Your opinion on lore and story.

[(PSN)thegarada]

There are highs and lows, but the highs are so good, that it makes you forget about the lows. There are some inconsistencies. When the game started the story and the game as a whole, were not expect to be this expansive. 

overall, it is one is the best stories for Sci-fi setting across both TV and games.

[OniDax]

14 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

There are highs and lows, but the highs are so good, that it makes you forget about the lows. There are some inconsistencies. When the game started the story and the game as a whole, were not expect to be this expansive. 

overall, it is one is the best stories for Sci-fi setting across both TV and games.

Respect your opinion, but I absolutely disagree. I don't think there are any highs, and I think there are a lot of lows, and I most certainly don't agree that it's one of the best stories for sci-fi across both TV and games. IMO, it's one of the worst. I think that if it had been handled by a dev studio with an actual narrative director and writer who cared about story, then it could've been on par with Star Wars. But DE has no such people. The inconsistencies and contradictions exist because DE made up new stories without regard for their existing lore. The inconsistencies are because DE doesn't care about consistency, because they don't care about story.

The devs don't even play their own game. They care more about other games than they do Warframe, and they lack the will to make Warframe as good as the games that they care about. Warframe seems like a paycheck to them, and where they originally had passion for their game in their first two years, that seems to have faded as they seem to just phone it in. That's not to say their artists aren't passionate. They are, and for the most part it shows in their work. However, when you look at the story, when you look at how they handle new content, when you look at how they handle criticism and the management of their game, their lack of care shows loudly. And one of the areas of the game where it shows the loudest is in their handling of story.

[SilentMobius]

Well, Story and Lore are very different things.

The Sory is, IMHO, pretty good unless you have a grimdark urge, because It's pointless presenting us with "morally grey" questions if you only want to play a bloodthirsty psychopath.

However if you persue the story as intended, as a troubled child soldier with many more years experience than looks suggest trying to recover some semblance of humanity and sense or right and wrong, then it's quite nice. But it suffers from the problem that all MMO's do in that it never ends, so each "resolution" needs to be made irrelevent for the next call to action.

Lore is a mixed bag, I adore the Warframe aesthetic and setting but there are too many areas where DE presents us with answers that do not actually resolve the problem they are supposed to resolve.

I'm fine with a mysterious story, I'd like to learn more about the Unum, when the story calls for it but when the story suggests we should know a piece of Lore then DE should actually tell us.

The War within gave us back our memory, more so than The Second Dream so surely we should remember what the Orokin Era was like, if not, why? The Sacrifice gave us an understanding of our relationship to one Warframe and information about them all, Also we have access to Teshin and now Loid so why are there still secrets like:

• Why are non-Umbra Warframes non-motive? What made them that way? If it was us how did we do that prior to the second dream when were didn't even know who we were let alone what we could do
• How did the Pre-Second-Dream Tenno rationalise building and using a new Warframe when they thought they were the Warframe. (We should know what our Tenno was thinking at the start of the game)
• When did Warframe production change from infecting unique people to throwing components into a machine.
• Why are the singular Warframe stories always about the Tenno versions, when DE have been clear that the Primes were the "Originals". Are these Bio-drone eara warframes or Warframes with Tenno Operators?
• To what degree were Orokin Empire citizens the Kuva-drinking-continuity-doing "Immortal Orokin" was it just a few at the top, hundreds, thousands, millions?
• What was the order and timescales of these events: Sending the proto-sentients to Tau, The Journy To Tau, The Zariman Ten-Zero accident, The Old War before Warframes, The Tenno-Fight-in-the-Old-War period, The Collapse
• When and why did "Tenno versions" of Warframes get made?

Sure we can make up answers to the above, and some of those made up answers may be more plausable than others but at this point in the story we should know these answers definitively

 

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

My personal opinion?


Waaaay too many dangling plot threads. Too many old plot lines and quest stories that introduces characters and concepts, only to never ever re-introduce them ever again, no matter how appropriate it would have been.

 

Neewa from Glast Gambit. Nearly all the Syndicates in their appropriate respective Open Worlds. Maroo and Darvo in general. Darvo and Glast especially could have made an appearance in one of Fortuna's plots. Jordas and his Golem showing up in Deimos. The dangling plot threads from The New Strange, that Arcane Codices. The Stalker being in the background since forever. Tyl Regor having developed his Tubemen since forever and we still haven't seen the end results yet. What's next for the Wolf of Saturn Six, Arlo's Cult, etc.

 

 

My suspicion may be voice actor availability. Can't bring back old characters without their voice actors.

[(PSN)GingyGreen]

On 2020-10-16 at 9:23 PM, (PS4)Yggranya said:

Ah, dark souls, where some people take their best guess, make a video about it, and everyone who watches it recites it like gospel. Your best guess is still just a guess(i really wish it is YOUR guess). If you enjoy that, then more power to you.

I would rather have even a lick of consistency, because the kind of "writing" that dark souls/warframe/japanese crap in general has is just so easy to retcon anything and everything at any time and it won't change anything, because nothing was clear anyway. "Writing" trash like that is as easy as breathing.

Because you never bothered piecing things together, you underplay most lore theories for that franchise.

 

While yes part of the fun is connecting all the pieces together to make sense (how Miyazaki experienced english fantasy novels), what makes it work is all the objective facts and gameplay that forms the skeleton for you to put together.

 

What is objective? Well we all know that Dragons are deathly weak to lightning thanks to the opening, constantly referenced in description, and how hard any lightning attack chunks them in the gameplay. The nature of Hollows being objectively established.

[TheVeiledScion]

I think Warframe has three story issues.

The first is that so much of the early story is now inaccessible because most of it was originally told through operations, events and tactical alerts. Consider that the Archwing Quest had 3-4 tactical alerts/operations that led up to it, all of which no longer exist in the game. And now, new players enter that quest with Vay Hek talking about rebuilding his Fomorian fleet, when until then, they haven’t really encountered it before. So that’s one big issue.

Second, DE utilizes its existing characters very poorly. Whether it’s overusing Alad V (who is now connected to three different boss fights on three different planets) or it’s a failure to bring back characters such as Darvo and Maroo in more meaningful ways. There’s a twin issue that DE’s “characters” are mostly just vendors and are paper thin as far as characterization goes (Fortuna is a notable exception, though again, mostly just vendors with backstory).

Third, Warframe really doesn’t have much of an overarching narrative, despite its cinematic quests. Although the game begins with the premise of the Grineer swallowing up colonies, there is no coherent narrative that takes you as the player from start to finish. And given just how messy progression is between quests and mastery rank and unlocking the Starchart, the cinematic quests (which at least have the Tenno focus in common) feel more like the long-delayed start of the story, rather than its continuation.

Story matters because it helps give context. Warframe isn’t a mindless PvE shooter, but rather a light RPG co-op looter-shooter, so narrative context does matter. One of the things DE could do to improve is to slow down on creating new story and go back and extend the new player experience by filling in the narrative gaps between quests by either adding new, shorter quests based on the old alerts and operations, or they could revise the existing quests to have more of that forgotten story/gameplay. For example, those alerts and events that directly set up the Archwing Quest could either be folded into the quest (my preference) or they could be added as smaller preceding quests.

They could also reorganize the existing quests and make story progression much more linear (a new Quest menu would help). So instead of the current menu with quests arranged concurrently and with very different requirements, DE could create a more linear menu and make it such that the quests are listed and made available to players in chronological order.
 

At the same time, going forward, DE could develop future content in a way that includes more developed stories, told across multiple updates. For example, DE’s latest release was Heart of Deimos. Instead of jumping to Duviri or New War or some other entirely new story, DE could tailor their upcoming content toward continuing the story threads set up in Heart of Deimos, such that DE doesn’t move on to the next idea until they’ve either concluded this story or have used it to set up the next. So, specifically, DE could choose to rework the Derelict tilesets so that Derelict missions are visually, narratively and gameplay-wise tied into the Deimos open world and it’s characters. Or, DE could use the upcoming Corpus Liches/Railjack as a vehicle for continuing the void-based narrative teased in Deadlock Protocol and explored lightly in Heart of Deimos and its lore. 
 

If you’ve noticed, a lot of this has come down to how DE develops, structures and organizes their content. So much of the game feels messy and haphazard because DE develops it in a woefully disorganized manner. So if DE can fix that, then they can fix not only the story but also the rest of the gameplay.

[five13]

Background lore is good, individual story beats are awful.  Everything seems fixed around downgrading the setting, making things less mysterious and presenting every single mystery in front of the player to show "how cool is that" "This is a thing!".

There's very little good background on characters.  When they get a character right (Eudico, Ordis) they're generally shoved aside in favor of a character that doesn't make sense.  (Little Duck getting Scarlet Spear instead of Baro, who actually has reasons to run into sentients, purple Lotus, Rus on Scarlet Spear instead of Hek)    And characters who should be centralized in the story (the clairvoyant Onkko, the preparing warrior Tenshin) simply don't show up.  It's baffling.   Not to mention the Tenno themselves are the least interesting thing ever and the operator lines are.. well...

Corpus never fight for themselves

In the Index of all places. 

[Viges]

My father was a farmer

[saghzs]

The story itsself, while not something like you'd get out of a book or movie, has it's intresting moments. And if you actually go out of your way to read all the little bits of lore scattered throughout the game it builds a relatively good backstory and leaves the door wide open for expansion.

 

But on the other hand.

We get "main story" like once per year.

That is nowhere enough to keep people actually invested in to the story.

[vanaukas]

39 minutes ago, five13 said:

Background lore is good, individual story beats are awful.  Everything seems fixed around downgrading the setting, making things less mysterious and presenting every single mystery in front of the player to show "how cool is that" "This is a thing!".

There's very little good background on characters.  When they get a character right (Eudico, Ordis) they're generally shoved aside in favor of a character that doesn't make sense.  (Little Duck getting Scarlet Spear instead of Baro, who actually has reasons to run into sentients, purple Lotus, Rus on Scarlet Spear instead of Hek)    And characters who should be centralized in the story (the clairvoyant Onkko, the preparing warrior Tenshin) simply don't show up.  It's baffling.   Not to mention the Tenno themselves are the least interesting thing ever and the operator lines are.. well...

Corpus never fight for themselves

In the Index of all places. 

Remember that LD is also a trader since the beggining, she trade special and dangerous stuff (remember she had a comic first), dangerous enough to be trusted by the rakis themselves.  Also, the corpus doesn't fight for themselves, they use slaves (the corpus fight units you see on every corpus mission) that are in debt and forced to fight for them, they also use robotics... So they don't fight for themselves, never

[lukasystem]

It's a real shame they don't invest hard on the lore in order to produce a thoroughly told story, the whole plot is really interesting imo, the Zarima Ten Zero, Second Dream, Old War, New War, the Void, etc. 

I hope they eventually (probably never) put all of these scenes together into a proper Main story questline or something like that.

[Surbusken]

Personally I can't get into video game stories all most at all.

Few exceptions might be something like silent hill 1 and 2 or metal gear solid 1. Like, it's supposed to be interactive but no matter what you still get the same cutscene, so what does it matter.

I played the walking dead game, that supposedly molds itself based on your choices, for that exact reason, but that isn't the case at all.

My background is in arcade, twitch reaction time, problem solving and blowing stuff up and later sandbox games like gta. My mentality now playing gta 5, is I'd rather have the game let me decide if want to hear the godawful npcs yack all day, or if I want to just drive the car over a cliff and be free of them.

I feel time ran out, about 15 years ago, for the play map watch forced cutscene style. I don't read text, I don't watch cutscenes because they do nothing for the gameplay.

The player, or the user as they used to say in tron, is the main character. The npcs are just pixels and sound effects, and so it has to be interactive and entirely in the hands of the players, for it to be relevant to the game.

If you can't engage with it, it serves no purpose - in interactive media.

Not that I think developers should not add cutscenes, for the people still into it, just the purpose of a game is to do something with the user themselves being the centerpiece.

As with most game designers, ours included, their mentality is always trying to control and manipulate the players but really a true game is one of improvisation and freedom.

What happens if I a, b,c, d, e, the fun really comes from the suspense of the unknown. When a cutscene is pre-determined, a story outcome has already been decided three is nothing to "play with".

Then if you want to go head to head with actual professional writers on their turf, then you are fighting shakespeare, hemmingway etc. in their prime... good luck with that.

I'd say minimum there should be an ambition in the gaming industry moving forward to add ANY layer of interaction with stories. But of course you know the gaming industry so here we are...

[five13]

22 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

they don't fight for themselves, never

 

[(PSN)SolarPhantom82]

On 2020-10-17 at 11:51 AM, Luciole77 said:

too much hiatus between all lore.

No no , 3 years on a cliffhanger is normal.   No one will lose interest or forget at all. . One 30 second cut scene a year will keep them coming back. .  Lets even say we will release a story update at Christmas and then don't do it. .  

This is great story telling. ..

[vanaukas]

32 minutes ago, five13 said:

 

I didn't know he was member of the corpus board (wich are the "true" corpus). Prodman is corpus in the same way that Fortuna residents are.

[five13]

6 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

I didn't know he was member of the corpus board (wich are the "true" corpus). Prodman is corpus in the same way that Fortuna residents are.

The Operator does not make that distinction.

[vanaukas]

1 minute ago, five13 said:

The Operator does not make that distinction.

But the rest of the game does, they don't contradict each other or are mutually exclusive

[vanaukas]

dupe

[vanaukas]

dupe

[five13]

52 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

But the rest of the game does, they don't contradict each other or are mutually exclusive

Source?   And clarification actually.  That statement can be interpreted several different ways. 

E2:  And of course, you'd need a good reason for an Operator who has never learned about high-level Corpus at any point (a distinct possibility, considering pre-Fortuna players) to have that opinion.

[vanaukas]

38 minutes ago, five13 said:

Source?   And clarification actually.  That statement can be interpreted several different ways. 

E2:  And of course, you'd need a good reason for an Operator who has never learned about high-level Corpus at any point (a distinct possibility, considering pre-Fortuna players) to have that opinion.

So we never had quest with high rank corpus? Wow, I thought we fought several times with against them and on the same side, so yeah, we never learned about high level corpus, yeah.

PS: Look for Darvo's dad ;)

[five13]

2 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

So we never had quest with high rank corpus? Wow, I thought we fought several times with against them and on the same side, so yeah, we never learned about high level corpus, yeah.

PS: Look for Darvo's dad ;)

Actually, I didn't know about Frohd Bek which sort of proves my point.  Although the wiki says

Quote

Though players have yet to directly encounter him

So I don't feel bad about that.   And as a third counterpoint:  Running into a high-level Corpus is not knowing about them, or their hierarchy.

[vanaukas]

2 minutes ago, five13 said:

Actually, I didn't know about Frohd Bek which sort of proves my point.  Although the wiki says

So I don't feel bad about that.   And as a third counterpoint:  Running into a high-level Corpus is not knowing about them, or their hierarchy.

Dude, it's not my problem if the game doesn't provide the information that it did provide but with a tactical alerts and also it's not my problem if you are too lazy to read or watch videos. We did know that Darvo is son of Frohd and his fate is still unkown since Ambulas reborn, he is the guy with the funny voice on Hades, when you fight the ambulas. You talk directly to him in another missions, but that mission is the last we hear from him. 

Take another example, with fortuna and deadlock protocol, we didn't know who is behind all of it? We don't know who is the giant sculpture with the funny hat on orb vallis?

[five13]

16 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

Double post

[five13]

18 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

Dude, it's not my problem if the game doesn't provide the information that it did provide but with a tactical alerts and also it's not my problem if you are too lazy to read or watch videos. We did know that Darvo is son of Frohd and his fate is still unkown since Ambulas reborn, he is the guy with the funny voice on Hades, when you fight the ambulas. You talk directly to him in another missions, but that mission is the last we hear from him. 

Take another example, with fortuna and deadlock protocol, we didn't know who is behind all of it? We don't know who is the giant sculpture with the funny hat on orb vallis?

Your constant reliance on tactical alerts and Fortuna really just drive home that all of this is missable.  Tac alerts aren't always accessible, Ambulas reborn isn't something that was required for my progression, and Fortuna was already answered.

 

Quote

it's not my problem if you are too lazy to read or watch videos

You brought this to ME.  I didn't ask to talk with you,  If you want to be rude, then be rude elsewhere.   I'm not wasting my time with you anymore.