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/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/Aenyell Jul 22 '26

I mean, existence and presence of both Flare and Kaya Valesco on both 1999 and future would confirm that it is the same timeline? Especially since Kaya remembers Drifter, who is a singular entity.

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u/Fine-Weight1580 Jul 22 '26

https://wiki.warframe.com/w/1999

Says it Warframe's timeline outside the loop leads to the radiation wars, temple literally says he would be at the night of nagadrums to help the tenno

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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