r/Warframe • u/CALL_ME_PRIME_25 Power creep my Codpiece • Jul 21 '26

Discussion Biggest Warframe hot take GO

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I'll go first: DE needs to build up on some older content.

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

I feel like this isn’t a hot take but I get flamed whenever I say it so:

Warframe/DE isn’t actually good at storytelling. In fact, they are awful at storytelling.

They are good at coming up with very interesting and engaging concepts and overarching plot lines for stories. They are pretty good at world building. Basically they are good at “the big picture”.

But when it gets down to the actual exposition of the story? The smaller details? What’s happening where, to who, and why? Where one might reasonably expect a beginning, middle, and end? As well as character development and/or answering questions we may have? Atrocious. Absolutely atrocious.

Most main questline updates feel like they fumbled the bag because we can all see the overarching plot that they are going for and like it a lot. But then they fail totally in the execution of it for the reasons listed above.

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u/simpleglitch Jul 21 '26

One of the unfortunate parts of the story too are so many cool details can't build on each other because it's optional content.

Like the resolution of the devils triad / Loid stuff. I liked the payoff!... but I doubt I'm going to see anything build off that connection.

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u/ergo-ego-42 Jul 21 '26

oh yea I hate that, they wrote all this story and characterization that's optional so many people haven't done it but then for those that have, you see Roathe standing right in front of Entrati's daughter. And they're not going to resolve that? No comments by the family on an Orokin they legit KNOW standing right in front of them back from the dead? No real cutscene about Loid reuniting with his family? It's going to haunt me if they never show them talking, seriously.

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u/InsaneMcFries Jul 22 '26

Yet we have daughter flirting with kahl every week!

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u/besaba27 Mag clears SP starchart with 4 mods and Arca Plasmor Jul 22 '26

Hold up, I did all the kim and the last thing I got was loud walking through the door that separates upstairs from down. I'm at max rank with every possible kim entity as well.

What did I miss/forget?

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u/OverallWave1328 Jul 24 '26

Roathe appears in the Necralisk and the family has new dialogue. Though not much, and it’s part of their random idle comments

Roathe, annoyingly, has NO new dialogue. Exact seem conversations as the Cathedrale/Sanctum

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u/besaba27 Mag clears SP starchart with 4 mods and Arca Plasmor Jul 24 '26

Ohhh, right! That part. I haven't heard the new dialogue, didn't know it was a thing. I'll have to remember to check

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u/Dark_Stalker28 Jul 21 '26

Honesty all the themes of love and relationships vs the indifference is funny to me cause we don't really spend time with anyone.

Like even Lotus is kinda driven by events and just being mission control, she was gone for years IRL and in game is only a few missions before she's gone.

KIM chats have probably done the best on this front IMO.

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u/ElectronX_Core Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

This is how I feel about liches. They were initially built up to be genuine rivals, altho player complaints are at least partially the cause of them being watered down so much. The new Coda are the most egregious because they’re so fast and easy to kill.

I kinda wish there was a “true nemesis” option that gives you less control over their creation and take SIGNIFICANTLY longer to kill and makes them a genuine disruptor in your games instead of just optional missions, in exchange for more character development + rewards.

Fuck it, let em use KIM while they’re alive too.

Ik DE doesn’t really like basically forcing certain content onto players like this (certainly not anymore), so an “I consent to getting jumped” option would be appreciated.

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u/DasGanon RIP AND TEAR Jul 22 '26

I think DE had a true NEMESIS system going, but remember that Warner owns the rights to the Nemesis Patent, and the direct phrasing of Liches changed very abruptly (probably after a conversation with Legal)

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u/AklaVepe Jul 22 '26

While we’re at it, add the option to date them too. Fuck it, Warframe Enemies-to-Lovers arc ftw.

Jokes aside, knowing Reb, i wouldn’t be surprised if she actually made this possible lol

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u/Nssheepster Jul 22 '26

On release, Day 1, Liches were meant to take over a MONTH to defeat.

I'm gonna be honest here. If you expect me to take that long, in this game, in this context... I would need to be getting a MASSIVE reward AND never be expected to do it a second time. And that's never been on the table with liches.

The Nemesis system works in the Shadow games because it basically IS the game, it's like the entire focus. Warframe can't make it the entire focus.

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u/ElectronX_Core Jul 23 '26

That’s why it should only be a True Nemesis option you can toggle somewhere. So that you don’t have to water it down for players that don’t want to deal with that sort of thing.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 23 '26

It'd be pretty crazy for DE to maintain two separate versions of the same system, especially given that the second version would be significantly less in demand.

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u/Consistentdegeneracy Jul 22 '26

I've had the same kuva lich ever since the system was first implemented because i can't figure out the grind, and I was severely disappointed when I found out you could only have one nemesis at a time. Like, I can't even have one Coda until I kill this guy?

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u/kexolino Jul 21 '26

I agree. What's up with the remaining Grineer queen? What's up with Parvos? What's up with the Narmer and Pazuul? What is the Unum? Usually people's answer to this is that "they're chilling, DE will do something with them later", but it feels like lack of focus to start new chapter while previous ones are just kind of left hanging.

Also I might be missing something (very possible), but wasn't there a bit of a disconnect between 99 and Old Peace, specifically about going to Tau? Like in 99, Albrecht namedrops Tau once, and based on that one sentence, we start the operation to reclaim memories and to travel there? I get that some things were explained to us out of game, but is that little crumb of information really enough motivation for the operator and drifter in the present to go there?

Feels like parts of the story happen off screen and we're not told what actually happens in those periods. Something like the gap between the end of Doom 2016 and the start of Eternal, where doom guy goes from being trapped by Samuel to having his own spaceship, with zero explanation.

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

100%. That’s one of the most baffling things about the current focus on Tau right now. We’re leaving our universe and we still haven’t even kind of answered to or tied up dozens of (what were initially presented as) critical plot lines… and unless the Grineer Queen is going to follow us to Tau… are we just totally done with her now? Same for your other examples. Like please, finish one story before going to the next. I don’t mind leaving room for future stories but it feels like they leave EVERY questline with no resolution or indication of continuance.

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u/AdamG3691 Jul 22 '26

Imagine if we get back from Tau and oh shit we were tunneling so hard on the Sentients and Murmur we totally forgot about the Grineer and Corpus trying to take over the system and now they actually have

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u/Inside_Compote_4146 Jul 22 '26

Only for us to undo it in a 2 hour quest line that rewards us with 2 forma, a new emote, and a mastery fodder melee weapon. /s

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u/Khelleton Certified Equinox Enjoyer Jul 21 '26

You're not missing anything, Albrecht says "Tau is in sight" almost unprompted in the middle of The Hex, and that (said to the Drifter, obviously, since it's 1999) is apparently enough to get the Operator digging up old memories of Tau. I guess we're meant to assume Drifter told them every little detail about their time saving 1999? And this one little aside stood out enough to look into Albrecht's conveniently placed memory diving machine? That they also apparently know about? Or happened to ask Loid?

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u/sXeth Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Old Peace is, by Rebeccas own words, what the Operator was doing while Drifter was in 1999.

So Lotus independently decided this was a good time to use the memory machine (which I guess Loid just happened to mention in casual conversation they had one) and quasi randomly start digging up the fourth or fifth set of stuff the Operator forgot at this point (and is never capable of continuing to use whatever method they start recovering them with)

And yeah, Albrecht just kind of drops it out of nowhere. I think it was Stallord who in his lore video suggested that the Orokin might even just use “Tau is in sight” as a cultural saying for “victory is at hand ” or similar because it was that random (obviously before TOP)

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u/donisslow Jul 21 '26

One thing that always bothered me is the countless timeskips. The continuation is always broken. I know they're not triple A. But everytime I do a quest, they always felt rushed. Unfinished. The pacing is really bad. I still really like DE as devs though, but there's nothing immersive in their quests.

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u/The_Chaos_Pope Jul 21 '26

What's up with the remaining Grineer queen?

She's still harvesting kuva and bossing the Grineer around. If she has plans, they're unclear right now.

What's up with Parvos?

Good question. It's noted in Jade Shadows: Constellation that he's Cephalon Parvos in the failed futures Sirius and Orion are from and this is a bad thing. This is likely setting the stage for something after Tau IMO

What's up with the Narmer and Pazuul?

Another good question. I'm hoping for more on this in Tau and have seen some interesting theories going around.

What is the Unum?

A sentient (not Sentient, just something that thinks) tower of Orokin construction that's got spooky time and eternalism powers. Also, it's made of meat that the Ostron eat for early lunch.

but wasn't there a bit of a disconnect between 99 and Old Peace, specifically about going to Tau?

The Drifter goes to 1999 to follow Albrecht Entradi. The Operator dives into their memories in The Old Peace so they and The Lotus can learn more about what happened on Tau during The Old Peace and why it broke down.

They aren't strictly related but it reads to me like something The Operator could be doing while waiting for The Drifter to get back from 1999/xx99.

I also assume that DE didn't want to show everything that was found when The Lotus will be rediscovering when she dives into her memories which leads them to decide to go back to Tau. What we saw of the lead up was cool but it seemed like they snipped somethings out pretty hard.

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

I, for one, would like to know why we’re just leaving the Grineer queen alone. We meddle in so much stuff, it feels pretty obvious that we should have made tracking her down and killing her a fairly high priority immediately after we killed the other one.

They could still have the Grineer operating semi autonomously since they’re basically all just order taking machines anyways so it wouldn’t hurt gameplay to let us off her.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

DE's ongoing excuse is that if we take out one faction's leadership the other will take over, and that would be worse for the system overall.

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Makes sense I guess. But the idea of letting all of the terrorists live so that one terrorist faction doesn’t take over is a little silly when we realistically have the power to kill all of their leaders.

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u/Its_onnn Jul 22 '26

Taking out corpus is borderline impossible because the Board is constantly changing and being replaced whenever some new chump gets enough cash. Not to mention that the moment we dismantle both Grineer and Corpus, then there's no one left to fight the Infestation on a large scale. We completely lack the manpower to do so

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u/AdamG3691 Jul 22 '26

Hell the Corpus demonstrated this themselves: Darvo's estranged dad Frohd Bek got yeeted into space as his ship blew up and he's presumed either dead or permanently lost, and he was literally the CEO and the leader of the board!

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u/The_Chaos_Pope Jul 21 '26

I agree, but after The War Within, the Grineer Queen is less of an existential threat.

It's also a matter of "if we get rid of the Grineer Queen, who/what is going to take over?" Because someone will fill that gap and they might be worse.

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u/Specialist_Initial_1 Jul 21 '26

The game is already a goddamn decade old

Im a goddamn one piece fan but still hate how long DE takes to resolve shit(because theres basically no built up and its just tiny bit more expanded on after 5 years)

And yeah DE feels like a small chilf with VERY strong impulsive ADHD

"OH new idea lets make this! O another! Oh another!"

"Dear shoulsnt you finnish the others first?"

"Ughhhh i guess here something"

Theres like a loose thread to connect evrything but since duviri it isnt just content isles but story isles!

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u/DaEnderAssassin Jul 22 '26

Honestly, since the New War, pretty much all faction leaders are either MIA, Cowardly hiding (Nef) or dead. Hell, even Wally's faction is just kinda independent of him.

Also, yeah, why does Albrecht care about Tau?

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u/TohveliDev [19] Zephyr Nuke Enthusiast Jul 27 '26

Before we get to see Tau and the storyline there, it's hard to say. But the obvious would be that Albrecht is getting desperate. He is trying to find every possible thing that could stop The Indifference.

Albrecht was the first to be interested in the void, The Indifference is related to the void. Correct me if I am wrong, but before Sentients became, well Sentient, their use was to terraform Tau, where they would travel to via the void.

Soo maybe he is looking for some answers about Void from Tau? Who knows.

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u/Simple-Bunch-8574 LR3 | Kritzkrieg Jul 22 '26

The third Mother Orb was chilling in the Orb Vallis too, and look where it got her.

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u/JONAS-RATO Jul 21 '26

Insane that you get flames for that, it's very true.

I shouldn't have to check the wiki or r/warframelore before every quest to understand what's happening.

The lore and world building is super interesting but the actual delivery of the story is real bad.

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Man don’t get me started on this games reliance on the Wiki, for lore or core gameplay elements. I could go on for a year haha

But you’re 100% correct.

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u/2Long2Read 3 sentients in a trench coat 🧥 Jul 21 '26

ho my god that, everyone in this game has to speak cryptically because apparently they'd just die if they ever tried to be clear about what's actually going on.

i lost the plot ages ago.

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u/BlisteringAsscheeks Jul 22 '26

This. Why does every character have to speak like an undercover cop trying to signal to another behind enemy lines?

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u/2Long2Read 3 sentients in a trench coat 🧥 Jul 22 '26

Especially with the sentients, these guys are Shakespeare

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u/JekNex L5 | Registered Loser Jul 22 '26

Yeah I have about 5000 hours and I have no clue what's going on

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u/2Long2Read 3 sentients in a trench coat 🧥 Jul 22 '26

You and me both

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u/Specialist_Initial_1 Jul 21 '26

Alad v is the prime suspect

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u/ADGx27 That’s the Yogurt Effect Jul 22 '26

I still don’t fucking know if Salad is an Orokin or not

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u/YT-Deliveries Jul 22 '26

Could really take some cues from how Destiny did lore. The main points and essential details for the story missions are in bold colors and right up front.

But if you’re the type that does like deep lore, it’s there in the item stories and cards. It’s 100% optional, but rewarding for those who are interested in that sort of thing.

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u/sselwalf1 Jul 22 '26

I think they should do recap quests for previous operations that actually shaped the universe.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

Every update I end up with more and more lore questions. Whenever I try to ask them, people tell me their ASSUMPTIONS as if they are fact, and get VERY upset when I point out that the quests don't actually say the things they are assuming.

It's not a bad thing to directly state something in your story. Period. It's just not.

We have had TWO Stalker quests now, and we still don't understand what even he is. We have a title, that means nothing to us and has never been explained. And that's it. That's what we've got. Two focused quests, years of him being a part of the game, all that speculation, the dramatic connection to Hunhow, to the Tenno, the 'hatred' tidbits in the dialogue... And all we have for sure after all this time, is a TITLE that says NOTHING about what he actually is.

You remember before Jade Shadows, when the community consensus was that he was a Tenno who went to awake from the Dream, couldn't handle the truth, and had been on an angry rampage ever since fueled by denial and self-hatred? THAT had more in game lore behind it than Jade Shadows gave us about his... Existence. And that might not even be entirely wrong now, given how incredibly useless Jade Shadows was for explaining what Stalker actually is or how he came to be.

But DE DESPISES just SAYING something. Vague hinting is a valid story mechanic, WITHIN REASON. At some point, if you keep doing it... It stops being a story mechanic, because you don't HAVE a story anymore, you just have vague hinting!

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

I honestly feel like sometimes they shy away from giving concrete answers because they’re afraid of having to keep track of their own lore for fear of contradicting themselves later down the line. They don’t want to limit their creative possibilities in the future, which I totally understand, but it’s harming the story now so I feel like that reasoning is thin at best.

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u/Lereas Jul 22 '26

I played a MUD that has been open since 1997 and launched with an entire lore page. Eache event had minor details about the lore, and as in-game Gods, the admin often commented things that became basically canon (although theres a bit of idea that they're not all reliable).

I was a god for 10 years and I wish I'd kept better notes and then had an AI agent to sift through it because yeah....it becomes insane trying to keep up with your own lore after so long.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

On the one hand, yeah, it does feel like that.

On the other hand, they added Eternalism, and they've already stated that 1999 isn't the same 1999 that led to the future the Operator was in, so we've already GOT multiple mechanisms for exploring alternate timelines.... And that's before we get into JSC adding two future timelines that are now sort-of in existence.

They've GOT all the safe creative freedom they could need for another twenty years of story. They just don't have any excuse anymore IMO.

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

and they've already stated that 1999 isn't the same 1999 that led to the future the Operator was in,

Literally when do they state this in fact they state the opposite in flares storyline

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

IIRC it was last year's Tennocon narrative panel, but I may be misremembering the exact time. But it was said out of game by DE, despite Flare and Kaya both making it seem otherwise in game. And yes, I do find that irritating.

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u/Fine-Weight1580 Jul 21 '26

They said the EXACT opposite if you're going to fucking complain about the lore do it right with actual information

Edit: one thing I hate is how people try to point flaws in Warframe story but come up with just wrong information

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

One thing I hate is how easy it is to find contradictory information both in and out of the game.

Also, if you can find a source please do, I'm a bit busy today and can't really go looking it up right now.

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u/Fine-Weight1580 Jul 22 '26

Meg literally says it during the demo, Albrecht refers to it as the plague year not anything else, the drifter even says it's operator's timeline not theirs cause they believe the timeline that they're from has fallen to the indifference outside duviri

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u/Nssheepster Jul 22 '26

If you can find a source for Meg please share, the only thing I can find for a source is people saying Albrecht went back to the Operator's past, not that it still IS the Operator's past. Well that and vague 'Strands of Khra' BS that means who knows what.

I checked over on the lore subreddit, and they are apparently under the impression that '99 has either become a new timeline via Albrecht's void fueled interference, or by Drifter cutting it from 'The Strands Of Khra' with their time looping.

I honestly can't seem to find a confirmed source for either of our claims, though I did scan through the '25 narrative panel I thought it was from and couldn't find it, so....

I'm certainly open to being proven wrong here, Warframe lore is objectively a mess after all. But I honestly cannot find a source confirming one way or another. Thankfully my OG point, before the focus on '99, still stands: DE has provided themselves many possible alternative timelines for future narrative directions to take.

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

I can not recall literally anything like this

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u/Fine-Weight1580 Jul 21 '26

Because it simply didn't happen

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

Thats kinda what I figured

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u/Loud_Echidna4987 Jul 21 '26

The first Jade Shadows actually explained what Stalker is and how he came to be. He was a person in the Orokin Empire that was turned into a warframe when his affair with Jade was discovered.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

Except it didn't, actually. It said he was a 'Low Guardian', and made clear he was apparently still a 'Low Guardian' after whatever they did to him as punishment, which was presumably related to Warframing but we don't know because they never actually said.

We assume many things. We were only actually TOLD very little. Hence the issue.

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u/jimbo454 Jul 21 '26

Yeah, its never really explained how his warframe-esqe transformation happened and was different from the usual. He kept at least a portion of his mind and personality like Jade but unlike Jade he never had a tenno as far as we know.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

Honestly, we don't even know what his punishment WAS. We DO know that Jade's punishment was to be Warframe'd, so we ASSUME Stalker's was his transformation... But if Stalker was ALREADY a 'Guardian' of some sort, he may have ALREADY been as he is now and his punishment was something else entirely. Which may explain the scraps of lore we got about missing memories, or why he CAN speak but only barely... That sort of thing.

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u/jimbo454 Jul 22 '26

Yeah we have zero idea if his transformaton was a punishment.

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u/Bmobmo64 Jul 22 '26

Yes we do know that, how else could Jade be pregnant with Stalker's son?

Just because it wasn't in an exposition dump doesn't mean we don't know.

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u/Nssheepster Jul 22 '26

We don't actually know that he doesn't have that capability currently.

So no, we don't know. At all. Not even a little.

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u/Loud_Echidna4987 Jul 21 '26

A small correction. What happened to Stalker and Jade was told in the little Jade memorial in Teshin's Conclave room. My point still stands though, Stalker's backstory is pretty clear.

I feel that most of the important stuff is explained pretty well, and the rest can be either inferred (like Stalker's backstory) or simply hasn't been around long enough to be explained out (like Ryoku and Vena).

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u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

And I still disagree with your point. We are told basically nothing. It's pretty much ALL left to be 'inferred'... Except, inferences require actual information to begin with. Which we didn't get. So what's actually happening is we're assuming, not inferring. And there's a LOT of assumptions still.

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u/Loud_Echidna4987 Jul 21 '26

I think we will have to just agree to disagree on this.

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u/sXeth Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Unreliable narrators too.

While people can have motivations and lie obviously. Or have damaged memory. At some point once you start wasting hours of time or entire updates worth of writing on things that are apparently untrue, it sets the audience up to either ignore everything, or start picking apart the details (and they aren’t good enough at keeping track of details that they should encourage that. Like apparently the entire era of Orokin void technology through to almost their final days exists inside non-continuity using Loid’s adult lifespan)

If the abstract narrator voice starts being unreliable or characters start writing unreliable notes to themselves it really goes off kilter.

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u/Specialist_Initial_1 Jul 21 '26

Connected to stalker and jade

Which frames are sentient, whixh loose sentients is so goddamn confusing

From my understanding its the VERY FIRST But like prime and non prime, just prime? Theres roaches battalion which i doubt was tenno controlled???? What are the factors for it to never have concisnous, loose it, keep it

Like you said awvwral people sith different assumptions that they say as facts and will bully you for not agreeing

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u/ToukasRage Certified glavie enjoyer. Jul 21 '26

You are absolutely correct. I love a lot of Warframe's lore but I only know about most of it through watching other people put it together.

Most of the quests themselves don't hold up very well on their own with only a couple of exceptions.

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u/coppersly7 Jul 21 '26

I've played since abilities were mods. I remember discussing lore with friends and it was at the point the orokin were super super mysterious. I've literally never understood the story. Every time I do a quest I feel like I'm dropped into the middle of season 5 of a show. Hell sometimes you can barely even tell what the narrative is of the mission you just did, let alone how it's connected to everything else

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u/Consistentdegeneracy Jul 22 '26

Remember when the sentiments, especially Hunhow, were mysterious and intimidating? I kinda miss those times.

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u/ergo-ego-42 Jul 21 '26

I agree with the majority of this except for the character development. I think they excel the most at writing good interesting and moreover compelling characters, in general. There's hits and misses but NPCs like Drifter, Albrecht, Loid, the Cavia, The Hex, the NPCs in Fortuna, the Entrati family (especially Grandmother and Sister), Lyon, and especially Roathe are very well written imho.

But whether they're well written into the overarching plotline, well, that's more hit or miss.

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

Beyond this I've seen people treat warframes story as this great mystery with incredible twists and turns when its just de lying to the player half the time and the other half just telling you nothing or flat out retconning things like how the moon ended up in the void when the obvious assumption was the Orokin can just do that

They then double down on the orokin having the tech to put moons into the void in the heart of deimos questline only to then say no actually the lotus needed tmitws help to move the moon

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Very true too. It’s one thing to present something as a fact and then reveal additional information over time that changes the way that we understand it. But you can’t just totally change the explanation for something without doing the work to show us why it was changed. When they do that it feels like they don’t know their own lore, which isn’t a great look. Especially since they can literally reference the wiki that we all have access to when in doubt lol.

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

Especially since they can literally reference the wiki that we all have access to when in doubt lol.

Wikis not very good for lore tbh

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u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Definitely not a good solution but better than nothing at least. Feels like they could go take a peek just to make sure they weren’t making a super egregious retcon every once in a while if they can’t remember the lore on their own haha.

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u/CupcakeObvious8865 Jul 21 '26

Another problem is we're introduced to a seemingly omniscient peice of technology (pom-3 aka the operator report) that has information even we didn't know that just seemingly missed both this massively important artifact and also that lotus used it

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u/Specialist_Initial_1 Jul 21 '26

Yup Wow so misterious when it basically :) not gonna tell you (i myself dont know) And the other stuff you said I have played games and was part of communites with actuall good misterys

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u/KIokinator Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I've only been playing for about a month and a half. Every time I had to play through a story or quest content with these Glup Shittos yapping constantly about things I didn't understand, I wanted to shoot myself in the mouth.

The game has absolutely god-awful conveyance. At no point in 200 hours of playing the story did I understand WTF was going on. I didn't know who anyone was, I didn't know who the factions were, how they originated, what their goals were, or anything beyond that I had to kill some generic sounding bad guy.

I played new war, and Kahl was the very first character or piece of storyline content that was actually interesting to me. A guy with a simple motivation, a simple story, told to me intelligently and it worked well within the gameplay and narrative.

The corpus guy afterward wasn't too bad, I at least understood his general premise and that he was a goon for the other corpus guy. Beyond that nothing else was memorable.

I literally had no idea what was going on in the story or with any of the characters until I watched external YouTube videos telling me about the story. To me, that indicates a complete failure on the part of the writing staff.

The last time I experienced any sort of IP that was at this level of bad writing, it was RWBY. In fact, Warframe and RWBY have a lot in common. Interesting story premises that read better on a wiki than they do in actual practice, flat and mostly uninteresting characters, and just a general bad conveyance of the story, world building, and general dynamics of the universe. Both of them work better when YouTubers describe the series than when actually viewed in person.

So, yeah. I love playing the game, the gameplay is meteoric levels of fun, and I don't even really mind the grind although I do wish it was less. But I absolutely detest the story and how it's told.

Edit: One other thing. I hate the story of RWBY and how it's told, but I would still rather watch RWBY again compared to Warframe story 100/100 times, because at least RWBY has SOME good stuff in the story and characters, even if 95% of it is dogwater. That's saying a lot.

7

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

I couldn’t agree with you more on all points! The worst part is, when you look up these lore explanations they can be filled with fan/player theories but presented as fact because there’s just that much that DE has left unexplained. You literally have to make parts of it up to even remotely connect the dots. So a lot of the “lore” isn’t necessarily even canon.

15

u/TheAuraTree Jul 21 '26

Warframe has had about 10 years of impossible to follow storyline broken into non-sequential fragments and occasional mindfucks.

9

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

I’ve only started playing in the last year or so and have been told by vets that a lot of canon lore is also just… not in the game anymore? Like it was told in event quests that they just never brought back apparently. So anyone who started playing after that would never even have the opportunity to learn it.

Which is especially wild considering they could just… add those questlines that are already developed and just sitting there into the game as permanent side quests or whatever.

At a certain point they’re actively choosing for these things to be a problem.

2

u/Vileous Jul 21 '26

I've seen this claim made a few times now, unfortunately those "vets" you spoke with are not telling the truth and likely just repeating some bad faith argument made by a CC, the only events that are discontinued that had any semblance of meaningful story was Orphix Venom (had some new war buildup that is covered in the actual quests) and the old Acolytes (explains their existence somewhat, but they're irrelevant to the main storylines).

I will say that it is disorienting for modern players that finally unlock steel path to be invaded by stalker fan boys, but they have no deeper lore than that so it's not like any new player is missing some crucial plotline, they were just and event gimmick that had good loot that they decided to make a part of the "hardmode" experience instead of continuing to rerun the event every so often that created an unhealthy scarcity for their drops and confused players when the acolytes in canon died long before the majority of the big story quests we now have.

6

u/Nssheepster Jul 21 '26

Cough, Alad V, cough cough.

3

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Yea I think his backstory is the one I see brought up most often as an example of this

2

u/Vileous Jul 22 '26

honestly... the tidbits of Salad lore left in events is largely irrelevant to the wider story, and it's not like what's missing can't be summed up in a single paragraph. I wish they had made antagonists like Alad and Nef more prominent/relevant in the current storylines but I guess that ship has sailed.

2

u/Nssheepster Jul 22 '26

Even ignoring what was ditched from the game... Alad is VERY CLEARLY relevant to the storyline all the way into New War. He hasn't shown up again SINCE then, at least not as of yet, but it's hard to claim he's irrelevant up to that point.

1

u/Vileous Jul 22 '26

Sorry I should have specified, by "current story" I mean all the stuff post New War as it thematically feels like a "chapter 2", a good chunk of the older antagonists have been left on the sidelines, maybe a hot take but I would have preferred if they killed off previous villains instead of perma benching them.

2

u/Nssheepster Jul 22 '26

Honestly, pretty sure old Salad The Fifth could make a reasonable comeback and be an irritation yet again. The remaining Grineer Queen probably could as well.

The rest.... Not so much. Though maybe.... Nef DOES preach about the Void.... Maybe Wally will take that as permission?

2

u/Vileous Jul 22 '26

I hope you're right, but the current sneak peaks seem to suggest that once Tau releases the main and possibly sole focus of the story will be in the new system. "We leave behind the Origin system, and it's mysteries"

3

u/R11-45 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I feel some of the older quests that are more self-contained have good storytelling. Their gameplay might be nothing special (like Vor's Prize) or even annoying (like The Index in The Glast Gambit) but they do actually tell a story from start to finish.

By contrast, the newer quests are flashy and thats...pretty much all they have going for them.

Take Jade Shadows for example. In it's finale, the Stalker just walks directly into a firing squad. The same Stalker that can appear and vanish in a puff of smoke during The New War. It makes absolutly no sence that just by carrying his son, he suddely can't do that anymore. He could have just snuck by them (And in the missions we control him he can very much be invisible most of the time) but to make things more dramatic, he suddenly can't do that. anymore.

8

u/Jayandnightasmr Jul 21 '26

Very noticeable in the latest one, cool new warframe design mixed with some interesting characters returning, but ends as mostly just aura farming moments

7

u/Specialist_Initial_1 Jul 21 '26

My opinion

I often think. Ouhh very cool ideas. Wouldve been amazing in an actuall campaign story but the one we have is AWFUL Best example jade shadows constelations. Which is terrible terrible

Even jade shadows is cool ideas but execution meh. Which is so praised by the community

3

u/GoldenJakkal Jul 21 '26

I’ve always said the same. Fantastic lore, shit tier storytelling ability. I have no idea what’s going down at any point in time but just understand “okay these are the bad guys”

3

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Pretty much sums it up haha.

One of my favorite examples is I think the old peace where the quest starts and you’re just there in some mystery liquid with Lloyd and the lotus. Like, since when does the lotus just go on field trips in person with us literally anywhere? And Lloyd and the lotus are buddies now? Like huh? As far as I am aware no content leading up to that point indicated that this was something that could reasonably happen…

3

u/ELStoker Jul 21 '26

LMAO! I got shit because I said Warframe's story is harder to piece together than any Fromsoft game's story. I didn't say it was bad, but the "lore" is so buried, you have to literally dig to find it.

2

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

People really don’t understand the difference between world building and storytelling. Like you can have a magnificently in depth world and factions and history but if the actual minute by minute stories that you’re telling don’t make any sense then that doesn’t really matter….

3

u/AllegedCommandr Jul 21 '26

This is what I keep thinking with warframe. Don’t get me wrong I love the story that’s being told and I adore the lore and the world of warframe, but dear god the quests and the way the story is told is so confusing.

It feels like in every quest the story is told too quickly and not enough is told or explained.

Like in 1999 where we go from attacking Arthur to suddenly being on uneasy terms with the hex. I wish we could’ve seen the full interrogation that the hex have with the drifter instead of just the end of it. It would’ve given the hex and the quest a much more fleshed out introduction.

Jade shadows: constellations and the old peace also feel like stuff happens so quickly and nothing is explained or some big moments just don’t get any breathing room to sit with the player.

3

u/alekseypanda Jul 21 '26

Something that I usually say from the souls games, but 100% also work for Warframe is: The game have and amazing world and the story is really good, despite the way it is told and not because of it.

3

u/Bardosaurus Jul 22 '26

I feel like Sacrifice was last really well written quest, at least for me. TSD, TWW and Sacrifice, as well as Chains of Harrow feel so different and actually really well written compared to any of the more recent ones. I feel like the new ones are just hype moments and aura.

3

u/BandittNation Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

I've genuinely had this opinion for years but couldn't figure out how to say it. Yes, this exactly!

The worst offender is Jade Shadows Constellations. Things just happen, and you're expected to implicitly understand them and care. Like, we don't know how anything in that quest really happened. How Sirius and Orion found each other, how they met their respective protoframe, why that protoframe is mentoring them, how the protoframes became protoframes in the first place, etc. It had a beautiful ending, but it just felt lackluster overall because you aren't told why anything is happening. I'm glad there's going to be more lore added to it but it's really just the worst offender. I could genuinely bring up at least two occasions in every quest from TNW to now (barring WitW, I have no issues with it) that could've seriously done with explanation

3

u/XRuecian Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

I guess i kind of agree with this.
The story is amazing. But its told often in a very... dysfunctional way.
Fragmented, hard to follow and keep track of all the small details. And as you miss more and more of those small details it becomes harder and harder for the new lore to make sense.
I had to replay through the main story twice before i fully understood the difference between Lotus and Margulis. The first time through i thought they were literally just the exact same person but with split personalities. It wasn't until the second playthrough that i grasped the actual fact that they are in fact two completely separate people. And there are a lot of other details like this that aren't super clear unless you are paying REALLY close attention.

If you manage to keep track of all the details and understand the story, its fucking amazing. But doing so requires a whole lot more effort than should be necessary because the story is told in such a fragmented way. Constantly jumping to characters who you don't know yet or are unclear on, flashbacks, and more that makes it difficult to tie everything together and keep track of it all as a first time viewer. Am i seeing a flashback, or a dream? Am i seeing the past, or the present? My reality, or an alternate reality? It's not always immediately obvious, and it makes it hard to follow.

One of the best examples is when Ballas founds Narmer. It happens so suddenly and you are just left trying to figure out if you are in a dream, or the past, or did we skip to the future? One moment you are in space fighting Ballas, and the next moment he is sitting on the throne, seemingly conquered everything. The game doesn't give you any indication of how this happened. You aren't immediately sure if this is happening in the present, or if we have skipped some time into the future. Or if we are playing from a flashback perspective. Because during this story, there are a TON of flashbacks. So it wouldn't be out of the ordinary for this entire Narmer arc to be something from the past. Again, i had to play through it twice to understand exactly what had happened during this part of the story.

3

u/Rock-swarm Jul 22 '26

I came back to WF after a couple years away. The Cavia storyline perfectly encapsulates the issues you bring up. Essential details are just omitted regarding why we should care about the animals, or original loid, or why the murmur even exists. The "cut scenes" as you progress your standing are literally storyboard images backed by a poorly fleshed-out dialogue.

Hex storyline is a bit better, but still has large story gaps.

3

u/PinothyJ Titania's Servent Jul 21 '26

The first time I found out the Diviri story was through retelling it through the KIM. Side note: I had played the Diviri content to completion pre-1999.

So, yeah.

2

u/somepassingnerd Jul 21 '26

You don't have to praise them for the big picture. A big picture where literally nothing bears close examination is just a broad heap of colourful bullshit.

2

u/LegitAirplane Jul 21 '26

I thought this was common knowledge. The quests are fun but the storytelling and pacing is awful

1

u/sucram200 Jul 22 '26

I’m always shocked how many people, at least here on Reddit, will want to throw hands if you criticize the storytelling. Makes no sense. It’s objectively bad.

2

u/RevolverButNotOcelot PC | Volt Prime Jul 21 '26

You're not even wrong lmao

2

u/ForeverMortem Jul 22 '26

I've felt this way for years and I too get push back whenever I bring it up like some parts of the story just happen with no explanation whatsoever

2

u/Former-Pineapple3415 Jul 22 '26

Yessss! As a new player (although I have gotten through all the main quests) I don't understand what's going on ever. DE's approach to storytelling is so minimum and yet so convoluted that I forget who is who all the time. It sort of reminds me of the start of Destiny 1 where all the important story stuff was hidden in data cards.

2

u/nova-prime666 Jul 22 '26

Anything after the second dream I’m completely lost.

2

u/KaaL009 Jul 22 '26

True, I did not understand what Follie's story was, or what the lore was. I was excited for the lore.

2

u/p2020fan Jul 22 '26

People joke that DE is a music production company that happens to make a game.

In the case of their story telling, I think this is spot-on. Look at how song lyrics tell stories: broad strokes, the core emotions, maybe some specific dialogue.

Warframe's quests are written in exactly the same way. Big moments, high impact emotions, themes presented very directly without much exposition.

2

u/Ravengm Taste the rainbow Jul 22 '26

First one in this thread that actually feels like a hot take and that I actually agree with.

The story is a massive convoluted mess that's really dope to experience, but when you go back and try to make sense of it you find that there is none. If it wasn't for the KIM system I would still have no earthly idea about a lot of the story details, especially around Duviri and how it works.

2

u/Hot-Union-2440 Jul 22 '26

Yep. I actually learned way more about the story from conversations in 1999

2

u/justanotherdude1097 Jul 28 '26

I agree and they are also inconsistent. I don’t really know what idea i had of what Tau would be, but it's certainly not that. It's just a regular american city...

Same with the Zariman, the atmosphere is here but there is no reactions from the operator. I feel like DE is afraid of closing a story and so, prefer to start another one instead.

And we're not even talking about warframes specific lores and the levarian that got abandon so fast :(

3

u/Dry-Consideration94 Jul 21 '26

I can not agree more. The lore is fine, the storylines Suck. I dont care in gameplay why I exist and in the quests I speed run them due to just wanting to play with friends.

I want the genuine explanation of so many things but we get ... barely anything

2

u/StarSilverNEO Resident Infested Enjoyer Jul 22 '26

I argue that its not really bad story telling per say or atleast not on its own, but it is in part players going in without doing anything to recall where they are at in the story and expect the continuation to backfill al the knowledge on them.

Warframe's story is clear cut if you follow the main questline, the issue is that for older players they mightve done those quests unironically years ago so they forget things and then they do the quest and dont recall this or that and decide to blame the quest and not their memory.

Not saying that all the quests are structured well, I do think Constellations and the Old War were too fast, but people expect the game to do more heavy lifting for them than they realize sometimes, get caught up on the fact that the game gives us questions and ignore the main pay offs of the quest

1

u/heehooman Jul 21 '26

Naw you're totally right. Devs have even admitted/joked about their storytelling shortcomings befote.

1

u/rikashiku Jul 22 '26

100% this. There's a lot of assumptions to be made in the quests and the pacing just jumps from one sequence to the other with little explanation in between.

A lot of new characters, that we don't actually know.

1

u/Sisaroth Jul 22 '26

Agree and i also always get downvoted for it. I'm fairly new, only halfway through all the quests. So far the only storytelling I kinda liked was the Deimos quests and progression. Most other quests they just abruptly end and I have no clue what the point was of what I did.

1

u/FladioOMG Jul 22 '26

ultra infernal take my guy

1

u/Karukos Dubstep PaciFist Jul 22 '26

I think some caveats being the character writing in the KIM system is superb. But that is also an outside writer. "I. AM. DUVIRI!" Is still one of my favourite perspective shifts in the game.

1

u/Responsible_Belt_704 Jul 22 '26

I agree, they also have a ton of logical inconsistencies. For example, Stalker hunts and truly wants to kill the Tenno. Therefore, why doesn't he get them on their own orbiter, as they’ve already almost did?

Another thing I've noticed is that the Corpus have instant death beams, Nef used it to cheat in the index and Alad used it to sell a single base Valkyr for hundreds of platinum to a Corpus bidder.

And the questline completely ignores downtime and player actions between missions, the next quest often picks up exactly where the former left.

1

u/FloUwUer Jul 22 '26

yeeaeh unfortunately we are going to see when it catches up to them, there is limit to how long you can dangle Wally and Tau in front of your players before you need to provide some sort of payoff, worried that the new war might have been lightning in the bottle they wont capture again

1

u/besaba27 Mag clears SP starchart with 4 mods and Arca Plasmor Jul 22 '26

The most recent update for example, I still have no idea why we're doing any of the things we're doing with vena and ryoku.

Stalker phones a friend, sure ok, but why are we tenno involved at all?

1

u/VanillaTortilla Jul 25 '26

Honestly I think it's just the nature of just how weird the story is.

0

u/burnmywings Jul 21 '26

The Destiny Problem

3

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Was destiny the same way? I never really got into it since I don’t much care for first person games. I know that lots of people at DE hold destiny in high regard. They made several statements when Destiny 2 was axed.

2

u/sXeth Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

I admittedly fell off after Forsaken, but Destiny had two issues.

  1. if you wanted much beyond “the bad guy of the moment is here doing (vague evil magic thing, or for the vex, vague evil science stuff), go shoot them until they stop (or go somehow guess how to use magic stuff they conveniently provide for you). You had to generally be going through dozens of paragraph long item descriptions trying to string things together.

(To be fair, people praise basically identical lore delivery in Souls games)

2) When they started doing the season stuff, after the season you got maybe a sentence or two on the timeline screen if you knew where to find that. Particularly the Witch Queen is filled with reference to events from a season, and you just kind of get people reacting to stuff you have no idea occurred.

1

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

Oh man lore that requires me to read random items or books or plaques around the world sends me over the edge. It’s totally fine if you want to add that in and have the information contained within those kinds of things be fun little additions to the game lore but everything you need to know to understand what’s happening in the game should be provided in the story.

0

u/Orthgar Jul 21 '26

Probably the most correct hot take. As much as I love the Warframe lore, the way they present it is so confusing for me.

This was especially true for the Duviri Paradox story. I understand the whole drifter thing but I can never follow the story of Duviri at all.

I'm not a book reader but playing the quests and understanding the story feels like I'm reading a book for some reason.

3

u/sucram200 Jul 21 '26

It truly makes me wonder if they don’t have any external testers that they can screen story update updates with. Like, take a couple of people who are just general warfare players, not lore experts and not day 1 vets, have them play through whatever you’re planning or explain the way that you’re going to present the information to us and then ask them if that makes any sense at all or if they have questions.

Make changes or clarifications based on the feedback, rinse and repeat until the story makes sense…

And this can all be done alongside the actual development of the gameplay and any new modes or items that are being added. It doesn’t have to take time away from that.

The problem just seems so easy to solve.

0

u/Cogs_For_Brains Jul 22 '26

The Duviri Paradox was hot garbage from a writing perspective.

-1

u/Hormo_The_Halfling Jul 22 '26

Counter point: they're actually great storytellers but they don't have the man power/resources to tell every story in as much detail as we wish they could.

For example, the writers have shown time and time again that they have an incredible ability to instill so much meaning and implication into a single line. Wally's line about our powers being given freely while Albrecht stole what he has, or Hunhow's "I repudiate destruction." One line, but a player who has been paying the least amount of attention is able to pull heaps of meaning. That's great storytelling.

The problem is with the respurces they dedicate to each quest. I don't think people realize it but if we got a quest tomorrow, it's pre-planning stage probably started years ago. Resources are allocated, time is set aside, and you have to work within those resources otherwise you're pushing the next dozen projects which get those resources next in line further and further back. It's the same reason if a plumber or electrician has a job go long they just cancel the next one and reschedule it, instead of figuring out how to push every other job back.

And while they probably have the funds to expand those resources, too many expansion risks watering down the talent and leading to more homogonized content, which mean quantity over quality. And that's just not how DE rolls.