Are warframes sentient? ( Some degree of spoilers )

[AngryBAsian]

I know the first frames created in the "Old War" were sentient (to a degree) and uncontrollable, which is why tennos became a thing. However, I remember during one of the MSQs,  our frames kinda pulled the Stalker's blade out by itself. So, are our frames sentient to a certain degree or was our frames just simply reacting to operator's feeling or something?

Also, is it stated anywhere if the frames and  the operators feel pain from the frame being attacked? Seeing the helminth ability insertion process made me think about this. The frame looks to be in pain when it gets stabbed but then it looks just fine right after.

[Dhrekr]

You... haven't played "The Sacrifice", have you.

 

The answer is that they are sentient to some extent.

[AngryBAsian]

3 minutes ago, Dhrekr said:

You... haven't played "The Sacrifice", have you.

 

The answer is that they are sentient to some extent.

I mean I understood where the Umbra frames came from and how sentient they are, but it does not mention much about the current or prime frames.

[Aadi880]

8 minutes ago, AngryBAsian said:

I know the first frames created in the "Old War" were sentient (to a degree) and uncontrollable, which is why tennos became a thing. However, I remember during one of the MSQs,  our frames kinda pulled the Stalker's blade out by itself. So, are our frames sentient to a certain degree or was our frames just simply reacting to operator's feeling or something? 

This part is often subjected to speculations.

Its not really known how that warframe was able to pull the blade out (implied by the game at least), despite not appearing sentient.

Umbra is the only warframe that we know of that is truly sentient.

As for the warframe who pulled the blade out, personally I speculate that the link between the warframe and you were not severed. You do not need to physically touch the warframe to link to it after all. It could be that, in that moment of desperation, under the fear of actual death, your tenno was able to link to your warframe and pull the sword out.

[LoneWolf9989]

Warframes have the potential to be sentient, but many gave up that sentience to the Tenno, in varying degrees.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

Seems unlikely that you could build a sentient being in the foundry. The fact that umbra exists is pretty dumb. Really, what does it matter if the sentients kill everyone in the galaxy? Just move to another one and build new humans in the foundry. Not that easy? Coulda fooled me.

[Sloan441]

1 hour ago, Dhrekr said:

The answer is that they are sentient to some extent.

They're not supposed to be. However, like most things Orokin, this ideal isn't realized. 

It appears warframes do retain some degree of what they were before their conversion. This appears to vary a fair degree and DE hasn't really gotten into specifics. There are enough clues scattered about that hint that somewhere in there remains something of what was. 

When they're under tenno control this is overlaid by the tenno's consciousness. I'd be surprised if this isn't a bit of a two-way street, but DE hasn't addressed this possibility so far. 

[Dhrekr]

1 hour ago, AngryBAsian said:

I mean I understood where the Umbra frames came from and how sentient they are, but it does not mention much about the current or prime frames.

You can use any frame during Second Dream and any frame will manifest some degree of sentience. Ergo, all warframes are sentient to some degree.

25 minutes ago, Sloan441 said:

It appears warframes do retain some degree of what they were before their conversion. This appears to vary a fair degree and DE hasn't really gotten into specifics

Thanks for taking my sentence, reformulating it and adding nothing.

Yes. They are sentient to some extent, as I said.

[TheSixOfDiamonds]

The logic I follow is from the dialogue in The Sacrifice. The player gets a choice of "We use this memory. It fuels our wrath.", "We accept this memory and move beyond its reach.", or "We return this memory to the Void and find peace in our emptiness." after listening to Ballas talk about how Tenno learned to heal the mental state of the Warframe, post-creation.

So for me, there exists a consciousness within Warframes, possibly aware of what's going on, that through, but allow Tenno to pull their strings. Umbra is the only one to 100% mechanically show this with his passive, but even back when Second Dream came out I assumed my Warframe ripped War out of itself. Which made it a ton cooler to me, but hey, just my idea.

[Shemarria]

1 hour ago, Dhrekr said:

You... haven't played "The Sacrifice", have you.

 

The answer is that they are sentient to some extent.

Warframes are "Yes"

Spoiler

Through the course of the game you find out they WERE created as a synthesis of Sentient tech, technocyte virus (infested) and a primary human growth medium; which becomes the void-template later on for other copies of the frame: see both The Sacrifice and the trailer for Mirage Prime.  The Tenno 'operators' are basically used to keep the technocyte and void-imprints under control. 

 

[Zeddypanda]

As far as I'm concerned, my Vauban pulled that sword out of his gut because he really hates swords, get that sword away from him.

[MqToasty]

2 hours ago, (PSN)Yggranya said:

Seems unlikely that you could build a sentient being in the foundry. The fact that umbra exists is pretty dumb. Really, what does it matter if the sentients kill everyone in the galaxy? Just move to another one and build new humans in the foundry. Not that easy? Coulda fooled me.

Which one would we move to?  You do remember why the Sentients were created, right?  So they can terraform and prepare Tau for us?

As for building humans in the foundry, that's pretty much how the Grineer are made.  Except that they accumulate flaws over time, which also explains why our vanilla frames are flawed copies of the Primes.

2 hours ago, Aadi880 said:

It could be that, in that moment of desperation, under the fear of actual death, your tenno was able to link to your warframe and pull the sword out.

I also subscribe to this explanation.  Either this, or perhaps The Man in the Wall gave you a small helping hand.  I think we'll have to wait to see how DE decides to retcon it.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

It's complicated, and to really answer that you need more than just point to the sacrifice or the second dream and go "There, problem solved." You have to look at other parts of the lore which to this day are heavily alluded to but still only implied, so naturally you'll always have critics claiming that if it's not outright stated by a character in game it's not true. Anyway. Here's some facts that are relevant to the question:

The original prime frame of a warframe series is created by pumping the host full of kuva and letting them get infested, warping their body and breaking their mind.
Ballas has the ability to influence the mind of the host turning to frame, discarding parts of the hosts mind, which are sent to the void, but aren't destroyed.(Sacrifice, Mirage Prime Trailer, Cephalon Fragments)
Even Umbra with only one remaining memory is able to function and fight alongside the Tenno.
DE has planned to allow every frame to become sentient and do "tag team" maneuvers with the player in tenno form.
DE Steve has answered that very same question(hesitantly) by referring to the second dream sequence when the frame came alive to break war.
In the original storyboard for the second dream, the frame even got up and battled with the Stalker to protect the tenno, but that was discarded because it felt "too tropy" IIRC.

All in all, there is way more signs pointing towards frames, whether primes, reconstructed primes(the ones we use), or the mass produced nonprimes having the capability for sentience. IMO, all that is needed for a frame to be able to move on their own is a power source. Umbra might have had one built in, but as for any other frame that players use in the second dream, it's the sentient energy from hunhow seeping into them through war. That was the point of the scene after all.

How much of their host's personality remains in them, or whether it could be recovered, is open for debate, but even that is a definite possibility given that it's been established years ago that bringing people(at least those who consumed kuva) back from the dead is possible.

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

per what we know via quests and Vitruvian, the frames were self aware and sentient before the tenno came 

Quote

Yet their minds were free of the Infested madness. Or so we thought. We set them upon the battlefield, bio-drones under our command. The Warframes... All of them... failures. Surprised? They turned on us, just as you did. And so we had no choice but to commit them to grave.

it was discovered the tenno could calm them and assert control (subconsciously) while in the second dream state

-see rhino prime codex

this seems for all purposes (not the tennos fault or choice) to be a unconscious action that allows them to interact with a warframes mind , and seemingly takeaway warframes self control/memories , and for all intensive purposes turns them into shells, bodies ready to be controlled 

Quote

We had created monsters we couldn't control. We drugged them, tortured them, eviscerated them... We brutalized their minds... but it did not work. Until they came. And it was not their force of will - not their Void devilry - not their alien darkness... it was something else. It was that somehow, from within the derelict-horror, they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing-- And take away its pain.

so yes all warframes are/were self aware and were humans at one point turned by the helmith strain creating the original prime frames (later cheaper clone models using less costly resources were created, the normal non primes were made for war time production units) 

the Umbra line however uses a different strain , one it seems more focused on sentient combat , were the primes were focused on defense at the orokin structures id wager given tactical use of deathorbs would benefit them on the home front (i just call it the umbra strain ) 

what ballas did to the umbra line progenerater , is to grant it a memory that even the operators transference couldnt wipe away , allowing it to keep its sense of self and be able to move and act like other warframes prior to the tenno using them, be fully capable of combat without guidance of an operator 

(also note per silver grove normal people can do transference with risks and much strain) 

(this is a non cannon hypothesis) (below)

Spoiler

if i had to rationalize this method of creating the umbras and why, id say it takes step towards using the umbra line as drones to attack the sentient in unguided attack force waves, as even if the transference is terminated they dont fall over and become ragdolls like our frames did in The war within. instead they would remain and be able to stage combat , probably using a memory that is to orokins benefit "like sentient are evil and killed your family ect" as memory alteration and wiping seems to be within their powers . then using operators as a sort of guild they could launch them in waves and disconnect the operators and ready the Next wave of frames to be released. operators would simply be the means to control them and get them to the destination, and then release them when they were at target area. given excalibur umbra is formed from a very high level swordsman dax its safe to say he would be highly combat proficient ad if using clone war (star wars) tactics an army of him unguided and enraged .. would be very destructive combat force. not to mention the other umbras are a thing also so a variety of various frames working and having the skills of veteran warriors , unchained by the operators control and directing all their hate to the sentient would have been a powerfully strong advantage , especially if they can strip sentients of adaption at will

but as said above this is a tactical rationalization of why orokin pursued this logic 

 

[Crabopoulos-Michael]

hace 17 minutos, AuroraSonicBoom dijo:

discarding parts of the hosts mind, which are sent to the void, but aren't destroyed

This is interesting. I wish at some point we're given the chance to go to the void with our frame of choice to recover those memories and turn them into Umbras.

[Birdframe_Prime]

The common theory for 'are Warframes sentient' is simply this; The originals created by Ballas from living people and the Helminth definitely retained something of themselves. The cut-down production-model versions we use may have that too.

The reason they were able to turn on the Orokin before the Tenno came along, however, is commonly thought to be the same reason that the original Infestation did, which is that it developed a hive mind. The Helminth is also Infestation, and even though it's docile, the hostility of the creation process was probably a deciding factor in them not listening to their masters.

Thus, in theory, it's likely that all Warframes are to some degree sentient. They don't act independently because the Tenno mind is in control, preventing any kind of Infested hive mind from developing and taking control.

Mesa is controlled by the Infestation in the Patient Zero quest, for example, while Nidus and the other Warframes are greeted in a friendly manner by Helminth on our ship, but the Operators are not.

Umbra is slightly more sentient than the others due to the circumstances and trauma of his creation, but we do notice that our chosen Warframe will act to save itself (and us possibly by proxy) at the end of The Second Dream. So it's an interesting balance of degrees of sentience.

Maybe in a future update we will develop our bond with the Warframes to the point where we can not only allow any of our frames an Umbra level of Sentience, but even more where DE might even put in actual Lore related explorations of the actual characters of the frames, which would be nice ^^

[(XBOX)DShinShoryuken]

Has anyone seen the changes in Frames since we got Void Demons transference out?

At the beginning, they would stand straight and be unmoving. Nothing would budge them from the spot we transferred out from.

Lately, my Frames have been doing stance and weapon animations when i transfer out. They get knocked down and roll up to stand again. Hek, i have seen them blocking attacks while i was in Void Demon resetting Resistance.

Is this something others have seen....or just my viewing

[Aadi880]

12 minutes ago, (XBOX)DShinShoryuken said:

Lately, my Frames have been doing stance and weapon animations when i transfer out. They get knocked down and roll up to stand again. Hek, i have seen them blocking attacks while i was in Void Demon resetting Resistance.

Is this something others have seen....or just my viewing

That is a bug. It happened since the new knockdown recovery animation was put in place (The hotfix which removed self damage).

Basically, if your warframe touches a knockdown trigger (ie from shockwave moas), it will get knocked down and get it self back up, but it doesn't revert to the stand still animation, but to the idle animation instead.

Previously it was immune to knockdown, but the late knockdown recovery animation changes bugged it where it is no longer immune to it.

[TARINunit9]

6 hours ago, AngryBAsian said:

I mean I understood where the Umbra frames came from and how sentient they are, but it does not mention much about the current or prime frames.

Warframes in general are clones, and they are clones who keep their memories through cloning

Memories are a characteristic of thinking beings

Thus I conclude that Warframe are thinking beings

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

As far as we know the frames we use are not sentient. Whoever they once where is gone.

The only exception is umbra becauee ballas left him with the memory of killing his son as a way to torture umbra.  We help yo bring umbra some level of peace via transference.

Xaku is also a bit wonky.  Its a a void entity that made a body from busted warframe parts. But we are not told its a hivemind or sentient like umbra.  Xaku is more of an it then any other frame.

I think it would be cool to have a mini quest like umbras to awaken and umbraize normal frames to give us someback story on who the frames used to be.

[AuroraSonicBoom]

5 hours ago, (NSW)Spektr3 said:

This is interesting. I wish at some point we're given the chance to go to the void with our frame of choice to recover those memories and turn them into Umbras.

I would like to do that as well, somehow recover my favorite frame's true personality, even if its just to get a backstory of who banshee's host was originally.

IMO, this is pretty much the biggest mystery that DE has hinted at with so many lore tidbits and worldbuilding over the years. Wally is connected to it, Lotus is connected with it, the sentients are. Hell, the god damn specters are connected to it. That's not the topic of the thread tho, but yeah, getting more lore for each frame would be dope. Sadly, I doubt it's gonna happen as they can't even keep up with leverian releases, which were designed specifically to give frames without quest and other lore in the game some backstory.

 

[(PSN)Kakurine2]

We hat if we gathered a special void shard item that would umbra a normal frame.

So stab saryn with it bam she goes nuts. 3 missions later we get a complete background story to tame her like umbra and done.

For example. Maybe saryn was some beautiful model that suffered a accident of some sort wuth poison thst tuined her looks.  The orokin saud we can make you beautiful again and turned into a warframe.

Maybe loki was a thief in prison and the orikin saud be the experiment or death sentence.

Rhino was a big bearly soldier that volunteered to be a super soldier.

Frost died in a avalanche and his nearly dead body was used.

Trinity was a doctor turned against her will.

Mag was a scoentist that suffered severe injuries well developing magnetic power generatirs.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

[RLanzinger]

Il y a 3 heures, (PSN)Kakurine2 a dit :

As far as we know the frames we use are not sentient. Whoever they once where is gone.

NOPE !

From WIKIA : https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Ballas

In Mirage Prime's video, Ballas recognizes the suffering that the Tenno--or perhaps the individuals who were used to create the original Warframes--endured to become what they are. He states that Mirage "played the fool" while others "writhed and raged in the vice," ... Mirage's tricks ultimately allowed her to "distort [Ballas'] design."

In Valkyr Prime's intro video, Ballas mourns the loss of animalistic aspects the Orokin tossed away for their immortality and beauty. He warns that the Warframes, which retain a primal nature, should be feared. Even though they are Tenno-controlled, they are merely biding their time to eventually strike at their Tenno and Orokin masters.

 

[(PSN)Zero_029]

Yes. They have a consciousness. But it is suppressed via the Transference Bolt.

Umbra was a special case, as his bolt was uniquely made so Ballas could torment him. Ironically this has allowed Umbra to retain sentience in a manner that most Warframes cannot dream to achieve.

The Infestation is the true reason why.

The Infestation as we've learned, literally absorbs not only the genetic blueprint of EVERYTHING it absorbs. But it also fully assimilates the being's consciousness into the hive mind.

As revealed in the Simaris archives where one of the twin sisters had become infested. The Infestation then allowed her sister to connect and call out to her sibling in order to set a trap.

Moving on...

Sacrifice showed that the Warframes remember the process of their conversion, which was a painful and horrible experience.

Also, once fully Infested the Warframes became berserkers who were no different from the Infested we deal with currently. (Meaning that the Infested see and feel everything. So they remember...everything....)

Thus...the Transference bolts were made. Essentially turning Warframes into golems.

Golems whose pain can only be numbed by the Tenno. (We still don't fully know how the Tenno do this. With Umbra we just seemed to somehow break the mental loop he was trapped in.)

So....

Yes. They have a mind...buried...deep...and I mean very deep...somewhere inside.

A mind that is literally replicated with every copy (essentially a clone) manufactured.

During the second dream.

The Warframe saw us in danger. And like in Mirage's story, and many other stories. The Operator and the Warframe form a symbiotic link. They become more than friends, they become kindred spirits. They share each others pain (Tenno do feel what the Warframe feels. Why DE cut that dialogue from the game...I'm not sure.).

So...the Warframe tried it's best to save the Tenno. But can it can only do so much.

(I do NOT want more Umbra frames due to this. Umbra impo should be unique, and...I dislike the idea of piloting my friend and forcing him/her to do my bidding.)

I love the dark themes...but...at times it does make me go. "🤔 Damn orokin... this is a terrible thing you've done."

[VoidArkhangel]

hace 12 horas, AngryBAsian dijo:

I know the first frames created in the "Old War" were sentient (to a degree) and uncontrollable, which is why tennos became a thing. However, I remember during one of the MSQs,  our frames kinda pulled the Stalker's blade out by itself. So, are our frames sentient to a certain degree or was our frames just simply reacting to operator's feeling or something?

Also, is it stated anywhere if the frames and  the operators feel pain from the frame being attacked? Seeing the helminth ability insertion process made me think about this. The frame looks to be in pain when it gets stabbed but then it looks just fine right after.

TL:DR just in case I say something someone already said.

They are sentient, they were Orokin soldiers who gone infested with a special strain, the transformation was painful in fact it was so painful that the result would be a mindless beast that only wants to kill due to its constant suffering.

Then the Tenno were discovered and the Orokin tested what will happen if a demon met another demon, as expected, the Tenno took away the pain of the warframes and these will serve them like pets or like puppets as Hunhow says.