My personal perception of the Orokin's ancient origins in the Warframe universe has changed

[FlyingDice]

21 hours ago, EmberStar said:

I had the impression that it's been closer to milinnia.  Long enough that even the "live for a thousand years" Corpus Elite are several possibly several generations out.  Citation:  Nef Anyo attempting to find genetic evidence that he is a direct descendant of the Corpus Founder.  Said founder turning out to be a possible Sealed Evil in a Can who has been watching the Origin system from a pocket dimension since the Orokin were destroyed.  And now might have decided that the best way to unite humanity to face the Sentients might be to start by ending the fighting between the remaining factions.  By destroying them all, if necessary.

I mean, as we've been talking about, the Corpus already existed well before the collapse, and the empire itself was old as #*!%.

17 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

Lotus says that Lephantis was created to fight in the Old War millennia ago. Other characters have said centuries, which is a subset of "millennia". That's as close to concrete as we have.

That quote (leaving aside the questionable accuracy of 2013-era lore), doesn't say that. And seriously, Lephantis was originally created to replace the J3 Golem. I almost guarantee that that voice line was just scribbled out with no real forethought, especially since it's very unlikely that the Orokin would just start cranking out infested abominations (Warframes aside) after all the trouble they had with it.

Quote

Deep within this millennia-old Orokin-turned-Infested ship lurks a creature created to fight in the Old War. Make your way to its location and dispatch this monster.

The ship is millennia old, not Lephantis. I don't know why people keep using this as a timeline indicator. It doesn't say when the ship was infested. It doesn't say when Lephantis was created. It doesn't say when the Old War started or ended. All it says is that the original ship is old as #*!%.

Don't trust the wiki on this one. Some idiot edited in a line about it having been millennia since the Old War, but all of the sources they cite are references to things unrelated to and predating the Old War and the collapse.

[TARINunit9]

27 minutes ago, FlyingDice said:

That quote (leaving aside the questionable accuracy of 2013-era lore), doesn't say that. And seriously, Lephantis was originally created to replace the J3 Golem. I almost guarantee that that voice line was just scribbled out with no real forethought, especially since it's very unlikely that the Orokin would just start cranking out infested abominations (Warframes aside) after all the trouble they had with it.

There's a lot to unpack here, but I'm pretty sure GrayArchon is correct

For one thing, Lephantis's lore actually is still canon. While it the lore is a copy-past of the old J-golem, they re-recorded all of Lotus's voice lines. Compare what they used to sound like with how they sound like after 2014. The fact they kept the script the same implies that said script is still canon

Secondly, Lephantis is explicitly stated to have been absorbing matter ever since the Old War ended. We can assume that Lephantis today doesn't look much like Lephantis of the Old War. The Orokin probably weren't just cranking out random monsters, but what they did create got away from them and changed on its own

[GrayArchon]

4 hours ago, FlyingDice said:

The ship is millennia old, not Lephantis.

The "Orokin-turned-Infested" ship being "millennia old" could mean that the ship was laid down thousands of years ago, or it could mean that the ship was Infested thousands of years ago. Think about what is relevant to the situation. No one cares how old the ship is. It makes more sense if Lotus is saying that the Infestation in the ship is millennia old. DE has a habit of using imprecise language and words that aren't quite right because they don't seem to have a decent copyeditor, and this is a good example. 

5 hours ago, FlyingDice said:

Lephantis was originally created to replace the J3 Golem. I almost guarantee that that voice line was just scribbled out with no real forethought

That voice line is actually inherited from the old J-3 Golem. I have preserved its mission dialogue on this page here. That being said, Lephantis replaced the J-3 Golem and can be assumed to have inherited its lore as well, since that's generally how retcons work. I don't know where you're getting the idea that the line wasn't given forethought. Even if most of the story was created ad hoc over the years (which, incidentally, does not appear to be the case), the idea of the ancient Orokin Empire long having fallen into disrepair and sending the System into a dark age has been in the game since the very beginning. I remember logging into the game in 2013 and reading the planet descriptions (since removed; you can read them here) and the item descriptions of things like Orokin Cells and being fascinated with the concept of this glorious, advanced, and fallen empire. So the question of "how long ago did the Orokin Empire collapse" is among the oldest questions in the game, and I doubt they didn't think about it when actively writing lines like these.

[Loza03]

5 hours ago, GrayArchon said:

Even if most of the story was created ad hoc over the years (which, incidentally, does not appear to be the case)

Certainly for the broad strokes. To crib a line from Destiny, DE knows the shape of Warframe's story, if not its texture.

There's evidence concepts like the Operator and the void which changed them predate Warframe itself, being ideas since Dark Sector. The Grineer, likewise, also predate the game, albeit in a very different form. So likely broad-strokes concepts for the Grineer were too. The Queens were also a concept long before the War Within itself. But it's quite likely DE intentionally doesn't plan finer details, so they can chop and change things.

Deimos, for example, we know was on the books for a while, and press releases earlier in the year make reference to 'the next open world' by the end of the year, after the New War story arc is concluded. DE then come out and say they're rescheduling, and now Deimos is before TNW. Chances are the broad strokes story was the same, and TNW would lead to Deimos to some degree. Perhaps the Sentients would have been the threat to the heart? Either that or they'd have leaned more heavily on Duviri and/or Wally foreshadowing. But DE were able to re-jig that into a story that made more sense for the current state of the 'War'. 

[GrayArchon]

5 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Certainly for the broad strokes. To crib a line from Destiny, DE knows the shape of Warframe's story, if not its texture.

There's evidence concepts like the Operator and the void which changed them predate Warframe itself, being ideas since Dark Sector. The Grineer, likewise, also predate the game, albeit in a very different form. So likely broad-strokes concepts for the Grineer were too. The Queens were also a concept long before the War Within itself. But it's quite likely DE intentionally doesn't plan finer details, so they can chop and change things.

Yes, this is what I mean. Steve (who appears to have been the main author of the story for most of the game's lifetime) has made multiple comments over the years about how the broad strokes of the story have been percolating in his mind since before Dark Sector, and the Ember Codex entry illustrates this, as it was added to the game over a year and a half before The Second Dream.

[Loza03]

2 minutes ago, GrayArchon said:

Yes, this is what I mean. Steve (who appears to have been the main author of the story for most of the game's lifetime) has made multiple comments over the years about how the broad strokes of the story have been percolating in his mind since before Dark Sector, and the Ember Codex entry illustrates this, as it was added to the game over a year and a half before The Second Dream.

Dark Sector trailer waaaaay back when also referred to a similar idea. Back then they were wearing suits, though.

[Bryuf]

I think the Orokin Empire can be somewhat compared to the empire of God Empeor Leto II (from the Dune series). A millenia lasting empire ruled by immortal tyrant(s) spanning huge distances and having a vast and repressed population of subjects living (somewhat) normal lifetimes for generations. You could also make some pretty obvious comparisons between kuva and the Spice^tm.

[PookieNumnums]

I always looked at it like the orokin were the ruling class. Controlling, creating, taxing, manipulating. 

The corpus and ostrons are just different groups of people. The fall of the orokin regime allowed for the grineer and corpus to really expand and grow. Ostrons remained pretty tribal. To be fair we need more civilian tribal groups. And honestly it would be neat if they developed out the factions to that degree. Like, put meridian on iron wake and give each group their own little base somewhere with vendors and faction unique stuff like amps mech bits arch and kdrive modifications, jack augments and avionics, and perhaps specialized augments that only work on subsume combos. 

[quxier]

2 hours ago, PookieNumnums said:

Ostrons remained pretty tribal. To be fair we need more civilian tribal groups.

I want to see the colony from the Glass Gambit quest:

Spoiler

https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Mycona_Colony

They weren't "tribal"... but close enough for me.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

On 2020-11-04 at 5:58 PM, (PSN)Shelneroth said:

What's this from?

Sounds like it was ripped off from the Americanized “Rick Hunter” Robotech series, but Oro was called “protoculture”...and it was a superpowered man-machine connection.  

Rick hunter was a teenage kid who was an ace using this energy to pilot his transformable jet-mech(seem familiar?)

The Robotech Masters were powerful but decadent humanoids very much in the vein of Rome before the fall (seem familiar?)

Their conscripted army was made of giant clones formerly created to mine resources that had large green warships (seem familiar?)

The INVID were the trilogy’s final enemy that came for earth like a giant wrecking ball with their Matriarchal Mother at the fore.  They evolved out of simple, peaceful life forms into hive-minded killing machines to RECLAIM the protoculture that was theirs in the first place (stolen by the Masters) and wipe out all life (Seem familiar?)

Yep, I’m older like Steve and crew and I can see the 80s pop culture influence in spades 😊

 

 

[CephalonCarnage]

9 hours ago, PookieNumnums said:

I always looked at it like the orokin were the ruling class. Controlling, creating, taxing, manipulating. 

Yep, me too - in many ways mirroring our own society and structures, except supercharged and exaggerated to extremes. The Orokin I feel are more like our own billionaires who hang around with each other at places like Davos, and live in their walled-off mansions with personal security and even real soldiers/security forces guarding them from the rest of us 'corpus' peasants whose only use is generating the economy that keeps them wealthy and fat. As Parvos told.

The best thing about this is that the Orokin then become just as flawed, greedy and political as we'd expect, just with a veneer of "they're better than you" because they say so and they are so rich they can afford everything that makes them better, but otherwise are exactly the same basic stock.

Can you imagine if we developed some anti-aging mechanism, you or I would be allowed to get it? Or will only the billionaires be able to afford it. You can guarantee society will start to split even further from the haves and have-nots if that did happen.

So I like the idea that there's actually nothing special about anyone in the WF mythos, its all a mess caused by people in circumstanes of their own making (or thrown into it) not so much different from real life.