Warframe needs a lore consistency pass. Badly.

[DaraSilverDragon]

So I've been guiding one of my friends through the game as a new Tenno again - every once in a while one of my buddies decides to pick the game up for the first time and I love to help them get on their way, because Albrecht-knows the game itself doesn't...
...and it really struck me how 8 years of solid development on the game has really left its continuity in quite a state. This really seems like the sort of thing that long-time vets and people who don't care about the story might pass over entirely, and newer players might just be too confused to even realize there's a problem, assuming that their questions don't even have answers in the first place and that the game's worldbuilding is just a mess.

I'll point to the most egregious early-game example... The Archwing. The... the quest, that is- not the equipment or the missions. In the quest The Archwing, which is acquired from the Mars Junction, you're shown two major game antagonists pitted against each other - Vay Hek, backstabbing Frohd Bek. Now, while it is literally impossible for a player to have fought either of these individuals personally before (since Hek's node requires an archwing mission to unlock), you can at least have been introduced to Vay Hek and his army of ghouls while out on the Plains of Eidolon, as he serves as the primary antagonist of that area (and of all of Earth, not that players would know that- but we'll get there...)
But Bek? Bek is only mentioned in the most perfunctory of ways by Nef and Glast, and I don't even remember if those are in quests that are available pre-Pluto or not. Either way, the only proper introduction a new player gets to Bek as a character is his boss fight all the way the hell out on aforementioned Pluto, where we learn a small bit about his history with Glast and the fact that he's on the board of corpus directors... and yet here he is, barely after we've gotten to Mars, being slapped with a Fully Operational Battle Station (tm) laser that we now have to run from with nearly zero context.
Really, this problem is the result of there being absolutely -no- means in-game of learning about prior world events that took place in Warframe's timeline for players who simply weren't there when they went down. The Archwing, for example, is a quest that follows on directly from the plot of Operation Cryotic Front which itself carried on from Operation Sling-Stone and Tethra's Doom, and then was immediately followed by Operation Eyes of Blight. Does a new player learn about these things... anywhere? At all? Yeah sure, if they check the unofficial wiki and already know what to look for. Bek himself features heavily in several operations unrelated to Hek as well, such as Ties That Bind, and his own personal prequel to his current boss fight, the ever-memeable Ambulas Reborn.
And let's get back to Earth for a second - remember me saying that Hek was the primary antagonist for the entire tileset? Well, that's because I was around for The Cicero Crisis. Were you NOT around for Cicero, Tenno? Well, tough teralysts, you'll just have to go and read the wiki if you want any context whatsoever regarding literally any of that.
You know what a GREAT way to handle this would be? Giving a Leverian scene to each major plot-relevant non-replayable operation from Warframe's past, and then just make viewing it a quest requirement. Is it perfect? No. Even so, it's still just boom- instant context, there ya go... and it would be considerably less work than almost any other suitable method

It's not even just the events though, either - why do players get a login reward the very first time they log in? Why can it be from any of the possible characters? One of the first things my friend said upon loading up the game was "What the hell is a Simaris? What is a neurode and why do I need it? Did I skip a cutscene on accident?"
Like, why is this even possible? Is it because no one at DE even realized it happened? I'm betting it's because no one at DE even realized it happened. It should be *very* little effort to just prevent login rewards from popping up for the very first login on an account (just give it to the person automatically, with no forced confirmation or comms message - they can't even make an informed decision about it anyway), and to limit the people who can show up to give you the rewards based on your account info. Completed Vor's Prize? Darvo can give you your login rewards now. Completed Stolen Dreams? Now Maroo's unlocked. Finished The New Strange? Simaris is added to the roster. You guys could do this with like... 4-5 conditional statements, or something.

What really needs to happen, is that someone from the writing team needs to break away on their own for a few days or a week, make a brand new non-developer account, wipe all pre-knowledge of the setting from their mind for a little while, and just play through all the quests start to finish with a notepad next to them, jotting down every time a character says something that makes no sense or gets introduced out of sequence or something. Because right now, Warframe's worldbuilding is just... a mess. Just a horrible mess that can go from slightly confusing to downright unintelligible, depending on how long you've been playing for and how closely you keep up with the retcons and things like excal's codex entry being declared non-canon.

Warframe's setting is too awesome to get this kind of treatment, guys. It's story is too awesome to get this kind of treatment. Please.

Edit: Here's another one I nearly forgot - The Glast Gambit is clearly meant as an introduction to The Index... why can it not be acquired until well after you encounter the relevant minigame?

[Loza03]

I agree. Whilst I definitely think DE has more than stepped up their game for recent content (for example, VK-7 and Sigor Savah's story being consistent across multiple characters), they've not brought their old lore up to standard, which in turn affects their new stories.

 

In addition to things like the Leverian or some such, having just the voicelines around for some of the most immediately relevant places would work. Lock Oculysts until the player has completed at least one Uranus sabotage. When you unlock that, Alad contacts you being all "Oh no I want to get healed for my disease please help", and when you run through a Uranus sabotage, the Tubemen of Regor voicelines play.

As for that, Alad's storyline needs to get cleaned up. I see no real reason not to do some slight retconning and put his lab in orbit of Deimos. Now, after you kill him on Jupiter, you can unlock that quest right away, and make that a requirement for the Second Dream. So now new players aren't mystified about why he suddenly has a purple scar.

[DaraSilverDragon]

You know, I kindof don't agree there - because that means heavily retconning what's already happened, and the current timeline of events does make sense... most players just don't have access to it.
If seeing a Leverian of the relevant events (or however else DE wants to implement it, it doesn't really matter as long as people get to know what happened) were to be made a quest requirement for Second Dream, I feel like that's a less fun but also more consistent and elegant solution
Your way would admittedly be more enjoyable to play through, though

[Quimoth]

Good point, I don't see it happening anytime soon given how notorious Warframe/DE are when it comes to new-player experience and building a cohesive story.

There are still so many gaps in the Lore or discontinued paths that there is no easy place to begin either. It does not really make DE any money. It does not interest those players who just got past these stages/bosses. There probably isn't going to be more than 1 person at DE looking into this for these very reasons.

The best way to get this all somewhat cleaned up would be to have more quests early on. These could also be addressing some of the systems that are barely being touched by the current quests. I would be happy to see more simple introductory stories around certain figures.

I personally could see the first issue being a short quest featuring Darvo and Frohd Bek like they did in one of the events (i really can't remember which event). They're father and son and both are encountered pretty early on in the game.

[DaraSilverDragon]

1 minute ago, Quimoth said:

I personally could see the first issue being a short quest featuring Darvo and Frohd Bek like they did in one of the events (i really can't remember which event). They're father and son and both are encountered pretty early on in the game.

Ties That Bind - I mentioned it in the OP, actually

[DrivaMain]

The laziest thing they can do is to upload the lore of previous operations into The Codex. Call it the "Origin System History and Events". 

[DaraSilverDragon]

24 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

The laziest thing they can do is to upload the lore of previous operations into The Codex. Call it the "Origin System History and Events". 

even better- Origin System History and Activities
Remember Tenno, when questing, always check your OSHA manual first

[Yrkul]

Don't mind me. Just looking around...

[Drasiel]

The problem with Bek specifically and a lot of bosses/important characters is they are often first and sometimes only introduced in one time events. All of that lore has been lost for 8 years at this point now.  Bek himself was first introduced in one of the events involving Alad V where he was shown to be a competitor to alad. Later on in a special darvo even mission we learn that Darvo is like 300 years old or something and Frod Bek is his dad. Then in the ambulas event Bek's character is fleshed out further to have been a student of the head of the perrin sequence that stole his work and turned it to war. No one who was not here for these events or the odd duck that scrapes through the wiki for lore could possibly know that.

Tangentially related I made a chart about the warframe bosses because some of them have depth and are super cool like Tyl regor, or ambulas, but in most cases there is either no build up, no back story, and the back story is lost to one time events. I made a chart.
 

[VoidArkhangel]

En 3/7/2021 a las 13:37, DaraSilverDragon dijo:

But Bek? Bek is only mentioned in the most perfunctory of ways by Nef and Glast, and I don't even remember if those are in quests that are available pre-Pluto or not

Even most old players wont notice or remember that Bek is the most friendly Corpus we've met to the point where our relation is neutral, DE needs to rework the in-game story.

-Cured Alad V helps us before getting infested

-Acolytes speak of someone to reckon, an orokin wich few would know that they are talking about Alad

-Nightwatch troops are so specops that we dont see them again

-All the bosses except Alad, Vay Hek, Bek and Vor have a massive "Unknown" under the current status section we dont know if they are dead or what

-What Tyl Regor did with the Exilus he found?

-How a manic is made?

-Finish a war that didnt even started (for future players)

I think DE stopped giving us such a nice events because players who joined after wont know about them just as you said so instead of making a way to update your database they just stopped.

[DaraSilverDragon]

Hot damn Drasiel, that's amazing. That's good data for DE's writing team, right there

[Drasiel]

3 hours ago, DaraSilverDragon said:

Hot damn Drasiel, that's amazing. That's good data for DE's writing team, right there

Thank you, although I do have to go back and fix a bit. I actually forgot about Tethra's doom and more importantly operation slingstone and the cicero crisis, which introduces the balor fomorians and explains why vay hek is on earth respectively.

I've replaced the image in my previous post with an updated one.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

So do we kill Alad V and then he gets resurrected via Infestation?

or is it that he is Infested on his own, Cured by us, then later the human version is hostile?

Is he even supposed to be alive currently? I've shot him plenty of times, but its unclear if I'm actually killing him, or "curing" him. Because apparently bullets are good for your health?

 

I've got no clue. and that's a problem.

[DaraSilverDragon]

6 hours ago, (PSN)haphazardlynamed said:

So do we kill Alad V and then he gets resurrected via Infestation?

or is it that he is Infested on his own, Cured by us, then later the human version is hostile?

Is he even supposed to be alive currently? I've shot him plenty of times, but its unclear if I'm actually killing him, or "curing" him. Because apparently bullets are good for your health?

 

I've got no clue. and that's a problem.

okay so, this one actually gets a pass from me - it's very difficult to both have farmable boss encounters, and also have those encounters 'count' towards canon. Generally speaking, you never actually 'kill' assassination targets, you really just like... disable them for a bit
the only exception being Vor, who we literally cut in half and who is then revived THROUGH THE POWER OF THE JANU- no, no, not again with this. Anyway...
Point being, you can't really hold DE accountable for the lore of us 'killing' the bosses hundreds of times. Is there cool stuff they could do to explain why we're able to do that? Yes, absolutely. Is that system the most suspension-of-disbelief-shattering issue facing the story right now, and what they should be focusing their effort to fix up? Not by a long shot.

Also, salad got infested between Operation Breeding Grounds and the Patient Zero quest, and was cured at the conclusion of the event Tubemen of Regor... which is another point of contention in the plot, because Natah and The Second Dream follow on from Tubemen of Regor, and yet Patient Zero - a quest that canonically takes place BEFORE The Second Dream, cannot be acquired until you have completed that same quest. You can't get from neptune to pluto without finishing Natah and TSD... but PZ, which takes place PRIOR, is only unlocked by getting to Eris. This is what I'm talking about when I say lore needs a consistency pass - not stuff like 'how do the bosses keep getting back up'.

[Leafsw0rd]

A whole other problem in this is that some of the lore outright HAS been retconned. 

The one that always makes me laugh is that Corpus originally didn't use human labour because robots were far more efficient. Which makes the entirety of fortuna an illogical anachronism. Why bother with slave labour when you have robots that require less resources and are smart and loyal enough to sass your enemies on their way in?

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Leafsw0rd said:

A whole other problem in this is that some of the lore outright HAS been retconned. 

The one that always makes me laugh is that Corpus originally didn't use human labour because robots were far more efficient. Which makes the entirety of fortuna an illogical anachronism. Why bother with slave labour when you have robots that require less resources and are smart and loyal enough to sass your enemies on their way in?

The annoying part is that there's a pretty easy way of explaining it but they never do. There's established lore that, because of the Sentients, the Corpus keep their robots dumb. So just explain that most Solaris do 'intelligent' engineering jobs, such as repairing unknown technology or more complex engineering roles that can't be managed by simple repair precepts. Nef's using them instead of dumb drones after the Weeping Towers are repaired because Nef's incompetant and it'd cost money to overhaul the workforce. Maybe even throw in a line about how switching to Moa's would be cheaper, but it'd require a high initial cost and it'd also damage Nef's pride.

There's a fair bit of stuff that could be easily explained or at least handwaved but they just... don't do it for some reason.

[DaraSilverDragon]

Honestly there's just so much focus on adding new lore and worldbuilding - really good stuff, mind! - that the old lore just gets left in the dust
But the old lore is cool too! It's the basis that the new better-written stuff is built on!
DE needs to give it the love it deserves, finally, and go over it to finally make everything consistent. Remove retconned content, move content around so that it happens in chronological order, explain content that can no longer be accessed yet remains important to the setting, and eliminate sequence-breaks
Will veteran players like this update? No, for the most part - it doesn't benefit them, and will probably be seen as wasted effort that takes away from the New War we feel we somehow deserve.
Will new players like this update? No, for the most part - they won't even understand why it's needed, and will just think it's the normal way things were always done.
This will be an unpopular decision with a large portion of the playerbase, honestly... and yet, it needs to be done. Warframe's story deserves to be told in a way that makes coherent sense. It is a good story, in a good setting, and it deserves better than it's getting.

[Alguerath]

Hard agree on this, as a new player I had to spend so much time in the wiki to get up to speed on all the lore I missed because I didn't know the game existed in the first place...it feels, punishing.

[DaraSilverDragon]

On 2021-07-09 at 4:11 PM, Alguerath said:

Hard agree on this, as a new player I had to spend so much time in the wiki to get up to speed on all the lore I missed because I didn't know the game existed in the first place...it feels, punishing.

That's exactly the problem - it almost feels like new players are being punished for not having been playing the game for the past 8 years already
Of course, I don't think the solution is just to bring back those events - that would make no sense, and undermine the whole 'limited time event' idea that made them unique in the first place
But expletive's sake, at least give them a codex entry for it...
Hell, maybe even just add a new tab to the codex, in the form of a timeline - it can look like the tech tree from a Civilization game, with color-coded branches connecting nodes that represent quests, events, and operations, which can all be clicked on for more context - with the exception of quests, which take you to the relevant quest screen and grey out any nodes past them

[Alguerath]

The Leverian idea is actually good, though, it allows for a better exposition all around when it comes to the long story that Warframe has.

[DaraSilverDragon]

On 2021-07-12 at 5:39 PM, Alguerath said:

The Leverian idea is actually good, though, it allows for a better exposition all around when it comes to the long story that Warframe has.

I mean I know they're giving the Leverian the cold shoulder for now, but I really can't think of anything better to show new Tenno about past events. I'm super open to new ideas about it though (and hopefully so is DE)

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

Consistent lore would be a dream. With all the world building & a plethora of factions at their disposal, DE does very little with what they have. There's very little in terms of grand scale battles or legitimate alliances between so many groups. I'm especially disappointed when they refuse to show interactions between syndicates. Steel Meridian never shows up at the gates of Cetus whenever Ghouls are on the rise. Ergo Glast has never once interacted with Eudico in spite of their equal contempt for Nef Anyo. The Arbiters are just sorta there, doing...Something. I could go on about syndicates, but what I'm most confused about is how one-off some of the characters are. Vor, Vay Hek & Ruk get so much backstory to them while Kela, Kril & Regor only get one or two major monents to shine.

No one can convince me that Vala Glarios is an interesting character. She shows up out of nowhere wanting revenge, starts singing some depressive sea shanty & disappears just as quick. Sleeping in the Cold Below is a good song, but some Moby D analogy does not make for a good character. She has very little depth to her aside from the whole vengeance angle.

[DaraSilverDragon]

On 2021-07-16 at 6:59 PM, (PSN)IndianChiefJeff said:

Consistent lore would be a dream. With all the world building & a plethora of factions at their disposal, DE does very little with what they have. There's very little in terms of grand scale battles or legitimate alliances between so many groups. I'm especially disappointed when they refuse to show interactions between syndicates. Steel Meridian never shows up at the gates of Cetus whenever Ghouls are on the rise. Ergo Glast has never once interacted with Eudico in spite of their equal contempt for Nef Anyo. The Arbiters are just sorta there, doing...Something.

You know, I've been thinking that myself pretty hard lately. Like... I know it's been a meme for ABSOLUTELY AGES, but why does Steel Meridian keep me marked for effin' death even though they've let me into their base completely freely to chat up the Red Veil speaker? There's not even a separate dialogue line - I can just walk right up to Cressa and get a fairly benign ambient voiceline, then I actually press the use key and talk to her, and it's nothing but red bars and death threats. Then after letting me wander unrestricted around her base camp with no supervision, I enter a random mission and she sends those *** ******* **** roller ball assassin death squads at me... and then after the mission's over I can just fly straight back to her camp and it's a casual greeting like nothing ever happened.

And like... we stan Suda in my household, but my friend has her quite pissed off at him. Man literally saves her very existence in Octavia's quest...
...and then remains solidly at rank -2 with her.

It just don't make a damn bit of sense.
And then like you said, there's absolutely no reason that Cressa and Konzu shouldn't be buddy-buddy, or Glast and Eudi
I mean bloody hell, Teshin has personally benefited from seeing the Tenno as people rather than just weapons... why isn't he sitting seiza with the leaders of Hexis, after the events of The War Within?