the cynicism of the world.

“To appeal to the sort of aesthetic or emotional reason for why we would make [Soulframe] is kind of a response to the cynicism of the world we are finding ourselves within today,” Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair tells me. “And I think that is sharper than it even was when we started it.”

He recalls reading a 2021 New York Times article about the appeal of The Lord of the Rings . It posits that the movie trilogy resonates with audiences so much because it shows men in touch with their emotions, and that people can be redeemed.…