#or. you know. if tenno is even in the game at all

[kaiserouo]

um

he's literally the only thing i draw today

[veilantares]

Dark at the End of the Tunnel

Sink into an Anglers grasp in a dream, like the undersea the Night cradles screams

Been inspired by anglerfish recently, so I'm going to try to do at few of these dark background ones back to back and see if I stumble into something new. I noticed I tend to draw characters / mechs / robots in these oneshot illustrations extremely lanky, but I wonder if I made a comic, whether I'd keep these exaggerated proportions - I'm often indecisive about how much mech vs character is in these biomechs, so I usually just don't think about it and draw what feels interesting in the moment.

This gives me a chance to lay down a meandering anecdote - many years ago as a dumb teenager, I'd stay awake every Friday evening / saturday morning till 4 am, hoping to catch my favourite developer, Digital Extremes' weekly devstream. I vividly remember during closed beta in 2012 people would introduce the game as being about futuristic space pirates zipping through corridors - the games fidelity back then was really quite different, one of the early warframes, Ember, even had her whole model redone at one point. Around 2013-2014 ish when I was most excited for these streams, I noticed the games tagline was "ninja's play free", nothing at all to do with pirates - but it was catchy, and you'd see all over in the advertising because of the parkour moves you could pull off in the game were genuinely sick.

Incidentally, both the Defiance MMO (rip) and Destiny 1 (rip) were what warframe tended to be compared to at the time, both released a little after warframes closed beta, neither of which were piratey or ninja-ey , I think probably 80% of the reason for that was that they all had both guns and abilites ... I guess they were also all live services, I don't know if they were called that back then.

Compared to Defiance and Destiny, I was puzzled at what it was about warframes identity that made the aesthetic feel "itself" - and I got my answer on one of those devstreams - the art lead at the time brought out what they called a "faction pitch bible" a one pager showing all the factions they had in the game at the time, each of them with a few lines of flavour text.

What struck me from that faction pitch was that the Tenno / warframes "cyber knight" description was nothing at all to do with pirates or ninjas, it was a third, wholly other thing, and yet by virtue of being first, it might as well have been the "true" description.

But there was another original, even more original than the "true", Warframes predecessor game, Dark Sector, was a spy thriller with biomechanical aesthetics, or perhaps a powered suit superhero series. Would this original, more original than even the initial, not be what it truly was?

I think what my takeaway was from all of these, is that first an foremost, the aesthetic is "itself" rather than any arbitrary descriptors - I enjoy this about my own pieces, that they mostly still feel like they were made by me even if I can't quite categorise them or explain myself. Perhaps I'm happy if the takeaway is "cool mech", "weird robot" or "wacky character" because maybe it's all of those things and even more!

[hollowtones]

what'd you think about jade shadows?

I put it under a read-more because I don't know how to talk about this without talking about spoiler stuff. The tl;dr is "I liked it but I wish there was a little bit more."

One of the things I didn't like isn't even really part of the quest itself, but I saw a mutual bring it up a few days ago & it's been on my mind since: it feels a little odd to have a content warning before your sidequest, and then not give you any way to skip the quest if it's content you don't think you'd be able to handle. Especially given there's a whole event & rewards that only unlock afterwards!!

OK on to the contents of the quest itself. There's a lot of themes of love and connection and empathy in the face of systemic cruelty or indifference, in this game in general, and a lot of how that manifests is stories about characters fighting for self-determination and agency (the Ostrons trying to stay free of the Grineer, the Solaris trying to destroy the systems that keep them in debt & deny them bodily autonomy, Umbra, the Tenno, the Lotus, etc etc).

I think it's interesting to try and explore a tragedy where we aren't able to help someone in time, where the powers that be have brutalized someone and we as individuals aren't able to get there in the nick of time & help them claw their agency back. I think it's an interesting thematic & emotional through-line (with very strong parallels to Ordis... very smart choice to make him the event vendor / narrator, I'm feasting good on all the new dialogue LOL), and I think there have been enough well-written woman characters in the game that don't get written out or killed for the sake of some man's tragedy or growth that I don't immediately roll my eyes about them trying a So Sad The Woman Dies story.

I do also think this would have hit harder if we got more information about Jade herself!! I realize "this woman broke a law and was completely dehumanized / made into a Thing by the empire, stripping her of herself to suit their ends" is Kind Of The Point, and they make enough of a fuss about "wow there's a lot that's redacted about her history, huh!" that I assume this is a plot thread they're leaving hanging for later. But I feel like the big moment would have resonated better if they gave us a little more info to establish this character, other than "she was heterosexual" and "the Orokin were fucked up, don't forget" haha.

(I do find it funny that the storyline about Ballas, who got Divorced So Badly that he Caused Nearly All Of Today's Problems, is all wrapped up, but the story keeps going "no no, don't worry, there's still plenty of opportunity to remind you how fucked the Orokin were." Here's these two people that broke some insipid law about conceiving a child & so their bosses and leaders broke their brains and turned them into bio-weapon lapdogs as punishment. Every time they go "BTW Something Was Deeply Wrong With The Orokin & We Still Feel The Aftershock Of That Today" I clap my hands like a seal.)

Warframe Babies Are Born!!!!! This little tyke is fuckin weird. What's their problem. I think it's weird and cool. I don't really feel much about "this character is a parent now!" type of storylines. (I did pop off when Stalker got to do his shithead honourable samurai defending a child with one arm thing. I'm a sucker for that & they made it coooooool. It feels like they're setting up some kind of "Lone Wolf and Cub" situation. The scythe being juiced up with BabysPower was also funny.) The baby thing is neat to me from the perspective of, like... This is something weird and new that's never happened before in this universe. That's exciting and kind of scary! I'm interested to see where they go with that. (Presumably in a year or two. Very funny to drop this on us when a completely different major story arc is right around the corner with 1999.)

Gianni's delivery was fuckin killer. I'm excited for whatever next arc they do with Stalker if it means they're gonna pay my boy to grunt and yell and scream more. It feels very strange to be acquainted with two people who've done voice acting in "Warframe" now. Me next? ^_^

I like our new Corpus weirdo. I hope she comes back. Fun to get more stuff with the Sisters of Parvos & with Mr. Granum himself. But I liked her a lot. It got a fuckin laugh out of me to have her through all the quest excited about her big promotion that she's going to get & resolving that with "Is that a fuckin baby??? Fuuuuuck! They don't pay me enough to shoot a baby with a gatling gun!" I wish her ending scene was a little more than just stoically standing aside but literally anything else I can think of feels way too cheesy or on-the-nose.

The facial animations on the Operator were really fuckin weird. I just remembered that. I thought that was just a thing on my end but I watched someone else play & the faces looked weird for them too.

Hunhow's a good inclusion. I like him seeing the Stalker stewing in his own misery because he hates the only people that could offer him help & going "aw man, c'mon buster, don't be like me now." I like his signature that he puts in his emails. I like that he's still an emotionally constipated weirdo that hates us but is still endeared to us in some way. (They make nods to The New Strange in his ending email, which makes sense given that this also feels like a quest setting up More Weird Shit In The Future, but I do get a laugh that it also reads as "JADE WAS PREGNANT? OKAY... WELL. DON'T FORGET THAT I HAVE A WOMB TOO, KID." Thanks Grandpa. Love you too Grandpa. Thanks for the sweeties Grandpa.)

The event quest feels like a nice bow on top. I like the parallels between Jade and Ordis. Wanting to afford her the dignity in death he could never be given. Acknowledgement of Ordan Karris is fun!!! (The line about him being conflicted with the thought of Granum un-cephalon'ing him has me rubbing my hands together.) I'm excited that we're getting so much of Parvos Granum lately. What a shit head. It's funny to see him so hyped up about Ordan. "Duuuude! Your history's famous killer!! That's awesome? Do you wanna work for me? C'monnnnn we both hate the legacy of the Orokin. Wouldn't it be awesome if MY rule was the one dehumanizing you and wielding you as a weapon instead?" This is something they've been establishing as early as "Parvos and Ballas in bed with one another doing shady back-room deals over a Warframe bodyguard and specter particle research" but it's fun whenever they sow the seeds of Parvos being so much like the Orokin he hated.

I wrote more than I thought I was going to!!! I like the thematic through-line idea of this quest but I wish they executed on it better. I like the stuff this is presumably establishing for the future. I really like the event quest as... not quite an epilogue, I guess, but as an addition. Other than that I thought it was okay! I wasn't expecting anywhere near the level of Whispers in the Walls, but that quest being such a high bar makes a "pretty okay" quest stick out to me a little, haha.

[darksekiryuuteiz]

I have to share this thought or imma gonna explode, English isn't my first language so bear with me

So...

Genshin Sagau right?

Imposter Au right?

But what if, just hear me out, WHAT IF

The reader, the creator, was from another universe/game.

Let me explain.

(From halo) Spartan!reader fall in Genshin with their armor and all.

They're alone and all that, so they start searching around and while walking in the shadows they see from a distance someone with their own face being worshiped like a god by all the characters.

So they step up to see to discover why the fuck this person is being worshiped and has their face.

Everyone is shocked upon seeing this person, that freaking tall and has an armor no one has ever seen and why do they feel both drawn to them by their aura but at the same time intimidated?

The imposter (the real one) notices this and orders, out of fear, for someone to attack them.

So the acolytes do just that...

The problem?

Reader is absolutely fast, they just see a blur everytime they move, and when someone manages to attack them, let's say, with a hydro attack...

Their power shield fucking protects them from the attack, redirecting it and they didn't even flinch or move a single step so everyone is, yet again, shocked.

The reader, tired of the imposter bullshit moves even faster until they are Infront of the imposter, who cowers in fear, they pick them up and pull out their magnum and they shot the imposter right in the head, killing them in a flash and revealing they weren't the creator.

Everyone stands there shocked and horrified until they connect the dots and...

This person with this armor MUST be their creator, their aura and moves and everything just reveals it.

So now you have a confused Spartan!reader being worshiped and being prayed on and receiving apologies and stuff from the acolytes.

Ooooor on the other hand...

(from Warframe) Tenno!reader who somehow ended up here in teyvat, in their drifter or operator form and they're exploring around teyvat and all that stuff. Maybe they even befriend the Traveler (for this imma gonna use Lumine cause I love her)

Then

They get captured and jugged at Fontaine, their sentence being death, obviously because HoW dArE ThEy To StOlE tHe CrEaToRs FaCe?

So they get executed by a sword on the chest. Lumine being second judged for protecting the imposter and everyone is looking dissatisfied and disappointed at her while she and paimon are trying to explain that they're the real creator but no one listens

So everyone at first cheers on until they see the gold blood start to fall to the floor, then all the characters are like What have we done?! And stuff.

The imposter is laughing like crazy because they won! Yay!

BUT THEN...

Tenno!reader wakes up and pulls the swords out of their chest and throws it away.

Everyone is like, shocked and even more when they see their wound heal.

Reader is absolutely pissed at the imposter because HOW DARE THEY TO TRY AND KILL THEM AND THEY TRY TO KILL THE ONLY PERSON WHO DIDN'T TRY TO KILL THEM BECAUSE OF THEIR FACE?!

So they transform into their Warframe, let's say... Excalibur umbra.

They unsheathe their sword and activate the Exalted blade, surprising everyone by their power, before they move as fast as the wind towards the guards around them (none being any character) using Slash dash and stuff showing their power.

Finally, they are covered in blood and get to the imposter, who tries to fight them but nothing comes out of it because with a quick movement they decapitated them, showing their red blood and proving even further they're the true creator (thing they don't know they are)

Finally, they clean all the blood that feel upon themselves and walk towards Lumine and paimon, helping them to get on their feet, before the reader picks up Lumine I'm their arms and starts to walk away, ignoring all the characters who try to plead for forgiveness

The just start to sprint away with the traveler in their arms, paimon following them.

The characters (specially the archons) search for them for a few days until they find a place with the creators aura all over, so they enter and see Tenno!reader is sleeping in that weird the tenno sleep, alongside si Lumine who's sleeping peacefully.

When they approach reader is quick to shoot their head up and stand up, placing their hand on their swords should any of them try something.

But they don't, hurt because the creator saw them as a threat, they all kneel down and beg for forgiveness once again.

Tenno reader does not say anything but let's them be, as long as they don't cause them trouble they're free to do whatever they want.

So now you have all the acolytes being jealous of Lumine who's treated by the creator as she was a dear friend, them helping her search for clues to find Aether.

Also I can imagine the archons following the trio (reader, Lumine and paimon) around, looking to win the creator's favor.

Tenno!reader wouldn't engage in conversation, only nodding, shaking or shrugging as a response to questions, until one day, when Lumine was feeling down upon not finding her brother, creator readers kneels down besides her and offering a reassuring hand they speak.

And everyone hears their voice and in a instant they are (more) over the heels for their creator, because their voice is soothing and beautiful.

They then only speak to Lumine.

And so the drill goes like that, the acolytes trying to win readers attention but they are too focused on helping Lumine and finding a way back home, to the lotus/margulis.

[venture-through-the-mist]

Thoughts on The Lotus Eaters

As I’m sure is obvious, this will be discussing the Lotus Eaters quest in detail, so if you haven’t played it yet, I’d suggest skipping this post! I don’t want to spoil it for anyone (because even though it’s a short quest, I still think it benefits from being played with no prior knowledge of what it entails), so the full post will be below the cut.

Alright, I have SO many thoughts, so I’m going to try and keep this somewhat concise…ish. This is mostly just a bunch of rambles, so I apologize for any grammatical errors or if it’s hard to understand. I just kinda…wrote what came to my mind.

First off,

The Music: I briefly mentioned this in another post, but holy shit the music for this update is amazing. I mean, we all knew it would be, Warframe has a tendency to put out absolutely awesome songs, but oh my god. We get two more versions of what is one of my favorite songs in the game. The loading screen version of ‘This is What You Are’ has to be, by far, one of my favorite things I’ve heard from this game. I love the feel to it, like a combination of ‘old’ Warframe with ‘new’, 1999-era Warframe. I’ve had it playing on repeat almost all day because it’s so good.

Now, for the version of ‘This is What You Are’ that we actually get during the quest, the one that Lotus is singing to herself. I, admittedly, didn’t pay too much attention to it when I was actually playing the quest, at least not beyond “omg Lotus is singing, that’s awesome” (I was just too excited about the actual quest lol). However, when I listened to it again, I was fascinated by the subtle differences in how this version sounds compared to the ‘normal’ version of the song, or even to the new version in the loading screen. The singing is a lot more staccato, and the notes don’t flow into each other in the ways they normally would. It’s almost as if Lotus is having to concentrate more on what comes next (at least, that’s my interpretation), which makes sense given that we know that she’s singing in order to drown out the Indifference’s voice. Her singing also sounds a little sad, or maybe just lonely, to me. Her mind is filled with the Indifference trying to influence her, and she’s taken it upon herself to be a barrier (or as she says it, a “distraction”) between It and the Tenno. She’s secluded herself (again), and her tone of voice seems to reflect that.

Also, after the quest, if you go and talk to Daughter/Kaelli in the Necralisk, ‘Party of Your Lifetime’ plays now, instead of whatever song was playing before. I just think that’s neat (and also brings in some interesting ideas for 1999…what did our Drifter do?).

Moving on…

The Story: I had absolutely zero idea where the story was going to go from this update, but I was a bit worried about how they’d go about locking us into playing as the Drifter for 1999, since — although I 1000% agree with why the Drifter is definitely going to be the one going back in time — I’m definitely someone who would rather play as my Operator for my own lore reasons (and I can’t think of a reason that my Operator would let the Drifter do this instead of her). I was actually wondering if they’d actually lock us into the Drifter without giving us a choice, or if they just wouldn’t give us the option to do the romance stuff if we chose Operator (for obvious reasons…bc yk, they’re a child). But, I really enjoy the route they went down, how Lotus knows that the Drifter has to be the one this time, because if the Operator does, that might just be giving the Indifference exactly what it wants. She’s, once again, protecting her kids in the way she knows how, by taking them out of the conflict in any way she can.

But, I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, so let’s backtrack a bit and talk about how cool it is that we see the Operator and the Drifter interacting with Lotus at the same time. I may have missed something in the quests leading up to that, or this might just be something attributed to the Man in the Wall’s hijinks, or…something, but I thought that they couldn’t be in the same place at the same time/in the same ‘reality’. So, I was quite surprised (pleasantly, ofc) to see both of them. I really love the difference in the dialogue options when we initially talk to Lotus. The Operator is torn between wondering if Lotus is alright, and also being super worried about what the hell the noise is, in a way that makes me think they definitely suspect that the Indifference is meddling with things again (which makes sense, given that they’re actively in the Sanctum). Honestly, the Operator was probably waiting for something like this to happen. They know, or at least suspect, that Lotus saw the Man in the Wall after the battle with Ballas, it was only a matter of time before that became important. The Drifter, on the other hand, is more concerned with Lotus herself, warning her to be careful, reassuring her, but also wondering what she means by “It’s you”. Maybe the Drifter doesn’t really know the extent of the effects that the Indifference has on the System, maybe the Operator is just trying to protect Lotus in the only way they know how…get the perceived danger away from her first, ask questions later (I’ve noticed from their dialogue throughout the game that the Operator tends to have a bit of a sharper temper than the Drifter does…perhaps bc they’re younger). Either way, it’s nice that they have different responses to seeing Lotus and hearing the noise.

I chose the “Are you okay” and “What do you mean, ‘it’s you’?” dialogue options, and I absolutely loved that my Operator’s line was “This isn’t just a bad memory, it is? This is new”. This acknowledges, at least in my interpretation, that Lotus does have lingering emotions from everything that’s happened in the past (Ballas/The New War, Hunhow, etc). Once again, Warframe surprises me by remembering to make the trauma that a character has gone through actually relevant to the story even after we’ve dealt with the source of the problem. I probably shouldn’t be surprised at this, but most video games I’ve seen don’t tend to do that. Usually characters are…somewhat fine after experiencing something horrific, so it’s refreshing to see a different (more realistic, imo) take on it. This isn’t even the only time we see this in this quest/afterwards. Lotus outright confirms it herself (“I will not let it devour one instant of my pain. Not even Ballas. Not even the Jade Light.”), and in doing so, is also showing us how she’s dealt with the events of the prior storylines. She’s gone through a series of extremely traumatic events, and she still has those painful memories, but she’s not going to succumb to the Indifference, even if It promises to take that away. She’s been hurt, yes, but she is healing, and she’s finally in a place where she can actually do so as herself. That doesn’t mean it’s easy for her to ignore the voice that’s calling to her —the voice that only she can hear— but she’s determined to. I’m curious if the voice-lines after the quest are different if a player had chosen Margulis or Natah instead of Lotus after the New War, though.

I find it very interesting that Lotus calls the Drifter ‘my champion’. I just really enjoy the fact that she definitively sees the Operator and the Drifter as two separate people, as opposed to ‘her child’, and ‘her child but older’, because I feel like that fact could have certainly been a cause of a bit of discomfort and a learning curve for both her and the Drifter after the New War.

Now, onto the 1999 portion of the quest, which, even as short as it was, was quite interesting. It was really weird to be in the Mall again and not hear ‘Party of Your Lifetime’ playing or see other Tenno dancing around the stage (like how it was during TennoCon). It was quite eery, and I love it. Also, we got to see Kalymos again, so that’s a plus.

All in all, this quest answered a lot of my questions about how the game is going to transition to 1999 (and even answered questions that I didn’t know I had). However, I am slightly (read: very) concerned at the same time, mainly because of the line with Lotus saying “If I become something you do not recognize, do not mourn”. I feel like that’s potentially foreshadowing something…They don’t usually put lines like that in without reason. Maybe I’m just reading too far into that…but I suppose we’ll see when 1999 comes out.

Anywho, another thing that I wasn’t expecting but am really glad that we got was the continued acknowledgement of Lotus/Natah/Margulis being a system. This happened not once, but twice (to my knowledge), and I think it’s really great that they didn’t just disregard the whole “I am not one” thing from The New War after we made our choice between the three of them. It’s really nice to see that that wasn’t just a one-off line, especially as we continue to get more and more moments where the game references them.

This is already way longer than it probably should be, but what can I say? I like well-written characters, and this game has so many of them. I’ve definitely forgotten some things that I’d wanted to put in this post, but ah well.

[meatball-headache]

This is Meatball's Warframe Post.

As usual, it was @chiclet-go-boom who got me to play. Right around when Endwalker was on the horizon, Warframe also released a new trailer, and Chic gibbered like three rabid squirrels to rush off and drool over it. It seemed uncharacteristic, since Warframe was some kind of parkour PVP game, right?

It was, in fact, not a PVP game, and as Chiclet soon explained, had lore as deep and intricate as any Final Fantasy or Dark Souls. To be a good friend, I watched the new trailer, too—of course, nothing meant anything to me, but the visuals were cool and had quite a lot of mystique, so it was intriguing. So, I downloaded the game, since it's free and all—and that was that for now. Endwalker was coming!

...and so Endwalker went. Some months later, in a lull between patches, the conversation returned to Warframe. I think it came to mind and I was mooded to crack it open and give it a try. What I found was... profoundly confusing. It opens with a cutscene, and I'm thinking: this game is years old. Is this like Destiny, I'm supposed to know the story so far, I'm supposed to be familiar with these characters? It was all very confusing.

The opening cutscenes celebrate the Tenno, and give you three Warframes to pick from: Excalibur, Mag, and Volt. My impression at the time was that these spirits, the "Tenno," were something newly added to the game? Were these the three new Warframes or something? Or, are they starting me at the beginning of the years-long update cycle? No time to be confused, though, I had to pick a Warframe. I wanted to be the cute girl, Mag, but it said Excalibur was the best choice for beginners, even though he looked weird, so I went with him.

I have never played a game that moves like this. It's so... fast. But it's not jagged or janky or spastic, it's very smooth. It's hard to aim, though, since I was playing on PS4, and I suck at a) shooting games, and b) aiming with a controller. All was going well until, early in the tutorial, it teaches you how to "bullet jump." Oh, I thought: this is so weird and awkward. Bullet jumps? Wall latches? Ugh. I'll just play this game normal and not do that very much.

I didn't really like Excalibur; he looks weird. Aesthetics are important! I only played for an hour or two that first night, but I was disappointed with Excalibur... I wanted to start over, but it doesn't seem like you can reset your account. I was frustrated... but, then I learned that Chiclet plays on PC. Obviously, I mean, c'mon. Could my computer even run the game? It was a years-old laptop that I only originally bought to have Youtubes on the side while I played FFXIV on PS4. But, turns out it could run FFXIV... maybe I'll try Warframe? Start fresh, and be Mag this time—even if she's too hard for a noob?

So, I started over. I installed it on my PC and created a new account and started with Mag this time, and boy, things were different—by about 40 fps. My computer, it turned out, could run Warframe... in slideshow mode. I turned down the graphics, and I was still getting around 20-30 fps. Well... good enough, I guess, if it means I can play with Chic.

I don't know how long that first session lasted. A day or two, maybe a weekend, something like that. The game was very much to my liking in this regard: you just play it. It's got story and lore, sure, but pretty much you start the game, you go through a "Press X to jump" mission, and then you're on your own! In this regard, it's a Soulslike—you do what you want because you want to, not because the game tells you to. You go over there because you can see it and you want to know what's there, and when you get there, things happen; cf. the classic Final Fantasy setup, where you can't go over there, not until the story tells you to go there.

I didn't understand mods or ranks or 90% of the things in my menu. It was a very simple game where you just pop in, run some quick missions, shoot a bunch of guys and grind for loot. It scratched a lot of itches—although performance wasn't ideal, but whatever, I'd manage gladly.

So, I played for a couple days, and then I got to the first big turning point: Cetus. All of a sudden, I was in a town? With other players? And what players they were! My little, unadorned Mag looked positively naked next to these Warframes in extravagant costumes, with animations, flowing capes, glowing wings, all sorts of things. Of course, I didn't know a single one of these 'frames, could not possibly comprehend how any of these things were acquired—pay to win, I assumed. I could only wonder how long it'd be until I got cool stuff like that.

Now, Cetus, if you know Warframe, you know it's different. It's not just a normal mission, it's a town, like I said, connected to an open world region, the Plains of Eidolon. Naturally, I assumed this was my next mission, and figured out how to take on bounties from Konzu. And these... were a whole lot harder than normal missions! It said it was my level, but levels apparently mean something else out here, because these missions kicked my ass. I remember doing a side quest to unlock Gara's blueprint. Excited to get my first new Warframe, I ran to the foundry to start making it, and got confused when it seemed to need more Gara blueprints to make it. Eventually, I realized the bounties Konzu offered had a chance to drop these component blueprints... but, some of the bounties were way beyond my level. Even the ones that weren't were already too hard. My hopes of getting a new Warframe seemed to wither.

I think I got to Mars, and then stopped playing for a bit. I'm not sure, exactly. I spent a nice weekend or so trying out the game, it wasn't bad, the grind seemed very steep, and then it was time to move on.

Months passed.

Somehow, I was inspired to play again—maybe Chiclet gushing about another trailer, maybe seeing the icon on my desktop for months eventually wore me down, but I picked it up again. I was on Mars, which was much harder than Earth, and still had no clue what I was doing, but I plugged ahead anyway, clearing nodes on the map. I still had only Mag, with no cool outfits, no new weapons or anything fun like that. Well, eventually something would drop, right...?

Hm—if I remember correctly, and it's all kind of fuzzy, you can't go from Earth to Mars at first. You have to clear Venus and Mercury, right. So, no, I wasn't on Mars yet. I was on Venus, which of course means—

Fortuna.

I was prepared. I had seen the music video on Youtube, I'd already heard the song. In fact, I'd heard the song long before I tried the game, long before I met Chiclet, a real long time ago. It was good, I liked it—and part of what kept me going was wondering where this amazing song would crop up. As I played the game, it seemed more and more out of place. But then, all at once, it happened. Imagine my surprise when I learned that, no, that wasn't a cinematic music video just to promote the game, that was the cutscene in the actual game!

It was transformative. It was profound. Yes, I teared up, of course I did! And then the story in Fortuna has you helping the workers unionize to defeat a capitalist? Sign me the fuck up! So I was motivated to play, to be part of this world, to help them out. The only thing is—the mission turned out to be incredibly hard. I died again and again. It wasn't until I went into the arsenal and added mods to my Warframe and my weapons that I was finally able to win, and even then, only barely. The game was starting to get hard! Did I have what it takes to get harder?

Open world missions on Orb Vallis were much harder than the Plains of Eidolon, but by now I'd also learned that these were optional. It was more reputation quests, more vendors... This game was getting really complicated. All I was doing was clearing the map, and there was so much to this game... Not only that, but around here I decidedly to bravely try to do public missions, though I was afraid I'd hold everyone back... this turned out to not be an issue. Everyone was super strong, super competent, and they blazed through missions with ease, with or without my presence. Thanks for the carry, you thousands of online strangers!

But, by doing public missions, I saw the vast gulf between Warframe's and FFXIV's philosophies. FFXIV has rigid requirements for every duty, fixed party sizes, role requirement, level sync, all that jazz—so that everyone has the same experience every time. Warframe just lets you do whatever. You might do this mission and have an MR30 Saryn Prime nuke the map from the start and be done in seconds; you might have a MR2 Excalibur still leveling the starting gear and trying to learn how to double-jump.

Never was this more evident than what I choose to remember was my first time playing a public mission. It was a defense mission on Earth. I'd done it before solo, and it took a long time and it was very difficult, since I had to machine-gun each enemy individually, being generally clueless as I was. After that, I decided to try a public mission. I can't get lost and be too slow for everyone else, since it's defense, and it might help to have more, well, help. I got a full group, and, I have no earthly idea what Warframes they might have been, but I remember one of them clearly: as soon as the mission started, they all cast a bunch of spells and the entire map started exploding. Then this one guy jumped on top of the defense objective, whipped out a guitar, and just stood there playing music the whole time while all the enemies exploded before I ever even saw them.

This is what lies ahead of you, Meatball, I thought. This is what you might achieve someday.

So, back on Venus, I proceeded to the end of the map, and this time—there was a boss fight! The Jackal. Needless to say, I died and failed the mission. I didn't understand what the hell I was supposed to do. Perhaps this is where I finally went on public, to get carried a little by experts? Whether it was my first public exposure or not, it worked—some pro players annihilated the Jackal before I could understand what was going on. This paved the way to Mercury, and culminated in another boss fight—and the end of the road. But, with Mercury out of the way, I could go back to Earth and travel to Mars.

In order to unlock a new planet, you have to defeat the boss in the junction, a mirror match against another Warframe. The first few were easy, but Mars I think was spicier. For the sake of the narrative, let's say I couldn't do it for now. I slunk back to my ship in defeat, and went to tinker with my mods and foundry and stuff like that. Have I gotten any new weapons or anything? No, I don't think so, I don't have any weapons or Warf—what's this!?

"Rhino chassis." A Warframe component blueprint. Not Gara, which was out of reach, too high level—where did this come from? Tooltips soon revealed it: it dropped from the Jackal. Bosses drop Warframes! My eyes lit up, my heart raced. I'm going to get my first new Warframe. I raced back to Venus to tackle the Jackal again, and farmed that bastard to oblivion, again and again until I had all the Rhino parts. Finally, finally, it was time—

—to wait. Twelve hours for the component, then three days for the thing itself. Okay, that's fine. I could use a break. I'll come back next weekend and be Rhino.

Now, I did exaggerate, dire reader. I had some new weapons ready when Rhino came out of the foundry: the Boltor machine gun, the Frigor giant hammer, and some secondary weapons but who cares. At this point, I didn't even realize that's how you grind MR. But everything was exciting and new—and stronger. I had to level them up, and with Rhino's shield ability, now I was tough enough to handle the junction and get to Mars and beyond!

At some point, I got to Deimos. Unlike other planets, this time you start in an open world, and work your way to the town. There was some story missions here, but I don't remember the main beats, only that in the end you get to test-drive a Necramech. This game keeps adding new things—first you had normal missions, then open world, then Archwing, now Necramechs... I remember the story mission being monstrously difficult again, so I bailed on Deimos for now.

There was something else I finally had access to. Somehow, I had gotten to MR5, and could fight the boss on Earth. It irked me that I couldn't finish off Earth before moving on, but, I guess they didn't want you to start with finished planets until you'd done a little story and unlocked some new systems.

This boss... is where this play session ended. It was so incredibly difficult and incredibly frustrating. He's a tiny flying drone, only vulnerable for brief windows when his face is exposed, and he's impossible to hit. I was playing solo, so my suckitude doesn't waste anyone's time, which just made this boss nearly impossible. I kept dying, I ran out of ammo constantly. It was the most frustrating experience in the game by far—but, bosses have new Warframes. Except Mercury, for some reason. And Mar's boss just dropped Excalibur, who I'd already tried. Earth's boss had a new one, something called Hydroid, which was the dorkiest name in the world, but oh well.

To make a long story short, I farmed this boss for all the Hydroid parts, which infuriated me beyond belief. I threw him into the foundry, and it was time for a very big deal: Jupiter. Now, when I'd first started playing, I joked with Chiclet, something, "Can I do what I want? Can I just go to Jupiter and deal with high-level enemies and hilariously get my ass kicked?" She gave me kind of a wishy-washy answer, something along the lines of sort of, but not really, but you wouldn't want to anyway. I had, in fact, found a couple of blueprints that needed components from Jupiter. I was very excited when I saw I could finally get these things. So, while Hydoird cooked, I tried to go to Jupiter.

And tried.

And tried.

And tried.

But... I just couldn't beat the junction boss, at all. She had too much health, and if I got close, she's instantly melee me to death, even through Rhino's mighty shield. You have to do these solo, so no getting carried, and there's no map or any other enemies, so I can't go collect energy before the fight. I had basically one ability, and that had to get me through. Try as I might, I could not win—so I stopped playing.

Months passed again.

I picked up the game again around April 2023. Pretty soon, I remembered why I stopped—this damn Valkyr Specter. But, I had some other stuff to do now. I had a new Warframe, Hydroid, to level up, and a new gun, the Boar, to try out. I certainly didn't understand how to play Hydroid at first, but I got him to 30, and then... I guess I'll try Valkyr again. I'd have to do it on Rhino, because he has that shield. Would the Boar be strong enough to beat her?

No.

Okay, now I'm getting pissed. I just can't beat her, no matter what I do. I was, remember, still pretty dumb, probably less than a hundred hours in the game—I'm a slow boil, what do you want :p—so fusing mods, damage types, or anything other that clicking Automod was beyond me. But, I said, fuck it, if Rhino can't beat her, I'll try Hyrdoid. I ran in with him, with the Boar shotgun and Amphis staff, and—died. Take two, I ran in, used my 1 ability, barrage of water bombs, but that fell off her like so much rain. Died. Take three, I used my 2 ability, the tidal wave dash... all that did was get me into melee faster so she could one-shot me sooner. Died. Fine! Take four! I used my 4 ability, the tentacles—well, that was no good, she was a boss, so they couldn't grab her, and once again I died. Well, I haven't tried the 3 ability, the puddle? A roving dot? It doesn't sound like it does much damage, but—

Dire reader. I turned into a puddle, and Valkyr ran to me, and—sploosh. She fell into the puddle. She was gone. She vanished. The only thing on the screen was a puddle, and damage numbers popping out of it. There's no way this works, I said. There's no way this lasts long enough to kill her. There's no way this does enough damage.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tiny damage numbers poppped out of my self, and I watched first Valkyr's shield slowly faded, and then her health began to dwindle—until, just before I ran out of energy, her health bar fell down to zero—Mission Complete.

I'm sitting there slack-jawed, astonished. There's no way this ridiculous puddle move just completely annihilated this invincible boss. But, it did. It happened. I made it to Jupiter. All thanks to this absolute boi, Hydroid—my new main. With the power of Hydroid's puddle, I ran through the star system like a beast. Jupiter fell and I moved on to Europa; Europa was defeated and I went to Saturn; Saturn was finished and I went to Uranus.

"Operator, a new quest is available," said the Lotus. And I had a funny thing on top of my screen that just said "NATAH."

Hm! I wonder what that is. Oh well. And I returned to my delightful grind. Some of these planets had bosses, so I had to farm for new Warframes. I had finally figured out how to buy blueprints from the market, so I was making new weapons. All this stuff had to get leveled up, so I went back and ran missions, defense missions—I figured out how to do Void Relics (sort of), and also tried to finally do some bounties—Earth only, Venus and Deimos were still wicked hard. And whenever I got back to my ship after a successful mission—

"NATAH." Hm! What a meaningless word. Sounds like a main quest. No thanks! Why do MSQ when I could grind, explore, and waste time?

So another hundred hours passed. I was starting to get good at the game! I leveled up my weapons and my Warframes and finally figured out how to fuse mods, so I crammed all my weapons full of as much damage as I could. Orokin Catalysts and Forma were still years away from my mind, though—but, it seemed to me that I was as strong as I could possibly get. I thought about the guitar guy, blowing up the entire map constantly without even moving—how can I get that strong? I thought about the K-drive, the Archwings, the Necramechs—all the weird stuff this game has invented. Maybe there's more weird things later? Maybe I have to... do story to unlock things?

It was finally time. I had done as much as I could, but it was finally time to do the MSQ. So, I took up this new quest, NATAH. It was like the other quests—you do normal missions while the NPCs talk over you. It was kind of interesting, because it got into the Lotus's story a little bit. Neat! But, unlike other main quests or side quests, this didn't give me a new orbiter segment to unlock some new machines to let me do something different. This didn't even give me a new Warframe blueprint! But, it unlocked another main quest. Ah, so this is how it's gonna be? But one MSQ at a time. Let's let it digest a bit. So, maybe tomorrow I'll do this next quest...

The Second Dream.

Dear reader. Dire reader. Dour reader. Nothing could have prepared me for the Second Dream—and this was the best possible experience I could've had. Legions of fans telling me "Just wait till the Second Dream!" would've tipped me off that something big is going to happen, and my whole attitude would've been different. My expectations would've been high, and perhaps even the profound experience that it was wouldn't've been enough. I assure you, I'm getting the chills writing about it, just thinking about it.

The Second Dream was like nothing else in the game. The missions started normally—well, not really. It started with a cutscene. Had the game ever had cutscenes before? Other than Fortuna, that is. After the intro, you do normal missions with voice-overs, like before. It has to do with... things I don't understand. Did I forget the story? Is it supposed to be mysterious? Lotus talks about her father, there's a Sentient, there's a Stalker—we proceed with the mission, and then things really come unzipped.

From the beginning of the game, I noticed something wrong with the star chart: where's the Moon? Well, not every body in the solar system is represented; Europa's its own world, but Io, Callisto, and Ganymede are just individual missions on Jupiter. Ceres and Eris are their own worlds, but not Makemake or Haumea. But, it turns out I was right to wonder, because in this quest, we're teleported to somewhere we've never seen before: the Moon. It turns out there's a lot of lore surrounding the Moon, something special is there, and through the plot, the Moon is added to the star chart—a new world to explore, a new tileset to play in!

But of course, that's not all, because once we venture into the Moon, we find something very special: the Reservoir, the power source of the Tenno, the spirits that control the Warframes. Right from the game's very first opening cutscene, we saw the still Warframes, silent until the spirit of the Tenno entered them. We, the player, are the Tenno, controlling the Warframes. That's why, when you select the Warframe, you're not "putting it on" like armor, so much as you're activating it, and controlling it from afar—it's a little bit meta, the way Ordis always addressed you, the player, as "Operator," not talking to the Warframe itself. Lotus would say things like "Your Warframe is low on power," not "You're low on power."

There's another cutscene. Deep in the Moon, we find the Reservoir, a lotus-like set of pods. One comes out, and from it comes... a person. And—our Warframe drops dead immediately.

The cutscene continues. My nose is an inch from the screen. This is captivating. I've been playing this game for a couple hundred hours, and only now we're getting cinematic story like FFXIV started with. Imagine if you had been playing Tetris for years, and you finally get to the kill screen—and it zooms out and it was Karl Jobst playing at an arcade machine in a bar this whole time, and now you're watching him. Imagine if you've been playing Minecraft and terraformed a whole world, and then Steve turns to the camera and says, "Now... we can finally begin playing."

The human crawls over to the Warframe, touching it with a glow, and the Warframe picks them up. The Stalker appears—but hesitates. The voice of the Sentient threatens to attack, and then you're playing again. You're playing—but it's different. You're still carrying the person. Your Warframe powers are gone, you can't use your normal weapons, and these monsters are attacking you—what else can you do but point and click?

And it fires! The person you're carrying raises their hand a blast of energy annihilates these monsters. You carry them to safety as they blast hordes of these strange new enemies, and reach extraction—you're back to the safety of your ship.

Ah! Your beloved orbiter. You've been playing for hundreds of hours. You know this ship like the back of your syandana! Well, except for those weird closed doors at the back. Lotus instructs you to take the person to the back of the ship—oh, what? Wait—those closed doors? Really? We're going to find out what's in there? You go to the back of the ship, and then, all of the sudden, the doors open, as if they always could. Inside is a mysterious chamber containing one of those pods from before—and the Stalker! This time, he attacks you himself, and the person you're carrying fends him off with their power. You bring them to the chair, but he pushes you away, and you drop the person. The link is broken. You—your Warframe falls dead again, and the Stalker stabs it with his mysterious talking sword. The Stalker grabs the person, lifting them off the ground by the neck... and then you—your Warframe comes to life, grabs the sword—and breaks it. The Stalker is destroyed, and in a flash of light, both you and the person are out cold.

But then... someone picks up the person. It's not you, your Warframe is lying still. It's—the Lotus. On your actual ship. She puts the person in the pod, and then there's a pulse of light. The Warframe moves again.

"Now we fight on two fronts, my child. The war without—and the war within..."

This is mindblowing. This is beyond anything that's ever happened in this game. It's like if you were playing Pac-man and then suddenly after level 69, 2001: A Space Odyssey starts playing. This is a profound shift in everything about the game's... everything!

And then, and then, AND THEN...

...it dumps you into character creation.

This is what you are.

After hundreds of hours of gameplay, after traipsing across the entire solar system, after, for some people, years of playing—

Tutorial complete. Welcome to Warframe.

This is, bar absolutely none, the single greatest moment in any game I've ever played. You know FFXIV is my favorite game, but moment by moment, it doesn't have an absolute wham line like this. This is on the same level—beyond, really—but the only thing that comes close to holding a candle is the E ending of Nier Automata, Rom in Bloodborne, or the World of Ruin in FFVI. But even all of those were presaged by the game's tone, clearly building up to, and showing the potential for, a moment like this. FFVI had a map that teased the whole thing, in fact.

Character creation. Hundreds of hours into the game. Out of nowhere. Like I said, nothing could have prepared me for this—nothing should have, either. This completely blindsided me. It completely changed everything about the game. It turned everything I expected on its head. It's like fighting Psycho Mantis and finding out he knows you played Castlevania. It's like learning that the ghost is always behind you in PT. This is beyond "outside the box," this is in a whole different box factory.

And I'm just talking about the meta impact! To say nothing about the lore—when Ordis was talking to the "Operator," when Lotus was talking the Tenno, they weren't talking to you, the player—they were talking to your real character, the Tenno who was asleep in the Reservoir this whole time. This is who you are.

This is who you are. When I got to the character create screen—I didn't change a thing. I couldn't. I wasn't just creating a character at the beginning of the game like some lesser game like Elden Ring, I have been this person the whole time. I did fix her voice, though, I admit that much. She looks like... Nathan Explosion. I didn't mean to pick a girl this time, either, that's just... what it gave me. (Can you even change their body and give them boobs? Or you just differentiate gender by voice selection?) This is who you are. This is who you've always been.

After the bombshell, I was hooked. I played nonstop, day and night, week in, week out, for months on end. Warframe shot to the top of my charts; I wasn't playing Chiclet's game just to humor my pal, this was my game now. I was into it. And, of course, I finally started to learn. I got into Forma, Lenses, started cracking open Void Relics left and right, started churning out new weapons and Warframes, did Railjack missions, tried Lunaro (lol), syndicates, bounties, you name it—everything, of course, except main story. I had to let this soak. And, Warframe is a horizontal progression game, unlike FFXIV. Every step you take unlocks a thousand hours of grinding to get your Rivens and Kuvas and whatever—I'm getting ahead of myself, though.

I was completely addicted to Warframe, not even FFXIV could pull me back. The only thing that got me to stop grinding MR was Lies of P, and after that, the furor had died out, so it was a little while before I got back into Warframe some more. When I did, I finally did the next story quest, the War Within—this was also excellent, better cinematically, but the bombshell could not compete with the Second Dream. However, with the War Within, I had some big new grinds unlocked: Eidolon hunts (actually this came with the Second Dream, but I didn't figure it out until then) and Kuva weapons. Kuva weapons. I'd heard of these! I'd seen millions of players with these special weapons that go to rank forty—forty!—and have a million words in their names, someone comes in with "Dax Thrall Suva Kuva Zarr" and just blows up all of Helene in one shot. Here, surely, lay the path to greatness! And with Eidolons, I could get Arcanes, which I vaguely knew about from glancing at builds on websites, builds which had lots of mods and these Arcanes I knew jack shit about. After the New War The War Within [typo], it was time to shelve story for a while; I had a lot of grinding to do.

Let me rewind quite a bit. All the way to the beginning. When I first began playing, I did figure out that if you press Equip on your Warframe in the Arsenal, you could see a list of every Warframe. For a very long time, every time I browsed that list I saw some names I was sure I hadn't seen before. I had to start with Mag, of course, but... which Warframe was the one for me? Which one looked the coolest, had the best powers, the most interesting lore? I instantly discounted some ugly ones, like Hildryn, and some with stupid names, like Hydroid. We see how that turned out. As usual, I was looking for a cute girl... but these were all very strange, weird, alien robot monsters. Lavos—he was the last boss in Chrono Trigger, maybe go after him. Sevagoth, that's similar to Sephiroth, but he looks weird. Ember, Frost, Volt... I don't really go in for these "elemental" things unless it's a superlative element. So like, holy or dark, that'd be a cool theme. Speaking of themes—music! When you click each one, it takes you to a page where you can see their skills, read their lore, and it also plays their theme music. Or, some music anyway, there's some repeats, I guess it's just some generic music. Yeah, Garuda, Gauss, Gyre, these all have the same music, Harrow—

Rap. Tap. Tap.

Okay well this is different. An eerie, industrial grind, haunting, strange whispers—this is very interesting indeed! I read his lore—he's a void priest?! Okay, now that severely fucks. I read his moves—whoa. This guy's got all kinds of support buffs? Well, that's certainly a lot more interesting than "This attacks in a cone, this attacks in a line, this attacks in a circle." Okay. I'm sold. How do I unlock this guy? According to the thing ingame, you have to do the "Chains of Harrow" quest on Pluto or the Void or something. Okay, well, then I just have to plow ahead to the Void and I'll be able to get him! Oh, neat, it looks like Phobos has a shortcut to the Void!

...anyway, that didn't happen, obviously. This was still my first weekend. Once I started to learn how to get other stuff, I forgot about Harrow, but still had him in the back of my mind. And, a while later—around the Second Dream session—I had finally gotten the hang of Void Relics. I had tried to get them before, way at the beginning, because I saw "Octavia Prime" and "Nezha Prime," and I recognized them as Warframes—a couple I thought looked pretty cool, in fact. I had no idea Primes were a different version, I thought it meant... "This is the primary part to make it," or something. Of course, day one player, I couldn't get all the things I needed from mere Lith Relics, and the higher levels were beyond me. It wasn't until much later, when I had access to more stuff, that I began to realize—oh, hey. I might be able to get a Prime Warframe! Wouldn't that be cool.

I jumped into Void Relics until I had exhausted my supply, went to grind more, and crack them again. I got so many parts for so many things, but never everything for anything. I just kept aimlessly grinding, getting 3/4 of everything, but something always eluded me.

Dire reader, you know what Void Relics happened to be in the rotation at that time? Why, none other than Harrow Prime's. I noticed it, of course, and grabbed the blueprints when they were available. And it wasn't until after doing a lot of grinding that I sat down and said, okay, what exactly do I have? I went through my foundry to see what I had, what I was close to, what I might be able to finish off—and, surely enough, I had three pieces of Harrow. All I needed were the Harrow Prime Neuroptics, which were the rare thing from an Axi, I think. But, I had some Axis. We had a mission, and from then on, I was grinding with focus, farming Axi relics, upgrading them for the maximum chance at the rare, and cracking them—in full parties, of course, in case anyone else had one. And so it wasn't long before it happened: Harrow Prime Neuroptics. I had all the pieces I needed. I had all the materials, I had the Argon Crystals—I was going to have my first Prime Warframe! And it was going to be Harrow.

I love Harrow—though, he is admittedly hard to use well, and having one "press this button to blow up the room" ability would be nice... but he's stylish, he's cool, he's mine. I used him a lot once I got him—he's a Prime! He's better than anyone!—but he wasn't my last Prime frame by far. Soon came Nidus Prime, Garuda Prime, Wisp Prime, Baruuk Prime, and more, and more, and more... Now, he's just one of dozens in my stable—but I still remember how he was the first one that stood out to me. In fact, dear reader, I reordered things a little—I got Harrow before I did the Second Dream, and it was as Harrow that I did it. He's my Story Frame—although another one I've had my eye on for a while, Baruuk, is really making a run for the top spot. Baruuk, the "patient monk," always caught my eye, being at the top of the alphabet as he is, so I'd always be starting at him when I was picking which frame to play today. I really enjoy his "neutral" theme, the commonality in his 1-3 abilities, and the absolute astonishing power of his 4 (my record is 2.3M damage). And Harrow did get stabbed through the chest with War (which is his "official" weapon now... every Warframe has "their" weapons to me, so if I want to use the Boar, I just have to play Hydroid, that's just how I am) so maybe he needs a break.

But, dear reader, this brings me back to the image at the very top of this brief post: the quest "Chains of Harrow" is my next story quest. Truth be told, it has been next for a little while—but it had to take a back seat, of course, for side quests like Octavia and Titania, and a little thing called, you know, Dawntrail. But Dawntrail is done. All my sidequests are done. There's nothing left. The way is clear. It's time to return to the beginning—to Harrow. And then...

...and then...

The New War— ...which, if the number of quests that have it as a prerequisite, and the fact that it doesn't even show up as a future quest, are anything to go by... this will change everything.

EPILOGUE

There's a few things I can talk about that I didn't include here. Duviri. Sevagoth. Lavos and Yareli. That one time I had six Warframes going at once and thought "whoa I'm finally getting this game!" And probably more... but these are the main beats.

Thanks for reading. Why do you keep doing that? I just don't get it...

[arachnostalgiac]

warframe something something

Awakening/Vor’s Prize:  You’re a Tenno and you wield a Waframe.  Don’t know what those words mean, that’s great, you won’t for like a billion quests.  Some guy puts bad bling on you.  You meet your new mom and your new son.  Get ready to learn a lot of vocabulary words.

Saya’s Vigil:  oh boy your husband sounds great i bet he’s not just like.  fifty feet away from you or anything.

Vow Solaris:  AND WE ALL LIFT.  AND WE’RE ALL ADRIFT TOGETHER, TOGETHER.

Once Awake:  You aren’t alone.  There’s bugs.

The Archwing:  What the fuck is Tellurium

Stolen Dreams:  You will hear more vocabulary words.  No one knows how they’re pronounced, not even the voice actors, this is fine.

The New Strange:  cephalon simaris is a little jerk who doesn’t understand personal space and tried to steal my son

Natah:  get ready to meet your new shitty grandpa.  also, learn about your mom.  your weird uncle is here, too.

The Second Dream:  congratulations, you are a haunted child.  the grandchild your grandpa likes better shows up.  more mom lore.  suddenly, the moon.

The War Within:  weird uncle lore.  you may be wondering ‘how bad could the orokin be’.  well.  i have good news.  be prepared to find out.  also, there’s a worm.  there’s a couple worms.

Chains of Harrow:  it’s time to meet your creepypasta-est brother.  also uh.  maybe learn that your original mom wasn’t the best sometimes.

Apostasy Prologue:  meet your shitty stepdad.  welcome to a momless existence.

The Sacrifice:  well we’re a good ways in and it’s finally time to learn what a warframe is.  the answer:  creepy and wet.  a cool guy is here, but watch out for evil stepdad and evil mom.

Prelude to War:  huh.  that can’t be good.  also there’s a shitty uncle too.

The New War:  oh boy this one’s a lot.  two of them.  your son gets a body.  get ready to play a different game for a while and also.  be sad about songs.  beat up your stepdad.  there’s a snake.  the space devil’s here.

Angels of the Zariman:  remember where you met the space devil?  it’s haunted.

Veilbreaker:  MY BOY.

[cyborg-hydra-girl-thing]

warframe is so fuckin trans

just

ough i love it so much

like even very early before we had the second dream and the operator it was kind of a not so subtle secret that we weren’t really the frames, we were just piloting them, with Alad V and Tyl Regor both commenting on how the warframe’s were just machines and empty shells, and also unpiloted wild frames are like feral animals, valkyr’s lore and a couple quests highlight this

so like even playing the game there’s this kind of meta level disconnect between you playing as the frames and just *swapping entire bodies* to fit the task at hand

where even the skin you wore was just a tool to do what you sought

and then we get the second dream and aw tits were actually an immortal space demon child

and oh no our spacemom(lotus), is actually a shapeshifter who took the shape of Margulis, who was the original mother to the tenno, and accidentally fell in love with these traumatized magic void children and donned the title of the lotus after the fall of the orokin at the hands of the tenno

and at the end of the new war when you get the opportunity to choose who space mom is like she is all of them, she is Natah/Margulis/Lotus and she will always be and has always been Natah/Margulis/Lotus and each one of those people has endured such trauma that that choice brought me to tears, i sobbed on my couch for over an hour just staring at the choices and thinking about

margulis was the orokin who took in and took care of the tenno. she protected them as best she could from the terrors of the orokin, and they ended up maiming her (on accident(i can’t actually remember how she died off the top of my head but)

and Natah, a mimic, the best mimic, daughter of Hunhow was sent to the original system ahead of the sentient invasion to weaken the orokin before they invaded, and donned Margulis’ skin

at some point the warframe’s are developed, a strain of the helminth virus injected into people mutating and twisting them into monsters

some kept their intellect, but it’s implied that a large number of the warframe’s were feral and uncontrollable

and the tenno, these ageless 12 year olds who’re the only survivors of a warp ship catastrophe and touched by the Void who made a deal with the Man In The Wall to save them and also give them magic powers, are able to connect with the warframes on a level nobody else can, and through transference can drive the warframe’s like external exosuits

perfect for ending this war with the sentients

and immortal child soldiers are perfect for a war spanning the solar system (at least? i know the sentients went to the Tau galaxy (system?) to terraform it ahead of the orokin)

and then the children murder their masters at the victory ceremony (after which they might have been executed? i can’t recall, i need to go reread the lore lol) and then Margulis -> Lotus hides them in Lua in the Void in a forever waking dream, still piloting their frames and as the Lotus, works as their mission advisor and probably securing missions to strategically weaken the corpus or grineer war machines

[newbiespud]

The Case for Hayden Tenno

At the end of my Let's Play of Dark Sector - the spiritual lost lamb of Warframe's long, tangled development history - I went into why I thought Dark Sector still has a grip on the minds and imaginations of those who know about it, sprinkling comments to the effect of "Oooh, is this going to tie in to Dark Sector?" below every Warframe content update, despite the game itself being a pretty mid-to-bland 2000s console shooter that wouldn't be worth the emotional investment on its own. During the credits of Dark Sector, I had just played the game for seven hours straight, and while I had the full theory in my head, I don't think I communicated it very clearly due to how tired I was. So let's take another stab at it.

Hayden Tenno, the protagonist of Dark Sector - both the 2004 concept video and the 2008 game - is, on a meta level, an astonishingly tragic figure among video game protagonists. He worked hard and did his job and stuck with the project all the way to the end, even through all the executive meddling, and it's a crime that he hasn't gotten more recognition for his loyalty and service in the aftermath of the success of Warframe, in the universe in which he was originally meant to be the star. The man was robbed of his glory by unfortunate circumstances, but he showed up anyway.

Like, look at the timeline in terms of an actor playing in a movie or a TV series. Hayden Tenno signs up for this sci-fi series called Dark Sector. They shoot the pilot and everything and start pitching to investors. The word comes down: Not another fucking sci-fi series, we're not going to compete with Halo, make changes or you're not getting funding. So this slapfight goes back and forth and the end result changes the entire concept from sci-fi cosmic horror to modern-day supernatural horror. Hayden is lucky he's not ordered to wear an eyepatch in a World War I setting.

Any actor who signed up for the original sci-fi concept would be well within their rights to say, "Nope, this is not what I signed up for, this is a completely different project, I'm leaving." But Hayden doesn't do that. He's still signed up to be the protagonist of "Dark Sector," and even though "Dark Sector" is extremely different from what he originally acted in and shot, he's gonna be the protagonist of "Dark Sector" anyway.

In this analogy, Hayden Tenno is not some legendary actor. He signed up for a sci-fi B-movie, he ended up in a supernatural B-movie, and he delivers a B-movie performance. But he shows up and does his job without complaint or putting on airs, and he does what needs to be done to get the project out the door and for the studio lights to stay on. Absolutely steadfast and loyal from beginning to end. And after that exhausting saga, knowing that a sequel is deeply unlikely, he retires as a video game protagonist and moves on, fading into obscurity.

And THEN, irony of ironies, that original concept gets revived at the studio four years later, reimagined with a new cast and new structure, and it takes off like wildfire. Warframe. Without Hayden Tenno. The executives had been wrong and the original creators of the concept had been right. Hayden Tenno got shunted into a borderline unrelated B-movie for nothing, sacrificed a potentially star-making debut for a cult not-even-classic.

Is all that accurate to say? Not exactly, there's no telling that Dark Sector in the mid-2000s would have performed as well as Warframe over the 2010s. But it makes for a compellingly tragic meta-narrative when you look at the role of Hayden.

This is why I think Dark Sector has a clutch on people's imaginations once they learn about it. Because it's a legit tragedy that Hayden hasn't gotten a piece of the Warframe pie after working so hard and sacrificing so much for the concept initially. On a meta level, his hard work and loyalty as a character deserves a reward, maybe in the form of a cameo or even a remake that can fit in better to the Warframe eternalist multiverse.

Is a grand comeback for Hayden Tenno likely? No, but it would make the perfect happy ending to this tragic tale, and that's why Dark Sector remains so compelling.

[edgygayguy]

!!!JADE SHADOWS SPOILERS!!!

I played the quest and it was ok. Felt very polarized by it.

The Warframe baby is a very fucking crazy and unexpected idea, the consequences of turning a pregnant person into a Warframe are really interesting and I want more lore and I want it yesterday. It will probably take like 2 years to get back to that tho. I would be happy with just some relevant codex entries. Also the baby to me looked pretty ugly and idk why I focused so much on that detail, but the piece of cloth stalker held it in was just not it. Like why does it look like he knitted that for the baby in advance. I'd rather have the baby itself be more visually interesting and wrapped in just black.

The quest was way too short, if I wasn't following devstreams I would feel no attachment to Jade at all. She's just there and the only thing we know about her is that she and stalker are in love, had a pregnancy and then got turned into Warframes.

I still have a lot of questions that went unanswered. Did the orokin turn both of them into frames at once or did Stalker get turned after the fall? If so was it voluntary? Why does the stalker hunt the tenno so fiercely? We know now why he hates Warframes but weren't the orokin responsible for turning his love into one? My headcannon is that the conditioning the orokin used on the dax was very effective on him, he couldn't bring himself to hate the golden lords so he began hating the warframes and in turn the tenno. I think he voluntarily turned himself into a Warframe, but how? No idea, maybe he managed to seek out Ballas who decided it was a great idea to create a hunter for the ones hunting him.

We know that some frames didn't get piloted by a tenno, Kullervo, Jade and most likely also Dante. The stalker seems to be the same. These 4 somehow managed to maintain their sanity, unlike most of them. This is the only question the quest answered for me, but not really, it just solidified what we already knew.

I love the inclusion of the sisterhood and the dialogue from Parvos, Ordis and Hunhow.

While browsing through Tumblr I saw two popular opinions I didn't even consider.

The first one is that stalker should have been trans. At first I had no idea if people were serious about it or not. The only evidence I saw brought up is that stalker hates himself and in his dialogue with Hunhow there's some stuff that could be interpreted as trans allegory. The latter I do see on a second read, but the first one is just weird. Is deep self hatred on the level of Stalker really a prerequisite for transness? I'd hope not. People being mad about their headcannon not being realized in this instance is odd to me, yeah it is pride month but there's plenty of transness in Warframe already. Ticker and Sentients (especially Hunhow, a man who constantly reminds you of his womb) are the first things that come to mind. I believe that Warframe is inherently trans and has been since the begging. You control Warframes, you can easily swap between them and they are representations of both sexes (+Xaku and Equinox). After the second dream that gets even more reinforced, "dream not of what you are but of what you want to be". Transness is so prevelent in this game that the stalker not being trans isn't that big of a deal, it's not like all of this game's representation was hinging on this one character.

The second one is that Jade doesn't have autonomy, she's stuck suffering and exists solely to give birth. I believe this wouldn't be a problem to most if we got like 20 minutes of extra time in the quest, Jade herself and even smaller things like our operator's involvement felt rushed. From the flashback we see that Jade wanted the child, if anything the quest advocates for autonomy. They should have shown us more to make it more obvious. It was illegal for Jade and Stalker to love each other because of their caste, let alone have a child. If only the quest took a minute to shit on the orokin instead of hoping everyone does that themselves. While in our world the major issue with women's autonomy isn't "I can't have a baby" but "I'm forced to have a baby", I think that these are both sides of the same coin. The underline still is: a woman was stripped of her autonomy. The message unfortunately wasn't clear enough. Also it doesn't help that this is Tumblr and LGBTQ+ people don't usually have the best relationship with pregnancy. And we live in a world where people are being forced to have babies for literally no reason, so it's pretty logical that the thought of someone literally dying to give birth is very emotionally charged and polarizing.

No hate to people who think that stalker should have been trans (I just don't see it) and to people who think that the quest portrayed women's autonomy in a bad way, while I don't think it's the case the devs should have known better, speeding through such a relevant issue was not a good idea on their part. They should have made it clear that Jade really wanted her child and her autonomy was taken from her by the orokin (it would also have helped if we got more Warframe biology).

[little-red-fool]

Ok, have some basic wf tips with some questions regarding socialization at the bottom:

-Best early game warframes are Rhino and literally every Warframe you can get from the Tenno Lab of a Clan Dojo. You can check guides to see how each frame is built, but i can also give you an overview directly if any warframe specifically catches your eye.

-Level up your damage mods and elemental damage mods. They will get you through with your weapons.

-Each weapon has either a higher crit chance or a higher status chance. Build either a full crit build for a weapon or a status build with elemental mods (best are viral, corrosive against grineer, heat and slash) depending on which stat is higher for your weapon. (Btw, you normally get weapons by buying their blueprints from the market for credits, yes for credits not plat, then building it wih the right materials. Same for Warframes, but you need to craft their components first which drop from their own places before you can craft the blueprint for the warframe itself)

-Experiment, get slots from Nightwave or by buying them with plat (if you still have starter plat remaining), and stick with weapons you enjoy using the most rather than whats meta or good. You can get an Mk-1 strun (a very bad weapon for all but the very early game) to kill level 100+ enemies, so meta is a suggestion. (Also, theres a set of mk-1 weapons you can buy for credits which are slightly worse versions of the same weapon without the mk-1 prefix. They serve as intro weapons and consider buying them, but remember to sell them if you need slots/get their base counterpart or a better weapon)

-Progress through the starchart at your own pace. All Warframe content since 2022 and probably forever will be locked behind the New War quest. Do not fret over this, Warframe is not made to be rushed. Play at your pace, everything can be earned.

-Prime gear is not necessary to do good in Warframe, it is a bonus

-If youre confused by the story, thats normal

-if you ever get stuck, the wiki is your friend (but i am also available, being a veteran of the game)

So, yea, that should be all you need to know to get started. Now, onto questions regarfing your interaction with the community:

1. How much do you usually interact with other fandoms youre in?

2. Do you even wish to be a part of the Waframe fandom?

3. Do you prefer to stay at a distance or would you like to interact a bit more? (Asking cause if its the latter, I can offer to be your training wheels considering the sheer number of people in the warframe community im actively friends with).

Ok, thats about all of the questions i can think of right now, but heres one more thing:

Warframe is a game filled to the brim with customization and fashion. It is an oc creator's wet dream. So just saying, if you like making ocs like your blog suggest you do, you will not wanna miss out on the later content in Warframe, trust me. As a proud owner of a bunch of ocs made over the course of multiple years...I would know

Ahh thank you so much this will probably help me a lot! (genuinely had no clue what I was doing in game lmao) I’ll have a look into these when I next log on because I’ll most likely need to change and upgrade stuff like mods, and I’ll try to acquire more Warframes since Excalibur’s the only one I’ve got right now. Also you’re 100% right about the OCs when I saw the amount of customisation options I was so excited lol

In terms of interacting with fandoms whilst I’d like to be able to be more social in the future I’m mostly just a casual observer at the moment, the extent of my interaction is usually just drawing and reblogging fanart, occasionally coming up with theories if I’m really invested in the story but that’s about as much as I interact most of the time and I’ll probably be like that for a while longer knowing me.

That being said I really appreciate the offer and I’m very grateful for the help you’ve given me, thank you so much! :)

[tauforged]

do you have any tips for someone who wants to get into warframe for the first time?

- don’t start with the duviri/drifter quest when given the option. it’s cool, don’t get me wrong, but it will be very confusing and you won’t revisit any of the stuff that’s touched upon until way way later in the game. start off in the origin system, the story progresses a lot more naturally from that start point. i don’t really know why they made this an option.

- you dont HAVE to buy platinum. they start you off with like 50 i think? it’s not necessary for anything aside from buying additional warframe/weapon slots. everything else is cosmetic or optional. you can get mroe plat later on by trading with other players (if you do want to buy plat for cosmetics or whatever, i recommend waiting until you get a discount as your daily login bonus. iirc they range from 25, 50, or 75% off. they’re pretty much entirely random though so don’t feel obligated to use one if you do get it and don’t need plat at the moment so it goes to waste. you’ll get another)

- even if you decide you don’t like a weapon you end up crafting, you’ll be better off if you level it up to the maximum rank (30) before selling it rather than trashing it outright, that way you won’t have to go back and get it again later on in the game in order to complete it. the more stuff you level in full, the faster you progress through mastery ranks, and some stuff is mastery rank locked so you’re gonna wanna pay attention to your progress.

- you’re gonna wanna join a clan as soon as possible. you can find some via the recruiting channel, or probably by asking around on social media, idk. i started my own (not recommended unless you’ve got a group of friends you can rally or feel like recruiting to fill out your ranks in order to actually get stuff done) so i don’t really know what the clan recruiting scene looks like. having access to a clan dojo makes life a lot easier (and can make finding people to play with less of a hassle too)

- the story itself doesn’t really pick up steam until you start the ‘natah’ quest. in between the start and there, you’ll mostly be doing a lot of running around trying to familiarize yourself with the setting and playing catch-up. don’t worry too much about all the stuff they throw at you all at once. almost all the quests are replayable through your codex if you ever want to refresh your memory, and for those that aren’t, the wiki is… usually a pretty decent source as far as summaries go. i’d take it with a grain of salt though.

- this one especially tripped my sister up so i’m gonna touch on it: you’re going to be required to do the ‘heart of deimos’ quest in order to progress past mars on the star chart. IMHO, this quest REALLY should not be mandatory so early on in the game — you aren’t going to be able to make heads or tails of anything anyone is telling you. don’t be afraid to breeze thru it w/o paying much attention and circle back around later in the game, preferably sometime after you finish the war within or at LEAST the second dream. i genuinely don’t know why they’re throwing baby tenno to the wolves on this one. just know it’ll all make sense later i prommy

- don’t worry too much about the open world areas like the orb vallis, the plains of eidolon, or the cambion drift at first. they’re very cool (and you’ll be introduced to them via their respective quests) but they can be overwhelming to new players and the difficulty spike might be frustrating, especially before you’ve unlocked a majority of the tools available to you.

- this game has been ongoing for over ten years at this point - there’s a LOT going on. take your time progressing at a comfortable pace. don’t be afraid to ask around for help if you’re stuck on something or getting frustrated trying to farm a specific part or material.

- if people try to talk down on you for being a lower mastery rank or w/e they’re literally just being an asshole. MR isn’t indicative of skill so much as it is a representation of how much gear you’ve leveled, which is basically just an indicator of how much time you’ve spent playing - a chimp smacking a keyboard can feasibly hit legendary after enough attempts. you’re fine. hell, i’ve been here since 2013 and i’m only MR 19 LMAO

- the ‘meta’ for this game is wildly subjective due to the vast customizability of builds. take everyone’s opinions with several grains of salt and don’t be afraid to experiment on your own to see what works for you

- dont read general chat. it’s not worth it. nobody in there is as funny as they think they are

- the most important part of being a tenno is having fun and being yourself :)

[vervainvoyage]

MR5, woot woot! THAT test was the hardest of them all- they wanted me to hack 6 things in a row. Never ask me to do this again. PLEASE.

I'm done with farming for now and getting back to quests, and I have a weird feeling that I got spoiled with some info too soon by doing the Heart of Deimos mission and

being told that apparently, those huge people made me? cool. Nice to know. I like the look of their old buildings, very gold and white, so I can vibe with that. OH and it suddenly makes sense why the extraction points in Orokin ruins look so conveniently designed- because they were designed to be landing points for Frame aircraft. Neat.

Me and Daughter are really vibing, mostly because I applaud her choice of blasting a boyband at full volume on a moon entirely taken over by eldritch mutated meat growth. The horrors persists but we stay silly.

Despite having now... 20 hours in the game, wow, I still run face-first into walls and fall off the map. I applaud Lotus for still wanting me on any missions despite that, though considering how often she tells me to "Focus, Tenno" she might have figured out I just have ADHD and usually forget to put on glasses. She scares me with some of her warnings though- when raiding Vaults, she sometimes says "something's wrong" and DOESN'T ELABORATE. MA'AM. PLEASE. DETAILS.

Also it took my bro a few tries to hammer it into my head that during the drilling missions, when Lotus tells me "The scanner has picked up a target. Go to the dig site" I'm supposed to STAY exactly where I was. Lotus please WHY are you telling me to go somewhere else and then nag me about my excavator getting destroyed 😭 I'm just a little gal, I can't receive this many orders at once, you already know I woke up from the coma a bit uh... uncalibrated.

Anyway, I just finished Stolen Dreams and... well that was a plot hook if I've ever seen one. I am more confused than before that mission. The Codices sound like a random MacGuffin, but I must assume they will show up later and this was just a set up that they even exist. The message though? About "the womb of the sky" being empty? Yeesh thanks ominous machine. Good to know. I'll just. I'll just leave you to it, thanks.

So. It's fun playing a warmachine that goes through enemies like a lightsaber through butter, even if I'm clearly one that lost some vital brain matter during the coma.

[riftwalker-limbro]

cephalon classifications

we know that Jordas & Ordis are Series-2 cephalons. Simaris & Suda are much newer. Cy is... i'm gonna guess somewhere in between these two classes. so, we have

Series-1??? Prototype?

Series-2: Orokin-style servant cephalons, with features to avoid the cephalon getting too much of an identity of its own, like mostly talking in the third person.

Railjack Cephalons: capable of first-person speech but obviously still very focused on one specific goal. need certain qualifications for this, according to Cy.

Relay Cephalons: have a fully-fledged personality and personal goals that stretch beyond their digital confinement. The only type of Cephalon whose datascape we've been in. presumably, these were volunteers to be turned cephalon in life, and have as such been allowed to retain all of their memories.

several questions.

what was the prototype cephalon series like?

what are the datascapes of non-relay cephalons like?

are there other cephalon tiers we just never hear about?

headcanons below the cut.

Prototype Cephalons

So the bare minimum requirements for a cephalon is to be smart enough to pilot an Orbiter and serve a Tenno, right? but not smart enough to rebel against the Orokin, or even give the Tenno the idea to.

i propose that the protoype cephalons were even more restricted than we see ordis being - probably like how ordis was with the vitruvian messing him up: completely depersonalised, emotionless. maybe prototype cephalons didn't even have a biological base in the first place but were pure AI. ordis with his mind-spy might've been one of the foundational/prototypical series-2 cephalons.

Datascapes

simaris' datascape is his pride and joy, and it is immense and varied, and several whole ass game mechanics happen inside of it (sanctuary onslaught, the simulacrum). compared to this, suda's datascape as we see it in octavia's anthem is almost barren, just containing the music elements. her goals do not require extensive use of her datascape like simaris' do, so her datascape is likely just for personal hanging out. it's like comparing someone's office-workspace to someone else's bedroom full of cds and a radio that belongs in a museum.

and these are two of the most advanced cephalon we meet. what does this mean for the other tiers? they might not even have datascape functionalities but i don't like that thought so i'm gonna invent something else that does make me happy.

going down tier by tier, i think railjack cephalons would be able to use a datascape for training, with or without their crew. simulating battle scenarios etc. they would need capabilities to host multiple people for these trainings.

but regular series-2 ship cephalons? the bare minimum i think would be to be able to support a 1 person training session. that would fall under the tenno support cephalon needs. maybe if multiple tenno are working together, their ship cephalons are able to work together and build a cooperative datascape to support all of them at once.

Other Cephalon Tiers

Ordis mentions there's barely any Series-2 left that he knows of. Cy mentions that he can't find a suitable railjack cephalon except for himself. We know that in-universe there are more tenno than just you, and presumably, not everyone has an identical Ordis copy. What are the odds that everyone else has a relay-tier cephalon and all of them are perfectly fine steering a ship for a tenno?

I think there is probably a tier in between series 2 and railjack, let's call it series-3, which mostly populates all other ships. if relay tier cephalons were allowed to keep their memories because they were volunteers and not otherwise a danger to the orokin empire, those were probably quite rare, and the orokin likely needed more cephalons than they had volunteers. so they would've likely sourced the biological components from undesirables if they couldn't get volunteers, similar to the warframe program.

so, after the failed series-1 and the prototypal hybrid-source series-2, the orokin perfected the single-tenno servant cephalon in series-3. i'm thinking, personality of polite-orokin-ordis, without the third-person-thing, which would make it less obvious that these cephalons still have a mind-spy-esque thing on them that would prevent rebellion.

[kassil]

Warframe Rambling

Some speculation with regards to the upcoming Duviri Paradox. Semi-spoiler-ish stuff past the cut.

So what we know, at the moment, is that the Plains of Duviri is some kind of pocket dimension in the Void, ruled over by an entity known as Dominus Thrax. The Plains are caught in a time loop, controlled by the same. We'll be playing as the Drifter, occupying the chronological stretch between when Paracesis gets run through the Operator and when we pick up as the Drifter in The New War.

I've seen some theories about who Dominus Thrax is, and have some notions of my own as well as thoughts on the ideas others have had.

The simple one is "some Orokin fucker who escaped into the Void before the Tenno killed him" but DE usually doesn't go for the simple answers. Evidence in favor: command of an Orowyrm, the distinctly Orokin trapping of various designs present. Evidence against: it'd almost certainly have to be another one of the Seven, and the only one I'm aware of being involved in a way that might allow for it is Tuvul. Last I heard, he got eaten by wolves.

Another popular one is "a third version of the Operator" - one whose bargain was selfish and seeking safety, rather than seeking to protect their fellow children (the Operator) or refusing the original deal (implied to be what the Drifter did.) Evidence in favor: the people who populate the realm, who are implied to be created by the will of Dominus Thrax, seem to regard Drifter as him. Evidence against: DE tends not to repeat the same trick too often in their quest for ongoing novelty, and this would be another round of Your Operator Got Soaked In The Void, Wow Weird Huh.

One I thought of after seeing the previous one, plus some information about how Duviri will work: Dominus Thrax and the Drifter are one and the same, the result of the Void operating on the Drifter's mind until they became an amphisbaena of sorts. Evidence: again, the realm seems to recognize Drifter and Dominus as the same. Logic: if you failed to save everyone, you might end up in a self-destructive spiral, such that you turn against and try to punish yourself; the "days" are referred as Spirals. The realm seems engineered to torment and punish the Drifter for no clear reason, at this point. Evidence against: I admit this seems like a stretch, and would be weird mind-game-tricks even by the standards of Void fuckery.

There's a theory that this is a version of Rell who made a bargain. I don't know what the evidence is, but Dominus doesn't particularly feel autistic-coded to me, and the last round they took some pains to make sure Rell was solidly sympathetic. Doing a flat demi-villainous autistic character seems more tone deaf than what we've already had.

The last one, and the one I'm most suspicious of, is that Dominus is some version of Albrecht Entrati, either the reflection that the Man in the Wall showed as for him, or as a timeline where he chose the power of the Void for himself over returning to realspace with the keys to the Void in the form of the fingers of the Man in the Wall, or the "real" Albrecht who didn't manage to escape and instead took refuge into a Void pocket, spiraling inward on himself as the only Really Real thing. I give this some credence, because Albrecht's own notes indicate that he's not sure if he's the "real" Albrecht, or if he's his own doppelganger, having escaped from Untime, and Mother from the Entrati family seems convinced that her father is just on the other side of the Untime Door, waiting for her. Sure, she could be delusional about it, but it could also be that she's on to something in that Infestation-induced semi-madness.

Edit: ...I guess I was right with the shower-thoughts guess of Drifter and Dominus, or at least closer than any of those other guesses. Dominus is a character brought to life to hold all those emotions that a kid would be experiencing with everyone else on the ship Dead or Worse.

[retphienix]

I figure I'll be saying nothing unusual in the slightest but-

I have, overall, helped 3 separate tenno on their journey over the years in 'more than minor' ways and a few "sticking points" have become.... extremely painfully obvious in doing so.

Because when *I* was progressing through warframe, I wasn't afraid to just say "Fuck it, later" to whatever line of progression got too annoying- but when you're specifically trying to match a friend and do the same content they are doing, you can't always say that.

So things that just rolled over me and didn't have vast impacts on my experience because I simply came back when I felt like it were EXTREME STICKING POINTS for many of them- to the point where what I would initially call "Minor ideas to improve progression/grind" are now seeming more and more like "MAJOR FLAWS IN PROGRESSION THAT COULD REALLY USE ALTERNATIVE AVENUES".

And again- these things weren't that annoying For Me, but they were EXTREMELY annoying For People Who Wanted To Match Where I Am NOW, and to be frank, I agree in that context- like why the fuck are these parts of the game so bottlenecked in mediocrity.

And again again- I understand warframe as a whole has design decisions built around slowing the player down, prolonging progress, and generally not being "too" rewarding in an effort to profit off inconvenience.

I also fucking hate that, btw, I hate that we live in a time where games just do that, but I digress because this conversation is slightly more "Yeah, you could and should change that" than me just saying "Be a perfect game."

Rambling and not editing the above: The fact that the modern game still has the horrendous setup for how Fortuna/Vox rep works, where you are expected to MAX fortuna in order to even begin meaningfully doing Vox stuff like Profit Taker, where Fortuna STILL TO THIS DAY has no reasonable grind for specific bonds- with Medical Bonds being tied to ONE bounty at a low drop rate in a low amount while needing a lot of them as tribute to rank up- good luck getting our bestie to sell you enough of them or even affording that-

-or where in order to get remotely close to current stuff you have to do all the old quests, then spend a week grinding SPECIFICALLY for necramech stuff (POST NERF WHERE YOU CAN BUY DAMAGED PARTS!!!!) which DEMANDS players go fishing and mining to an extreme amount in a location that has FAR TOO FUCKING MANY DIFFERENT FISH AND ORE AND NO GOOD BAIT IN COMPARISON TO OLD OPEN WORLDS LIKE WTF IS THAT DESIGN DECISION WHEN MINING AND FISHING IN CETUS/FORTUNA IS LIKE 99% OPTIONAL FOR OPTIONAL STUFF LIKE AMP UPGRADES, ZAWS, AND KITGUNS???

-or where you ALSO have to dedicate time to grinding a fucking railjack of all things- the most MEANINGLESS mainstay in your entire arsenal by all accounts and I say that as a huge RJ fan! What does it do!!!? NOTHING! Arch can speed you up in open world! Necra can trivialize open world! RAIL! DOES! NOTHING! WHY DO YOU NEED IT FOR THE QUEST BEYOND "It's a sense of progression that you earned this :)" NO!!! STOP!!

-or even just the BASIC fact that in order to do FUCKING STEEL PATH- you know, that basic step in progression that opens up a fuckton of potential in your kit and like almost all worthwhile content is best done in steel path? Yeah? GOTTA DO EVERY SINGLE NODE! What a MEANINGLESS task! I mean it!

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Anyways I'm just ranting I think.

Fortuna/Vox is a busted ass rep grind- there is no reason you should need to MAX Fortuna rep in order to do VOX stuff, that's just ridiculously put together and outdated. I'd bet money, because I was FUCKING THERE, that the entire reason it's STILL like that is because they were desperately trying to delay people grinding Vox rep and doing Profit Taker because, spoiler, PT wasn't there.

They made the max rep a requirement because the content behind it didn't exist yet, and then the content released bugged as fuck so they never adjusted it. It works now but too late! Keeping the STUPID fucking rep progression as is!

Forced fishing and mining (on the worst planet to do it on to boot) for KEY QUEST PROGRESSION is just fucking stupid- oh hello Necramech.

Forced Mech and RJ just to do New War is also suspect because both of them practically just get a cameo appearance in the fucking quest, yet MAJOR PROGRESSION is tied to finishing both, cool.

And *I* enjoyed clearing all the nodes. I also wasn't in any hurry to do so. But why the fuck does every single player need to complete like 250 nodes of the same handful of gametypes in order to just do SP? Ridiculously outdated and needs trimmed, either in total missions period or in what's required.

/rant because having to tell people who enjoy warframe "Oh yeah.. uh... yeah you HAVE to do that" and hearing them go "....Seriously?" fucking sucks./