Warframe Interview: A Deeper Look into Plague Star and the Grineer Ghoulsaw

With just a little over a week left in the ongoing Operation: Plague Star Event in Warframe, I had the chance to pick Art Director Geoff Crookes’ brain about the game’s most popular event along with the design of their newest weapon type. The Ghoulsaw is the newest melee weapon type in Warframe.

If there is anything that players really love about Warframe, it’s definitely the fact that there are so many unique melee weapons to choose from in your loadout. You have typical weapons like swords, axes, greatswords, sword and shields, polearms, and so forth. The team at Digital Extremes have covered what seems like almost every possible type of melee weapon.

Then they came out with the long-awaited and heavily teased Assault Saw weapon types. The first of its kind— the Ghoulsaw is one of the most unique weapons yet. Since this has been in the limelight for a while and the first of its kind for melee weapons, Geoff delved into the story and process in creating this type of weapon.

“The Ghoulsaw definitely has a unique story and it’s one of those examples of how we as developers at Digital Extremes are always taking to heart and listening to what our players want out of a great Warframe experience. When we first featured the Ghoulsaw as a weapon armed by the Grineer Ghoul Rictus around the launch of the first Operation: Plague Star in 2017, the community just went a bit nuts on our devstream and a lot of players were asking us to add it as a weapon they could earn.”

Of course, with a fanbase as loyal and passionate about the upcoming releases in Warframe, the Dev team do take things into consideration and try to meet them halfway. I was in the chat when this first came up; it was almost impossible to not see the excitement overflowing and people throwing out all sorts of cool, whacky ideas of how this weapon would work in the hands of the Tenno.

The sheer amount of support and excitement the viewers showed gave them that momentum to create something special. It got just a bit more love put into it when fans suggested that players should be able to ride it like a skateboard, gibbing enemies and looking like a badass in doing so. That’s what Digital Extremes did; you can ride this bad boy in combat.

As for the weapon’s constraints, some were met when it came to when it would release and with what update. Prior to its release, the Ghoulsaw was very far along in its development around the time when the Sevagoth update had come out. They had to make time for other updates like the Sisters of Parvos and even Tennocon 2021.

It also made more sense to have this release during a window in which it would be appropriate for something Grineer themed. The Sisters of Parvos update and smaller updates before it were Corpus themed, and it would be out of place to put something like this in the mix. However, with the reintroduction of Operation: Plague Star, it was the perfect opportunity to do so.

In regards to this event, this is the only way to obtain the Ghoulsaw. Players still have some time left before it ends on September 30. This event is a recurring one, so the chance to acquire it again will come back. Think of it like Thermia Fractures, Ghoul Purge, or the Relay invasion events that periodically happen in Warframe. Get the Ghoulsaw now or else you’ll have to wait until the event is in rotation again!

Finally, as the weapon is still rather fresh in our inventories or foundries, the weapon has received some tweaks to live up to its hype and destructive potential. You can check out a build I created for this weapon here.

The Ghoulsaw is definitely the most unique weapon type yet in Warframe, and one with an interesting story that started out from overwhelmingly excited outpours of requests from its loyal fanbase. As Crookes puts it, “this was something fun we wanted to do for our community and we made it happen.”