More lore and backstories of warframes (playable flashback missions? Warframes being autonomous?)

[BloodRavenCap]

I think that there is quite a lot of unrealized potential there, because even though we have a lot of warframes, we don't learn their backstories enough. It would be really cool if we had a story not only about warframe's exploits in the Old War, but about its progenitor too, like we learn about the fact that Ember was made from a girl, that was burnt by Tenno and so forth.

I understand that it would take a lot of resources, because even reworking one starting area in the tutorial took so much time, but I think it would characterize frames a lot more, than just a Leverian entry, that tells about one specific point in their lives. And I think it's a big shame that warframes' theme is more important, than their progenitors. My headcanon was that Orokin saw exceptional warriors first and then decided to immortalize them, by creating warframes from them, and that warframes inherited the theme of the warriors. Like, Excalibur was a master swordsman so good, that Orokin thought that they shouldn't allow his talent go to waste when he dies and decided to put him through "Warframe Program", so to speak, make one original frame, that would be cloned\copied later. Wukong was a trickster warrior with a staff, Rhino was a buff veteral soldier so big and tough, that bullets didn't bother him anymore, he went through so much campaigns, that his body mostly consisted of scars, that he jokingly called his "Iron skin", Saryn was a talented poison master, that Orokin sent to sabotage their enemies, she was so good at her job, that she could basically win entire campaigns by herself, etc. Potential is unlimited.

Or if DE doesn't want to waste time on implementing this into the game, they can have a dedicated writer, that writes official lore for every warframe, about its exploits and so forth. That would actually free them up a little, because from that point they can concentrate on gameplay parts more and dedicate less time for quests about warframe acquisition, because, honestly, they don't add much to the game and play mostly like fetch quests. And if you want to read up a story about specific warframe, you just find his lore entry and that's all.

Also, it would really be great if warframes could acquire back their original character, so to speak.

I had a lot of discussions here and everywhere else with people telling me that warframes can't be self-aware, sentient being and if they were, Tenno would be irredeemable villains for using living beings with free will to do their bidding. Let's dive deeper in this conflict, because I'm sure everyone is familiar with it and took one or another stance on it.

Okay, Sacrifice tells us that only Umbra was permitted to have its memories, every other warframe had its memories wiped. So, every warframe is "just a metal puppet dangling on Tenno strings", to quote Hunhow. But in Second Dream your warframe moved on its own, when pulling out Stalker's sword. Some people consider it to be leftovers of Tenno's connection with the warframe, but I see it as a sign, that something is still there inside warframes. As Rhino Prime codex entry states, without Tenno warframes behave like wild animals. Operators pacify warframes. And DE already had that idea about Umbra memories being implanted into other warframes to have them being autonomous (search for Echoes of Umbra if you want to know what I'm talking about). But what if we take it to another step?

What if we have the same mechanic as Umbra memories implantation - that means that you get some specific blueprint, some resources and craft this device that unlocks\returns warframes' memories. But it's not Umbra's memories - every warframe has its own story. For now, we have Leverian that tells us about those cool events that happened in the past. But what if we unlock something like this directly through warframes and have little playable missions, where we get glimpses of the Old War and Orokin Empire at its peak? Moreover, every warframe gets its own character and has its own bond with the Operator. Depending on the usage, warframe can get more fond of your operator and unblock some additional skills. Maybe you can augment some of your abilities without wasting mod slot or increase shield\health capacity, something like this. Little bonuses that are still worth chasing.

We were shown in Sacrifice that Operator share this bond with warframes, but we don't really see it in action, so to say. Depending on your affinity\relationship status with warframe it can act a little detached or even paranoid, but if you use it really much, don't die, clear missions efficiently without taking too much damage, it respects your Operator more and more. And no, I don't mean some "decaying" system, like if you don't use some frames, they start to hate you - their trust decays only if you take them to the mission, but don't play good enough. Also, you can have little activities in your Orbiter if you go into Operator mode. Umbra plays Shawzin, which you can listen to, or you can play Komi with him. Hildryn works out a lot, Ivara practices with the bow and you can practice with her (because I feel that we will get Operator weapons in Duviri Paradox, so, some practice would be good) and if you get higher score than here, you increase your skill with the bow or something like this.

Nidus is chilling with Helminth, you can help him with the garden of subsumed warframes. Vauban, obviously, crafts new grenades, Mesa does sharpshooting. You get what I'm talking about.

You can take it even to the next level, where you have little competitions with your warframe in open worlds. Can you outrun Gauss in Operator mode? Can you outkill Saryn? Can you take (block with Vazarin) more damage than Rhino? Can you outheal Oberon? 

So, the problems with implementing this idea are:

1. Technical - well, just the fact that DE can't afford people to dedicate their time doing something like this. But if a lot of people ask for something, DE can listen - and just look at the Revised update and Railjack Revisited they're busy with right now. If a lot of people want it, maybe somewhere in the future we might get this feature.

2. Umbra won't be that unique anymore - well, he had his fifteen minutes of fame. And look at the way DE wants to fix healing abilities - by nerfing Vasarin dash, but bringing everything else up. What's the point in having one unique warframe with a really, really situational perk of being autonomous, when you can have a lot of lore and story for every frame?

3. Lore-related.

A) Well, first of all, some people would say that frames are more like wild animals and you can't be friends with them. Fair point, but Ballas in Sacrifice specifically states that Operator "takes away (warframes') pain". And our Operator tamed Umbra, the wildest warframe there is. Why can't Tenno bond with other warframes, if they will have sentience?

B) Warframes are meat puppets that can't have any character and only animated by Operators. Well, as I said in the start of the post, we had warframes moving on their own in Second Dream. Also, every warframe has its own unique animation set, that conveys this warframe's character.

С) Tenno bring living beings into the world by cloning\copying them and making them fight for them, which makes them complete monsters. Well, that's a shame, but we weren't the ones who created warframes in the first place - Orokin did. And we still create them all the time, but if they really have some kind of intelligence buried somewhere deep within, I think that makes us even more monstrous, because we intentionally block them from having any kind on consciousness, piloting them without their consent. By allowing them to acquire their character back, we actually do something good, because those clones at least get some sense of closure - they can do something in their free time, instead of being senseless war machines that are stored somewhere in the Orbiter, when they're not needed.

I saw a lot of arguments telling me that this would be a "rape of the lore", but for me it looks like there is nothing stopping DE from implementing something like this. All starting points are there, they just need time, money and motivation to do this idea. And if people tell something about this being a retcon, no, it's not, because there's nothing against this idea. Yes, warframes don't have memories or self-awareness, but then came Umbra. And don't forget about feral Rhino Prime and warframe in Second Dream moving on their own. So, that would be a retcon too? Maybe thing that you consider a retcon are just story points that were not expanded upon and just waiting for their time to shine?

I, for one, don't really like the fact that Sacrifice gave us this really cool concept of the bond between warframe and Operator, but it's not explored at all. Don't know about you, but I see this as a really cool and unique concept that I really didn't see anywhere - only in Titanfall 2, but there we deal with an AI, a machine, while in Warframe we could actually interact with people, so to speak.

Some people really liked to play as warframes and hate the Operators - but isn't it worse right now, that frames are just fleshy golems for Operators to drive? If they were independent, strong beings that just accepted Operators and allowed them to drive them - wouldn't it be better than something, that doesn't have a soul?

So, that's my idea, I hope you'll like it and DE will notice this and gives us an answer - will they do something like this or it goes against all their concepts and ideas.

[Andele3025]

It is and was option B. Primes are metal and technocyte dolls as devstreams, prime access+trailers and the titania quest note (being built). Infestation itself has some base forms of sapience (which we do suppress). Meanwhile subject 9 umbra (and whatever potential other umbra frames we might get) are the actual people infested turned frames. The mass produced copy frames in turn are essentially 3d printer versions of a unique model (the prime).

Vitruvian and umbra being a last second additions to sacrifice can be excused but what makes no damn sense is the new Deimos heart stuff. A massive indirect point of the Second dream (and harrows quest) is that the tenno themselves are essentially the frames infinite batteries and how unlocking that power fully is dangerous but was needed. A pineapple on the equivalent of a oversized asteroid fueling the frames is either stupid retcon which is illegal as the prior quests can still be played or bait n switch S#&$ty writing which i really hope it is much like the Nef+Parvos bs.