Posted by on Mon Sep 12 2022 (Updated: Wed May 17 2023)
I decided to play the 4-hour long questline for Warframe called The New War. Here is what I thought about it.
Warframe is an online video game. Unlike singleplayer games, I can not load a save file to different points of a mission or stages of the questline. For personal reference, I have recorded a full playthrough of the game.
Full playthrough: https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk
The New War introduces the scenario of the player losing items and equipment; therefore, the prior acquisition and grind for in-game items is irrelevant to the progression of this quest.
Note: Warframe is a video game that is notorious for its bugs. The graphics engine is performant. But various game scripting is both broken and fixed each update. Watch the game run at a stable 144 frames per second with a high view-distance scenery. But simple logic such as exiting a mission or fishing get botched.
The studio certainly has talented programmers. I suspect that these bugs are intentional. An unstable, nonperformant game engine does nobody favors. But gameplay being too bugged to work can force players to purchase microtransaction for the resources they otherwise would be able to acquire.
Warframe is a free-to-play third person shooter taking place in the Solar System. In the far future, multiple factions are at perpetual conflict:
the Corpus, a giant corporation with a religious attribution to the pursuit of profit
the Grineer, an army of mass-cloned soldiers
the Infestation, a fungal disease that infects both organisms and robots
the Sentients, an artificial race from another star system (Tau, possibly Tau Ceti)
the Tenno, the players.
These factions fight over control over extraterrestrial territory or lost technology from the fallen empire, The Orokin Empire. In many cases, the storylines involve one of the factions but not neccessarily all.
The early versions of the game had enigmatic characters and a unique, futuristic blend of European and Asian cultures. Often, characters in Warframe are clad in full body space suits. Their faces are obscured behind helmets, masks or visors. The structure of the gane has led many players to question and speculate about the setting.
“Who is the Lotus, the mission operator that guides the players (the Tenno)?”
“Who or what are the Tenno (player faction), and how or why do they have superpowers?”
“Who are the Orokin? What more can be discovered about the Orokin Era, a supposed technological golden age from which lost technology must be discovered?”
Initially, the player character was interpreted to be a silent protagonist wearing a space suit. By now, must of the initial mystere has been lifted as material for storylines and lore. All aforementioned questions have been answered, and the questline The New War builds a story upon the answers.
If you prefer to find out for yourself, skip over the remainder of this section.
The Tenno originated from a colony ship called the Zariman. The Zariman had been on an extrastellar journey from the Solar System to the Tau System, but an accident occured as the ship was warping. This had left the ship stranded in the Void, a region of hellspace where the laws of physics have little influence. This spaceship had children aboard, and an unknown entity had driven the adults insane.
Eventually, the children were rescued. As a result and a combination of circumstance, the children have metapysical superpowers but are kept in cryostasis. Within the setting, the player character is one of the children (an “Operator”) that controls a warframe by using the power of Tranference to transfer consciousness.
The preceding material to The New War reveals that The Lotus is not actually human despite her outward appearance. She is a member of an artificial race designed by the Orokin called The Sentients. The Sentients were the faction that defied their masters and destroyed the Orokin Empire during the Old War.
Activating the quest from the menu warns the player that the New War is a solo-only quest and that certain features of the game are disabled until completion. This is an uncommon design for an online multiplayer game. Given the revenue model, the questline can not be too challenging, too long, or too bugged lest the game studio risks permanently locking out their players.
In the first segment of The New War, the player takes the perspective of different characters involved in the conflict. This quest introduces two new significant characters: a selfless Grineer soldier, Kahl-175; and a Corpus support technician, Veso-R. It is not until later in the storyline, the player plays as their custom character.
I had barely customized my character (“the Operator”). My character wears the default spacesuit and has minor changes to hair and eye color. I did not choose the sex of the character. When the character was revealed, he was a boy and I had simply left him as that. This is where the weird part of the quest happens.
I had guesstimated the Operators are around the biological ages of 10 to 12 years old. For a long-running game involving cryostasis and unaging characters, a voice actor should sound consistent. I can understand why child actors are not used for child charactes; male voice actors who have trained to retain prepubescent voices are rare. For both sexes, the voice actors for the Operators are adults. I thought the male voices were too deep for the character model, so I had picked the Raven voice for my Tenno. It is supplied by a voice actress, but her performance was androgynous initially.
This completely falls apart in quest because it introduces the adult version of The Operator. As a result, I played as a old man with an old woman’s voice and was unable to change that until the end of the quest. I had tried hard to suspend my disbelief in that my character could be like a man with a similar voice to Dean Venture from the Venture Brothers. But whenever my character came on screen, I rather the scene be done with already. I suppose this is one of the cases where traditional cinematography clashes with the interactive medium.
Who is the enigmatic player character of the second chapter?
It’s you(r character)!
The reveal would not be as much of a surprise if the player was prompted to customize the character before the scene occurred.
Even during the portions of the quest when the child re-appears, the Raven voice was not as androgynous as past performances. Maybe the quest would’ve been better if the game assigned the adult voice based on the character model.
After the conflict in high orbit, the Operator and the Lotus disappear into the Void Portal. The primary antagonist, Ballas, builds the Narmer Empire. It is founded without blood or violence, but delusion and belief. Civilians are forced to wear mind-control VR headsets (Narmer Veils).2
The adult version of the Operator called the Drifter. The Drifter does not have the same metaphysical powers as the Operator and can not transfer his consciousness to a Warframe like the Operator can. In the absence of the Operator, the Drifter is the player character.
With a pistol, medical supplies, smoke bombs, and plot armor, this mostly normal adult has a tall order of taking on an empire without direct support. Stealth is not my strong suit. With limited places to hide and 1-hit kills upon failure, I believe the mission Stolen Plates was mostly trial and error to find the correct path to the next objective.
Later, in the mission Wild Hunt, “Archons” are introduced. Archons are reanimated hybrids of Warframes and Sentients. In-game, they’re recognized as blatant asset reuse. Practically, they are recognizeable warframes with animal heads. For the quest, Archons are mini-bosses the Drifter must hunt to acquire the crystals to revive the Lotus. Out of three, the player chooses to fight two for this chapter. The ones I fought were Amar and Boreal.
With regards to story, in other parts of the game, warframes can be seen ripping out components from giant robots. I found it quite silly to see the Drifter, a powerless but abnormal human kicking off a warframe in close combat.
Pertaining to game design, the Archons are not great bosses to fight. Considering their health pool and the damage output of the player, their encounters stall the player and pad the length of the quest. Additionally, the bosses have invincibility states that the player may have to wait out (example: Boreal’s screech).
Post-script: As the Drifter is fighting to revive the Lotus, a character reveals that Ballas’ forces are also searching to recover The Lotus’ remains.3 I am not sure why they even bother because Ballas opened a portal to throw her into the Void to begin with.4
With two Archon Shards, the Lotus is partially restored. She fails to recognize the Drifter then attacks him. It is then the Dritter regains the power of the Void. After being stuck by the clash of Void and Sentient energies, the Drifter appears to have become the Operator again.5
The Lotus recognizes the Operator and stops attacking. She then remembers the greater conflict at hand and pursues the primary antagonist on her own. The player acts to intervene.
The grand finale takes place at the heart of the Solar System. The great Sentient mothership Praghasa is a weapon designed to consume a star. Its target is the Sun.
Here I barely hold my suspension of disbelief together as the player’s spaceship approaches the Sun. If the light of the sun as seen from Earth is blinding as is, the light intensity at the Sun is perhaps enough to shine through flesh. The amount of radiation must be several scales more than that of a nuclear power plant, and the temperature is in the millions of degrees. It does not end there.
For the final encounter of the questline, the player bears witness to the conflict between Ballas and the Lotus. Two (former) lovers, both very powerful people at the center of the Solar System, bicker like a married couple over the past adoption of a child. Before the abusive husband strikes his wife with a sword, the player character pounces in and slaps a Narmer Veil on his face. Ballas is pacified and deluded into seeing the Lotus as her past incarnation (Margulis), allowing the Lotus to plant a kiss of death on Ballas. At least one thing is certain; Ballas the Golden Lord of Lies did love Margulis.
In the conclusion of the New War, the player decides which incarnation of The Lotus will lead the Tenno. The choices are between herself as a human (Margulis), herself in her original Sentient form (Natah), or herself as the Tenno know her. The game conveys a graphical effect similar to The Drifter changing places with The Operator as the player mouse-overs each selection.
In a scripted sequence of the questline, the player character flashes back to a classroom lecture just before the Zariman makes its jump. The current lesson is the “Temporal Axioms”. According to the subtitles, Euleria Entrati (who sounds much like Goimatru Entrati) explains the two models of time.6
Presentism, only the present time is real; the past is invalidated to be hypothetical while the future has yet to happen.
Eternalism, the past is not hypothetical and all positions in time are equally valid; the result of either choices in the past are both real and theoretically accessible.
I see just like the Operator and The Drifter, The Lotus is imbued with some attributes of the Void after she had been banished by Ballas. Her past incarnations can access the present time. The game assigns the moral alignment of Sun to picking Natah (the form her family wanted to restore her to), Moon to picking Margulis (the form her former lover wanted her as), and Neutral to picking The Lotus (the identity she took when she adopted the Tenno).
I wanted to maintain the Neutral alignment for my profile. However, I have yet to see what direct in-game effects it has beyond it as an indicator of choices made throughout the story of Warframe. But Natah is a much more awesome model than the rest.
More of a chore than it is entertainment. But plenty of people other than me can appreciate the cinematography.
The spaceship designs for the Sentients were at least cool
The Lotus — the so-called Sentient Queen and the guide of the Tenno becomes much like a battered and abused wife for this quest. I am sure this is what some people consider adding depth to her character or making her realisitc or relatable, but it is just about as cool as mentally ill protagonists whose personal issues or mental illnesses somehow tie into the greater conflict at hand.
Ballas — the primary antagonist. I am rather disappointed in how cliché his emotionally abusive lines were in the final encounter (“She has this coming!” “You’re making me do this!”). Hard to tell if the game was trying to create a boss fight or a reference of emotionally abusive sentences.
Errah — just about everything this character does contradicts his motives and conveniences the plot. He wanted to restore his sister but allows Ballas to kill her. He wants to finish the Old War and conquer the Solar System for the betterment of his people, but he gives dominion of the empire to Ballas (a “Maker”) who is capable of programming (enslaving) them.
The Operator (The Raven) — some of the Operator’s lines in this quest are just petty or childish almost to the point of breaking the character established in previous quests.
Veso-R — This minor character was part of the quest’s strong start. For some reason, his character model has a much higher quality than other more important characters.
In Warframe, the real-life-to-game intermediary currency is Platinum. Platinum is used to unlock inventory slots (microtransaction) and is also exchanged between players. I have never purchased platinum with real money, but I have traded game items for platinum.↩︎
Narmer, https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk?start=1h7m33s↩︎
Enemy of Enemies, https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk?start=1h53m15s↩︎
The Void Portal Opens, https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk?start=1h05m21s↩︎
The Second Archon Shard, https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk?start=3h00m02s↩︎
Temporal Axioms, https://video.hardlimit.com/w/mjVBRVW3bSkzu6uSR4pzHk?start=2h10m40s↩︎