Back in 2018, I played Warframe for the first time as part of Choose My Adventure, and I knew that it was going to take me some work to get accustomed to the game, but I also knew that the moment I did I was going to be lost. It had a lot of things I liked right from the outset. One of the things that did make me bounce off, though, was that the game clearly had no interest in explaining its story to me at all in addition to some of its more oblique mechanics, and as I’m someone who really enjoys story, that turned me off.
However, when I returned to it this month I actually feel the exact opposite. It’s not because the presentation of the story has actually changed; it hasn’t. Rather, it’s because I developed an appreciation for how opaque and impenetrable its storytelling actually is, and while it’s tough coming into it cold, I think once you understand and realize that this game is clearly trying to tell you a very involved story, it is also doing so by intentionally making it hard for you to get into it. And it’s a clever trick.
To really understand how hard Warframe relies on intentionally denying the player easy introduction, let’s look at something so basic that most MMOs provide it as a given: character creation. In the vast majority of games this is something you do at most after watching a cutscene. Make character, start game.
Occasionally, a game will push the boundaries a little bit and have you do a first mission in disguise or in a not-yet-final state or whatever, and then you get character creation. You know, a little playable prologue before you get to establish your personal little guy. This is a logical choice.
Warframe does not allow you to get to any form of character creation until you have already played an enormous chunk of the game. See, you are not a Warframe; that’s always been clear. Warframes are things Tenno operate. What is a Tenno? You are playing one. And in order to get to character creation?
Well… deep breath.
You have to first clear through the Earth nodes to unlock the gate to Venus. Then you have to fight the gate guardian to get to Venus. Then you have to fight through Venus again to open the Mercury gate, which includes a boss fight, fight the Mercury gate guardian, and then do missions on Mercury so that you can go back to Earth to open the Mars gate. Now you need to do a quest line on Earth and a quest line on Venus, finally fight the Mars gate guardian, move through Mars, open the gate to Deimos and Phobos both, do another quest line on Deimos, clear through Phobos missions (and fight another boss, of course) to open the Ceres gate, fight the Ceres gate guardian, get to Ceres, clear missions to open the Jupiter gate, fight that boss, get to Jupiter, clear missions to the Europa gate, fight another boss, clear Europa missions, open the gate to Saturn, fight another gate boss, once again we’re fighting missions across Saturn to open a gate to fight the boss again, now we’re on Uranus and we have to do a quest line that only can start when you randomly encounter some aliens on Uranus, finish the quest, fight through Uranus, another gate boss to open the path to Neptune, and now, now you can finally do a quest line that allows you to unlock character creation.
But to be fair, you could do a more recent quest once you reach Uranus that puts you in an alternate reality that makes basically no sense and introduces a whole alternate universe all over again.
And I know that I have a reputation for being hyperbolic, but I promise, none of that is hyperbole. All of this is the stuff that you have to do in order to understand who you are even playing in this game. That is a big lift.
So how is it a good thing? Well, because everything in the game is a big lift from the start. Right from the first moments you’re awash in a sea of proper nouns, some of which are actual English words and some of which are in an ambiguous place wherein you’re not sure whether they’re archaic or unusual words you don’t know, foreign words, or just made-up terms. Like Tenno, Grineer, Ascaris, Cephalon, Syandana, and so forth.
And worse yet, you have no point-of-view character. No one is explaining this world to you as if you are unfamiliar with it, which you are. The closest anyone gets to explanations is Lotus, who just gives you orders about what you should do, and they at least sound like heroic acts or acts that would avoid your death. So you follow your orders because you don’t know what the heck is going on, but dying is bad, so let’s avoid that.
Lo and behold, as you continue through the story, you learn two things. The first is that people are very deliberately holding back information from you so that you’ll be inclined to do things that do make sense. The other is that thrown into the deep end, you start to adapt.
By denying you any tether to a recognizable version of the real world, you not only stop trying to figure out answers to questions that wouldn’t matter anyhow but start trying to just accept the unusual and perplexing nature of the world. If this is not going to work for you, then the game is also telling you that right up front. Either you have the willingness to figure out what the heck is going on with very little immediate grounding or you do not, and the game isn’t doing you any favors if it makes it easier for you to understand.
It gives the plot freedom to go off on gonzo flights of fancy and take truly bizarre turns, with the gradual realization hitting the player that this is a story involving not just time travel but time not flowing in a clear or linear fashion from first principles. And denying you access to a clear line from the start lets you appreciate this. It lets you know the kind of storytelling you’re in for, something that is more like a science fiction tone poem than a clear narrative, something that embraces a universe that is baroque and bigger than you as an individual.
And it perfectly sets you up for a realization that this may be a universe and existence that is far beyond any concepts of heroism or even goodness as you recognize it, and then you later start to learn that this might not be our world millennia in the future but a universe that diverged from ours way earlier. So even once you have your little guy, you should still be expecting to be confused.
But it’s also really good and worth experiencing if you like that stuff. Fortunately for me, I do.
Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.
