I'm conflicted. (Heavy Jade Shadows spoilers)

[Prof-Dante]

I was caught of guard when I realized there was a new update going on, I haven't played the game for a while and thought I'd start by watching the quest first.

first of all, great quest, short but really emotional, and this is really what we all want out of story missions, although I'm kind of sick of getting more questions than answers.

it's great that DE wants to keep the continuity going, but give us some temporary closure guys, every new quest gets ever more confusing.

 

BUT

Does anybody else feel kind of eerie from the realization that we are playing as Stalker's dead pregnant wife, and God knows if that's a real cloned baby in there or some sort of infested mumbo jumbo? 

I mean, Warframe is used to carrying out suggestive and violent themes (you should see Dagath lore), but I think this is crossing the line just a little bit, don't you think?

the message itself is beautiful, and the quest was great, but there is odd and there is odd and right now, this is odd.

Edited June 22 by Prof-Dante

[trst]

I mean every frame was originally another person. Some of, likely most, were even forced to undergo the process.

Jade and Umbra are the only ones we have with some backstory on the original person. But it's a safe bet that most frames would also have traumatic origins.

Also I don't see how Jade's story would be crossing the line. We already have a plethora of forced body horror, mental abuse, and outright violent stories and situations, some of which even involving children. Plus there's the whole horrific genocide thing we're regularly conducting.

And there's nothing really indicating that the Jade frame we use is still pregnant. There's no reason for her appearance to change after being replicated while there's also no reason for the child to have been replicated, if that's even a possibility.

[Yaerion]

Citation

but give us some temporary closure guys, every new quest gets ever more confusing.

I couldn't agree more on this.

---

The "baby" move is a bit edgy, even if offers nice possibilities for a future story arc.

However, to come back to the first point, the quest histories make no sense at the moment, because each one brings more (totally unexpected & out of scope) questions than it resolves. It goes in so many wtf directions that it's harder and harder to make some sense of everything we saw until now.

As an example, to focus on the Stalker (which is one, if not my favorite character), after having done this quest, I struggle to understand what the hell he is doing since the beginning. He loved a person who was turned into a Warframe, but wanted to kill all the others? He wanted to protect his lover & baby but attacked every single being able to save them, before allying with our natural biggest enemy, and now comes back to a Tenno thanks to that enemy who is now cool grandpa to get what he needed since the very beginning? What the hell are these nonsensical moves worthy of a goldfish on ecstasy?

Now instead of knowing more of the past, his true identity (a single first name doesn't help) and reasoning, we learnt that warframes can have babies (wth?!?) but it kills them in the process but they're not really dead if we disintegrate them in order to re-print them? And also corpus cut slaves body in several pieces & sell them forever but won't touch you if you have a baby in your arms even though you slaughtered an entire battalion?

Edited June 23 by Yaerion

[Joezone619]

Yeah, jade gives me kinda weird vibes. Like, did nobody at DE think "maybe we shouldn't because some people feel uneasy about pregnancy"? The quest was great, the story amazing, but a perma-pregnant warframe feels a bit too far for me.

[PsiWarp]

There is a difference until we are given more information though. We don't actually know if our own built Jade Warframes are still pregnant or not.

Human Jade was pregnant. Made into a Warframe as punishment for defying the Orokin Legems, designed to house the Jade Light (at least a core or a light source) in her belly with a glass window, and we can guess it was Ballas' sick idea since he was heading the Warframe Project at the time.

After the Collapse, Jade's existence was hidden from the world at large, and she was kept safe by the Stalker for millenia. Hunhow probably only discovered Jade after he made Stalker his Shadow.

That leads us to two possibilities:

1. Our built Jade is still pregnant, but the pregnancy can last thousands of years before childbirth.

2. Our built Jade isn't pregnant, or she would be constantly drained of strength by the baby. She just looks like it because of the Jade Light container built into her belly. You don't actually see a baby shape in there, but a glowing orb of light.

[QueenofYandxre]

1 minute ago, PsiWarp said:

There is a difference until we are given more information though. We don't actually know if our own built Jade Warframes are still pregnant or not.

Human Jade was pregnant. Made into a Warframe as punishment for defying the Orokin Legems, designed to house the Jade Light (at least a core or a light source) in her belly with a glass window, and we can guess it was Ballas' sick idea since he was heading the Warframe Project at the time.

After the Collapse, Jade's existence was hidden from the world at large, and she was kept safe by the Stalker for millenia. Hunhow probably only discovered Jade after he made Stalker his Shadow.

That leads us to two possibilities:

1. Our built Jade is still pregnant, but the pregnancy can last thousands of years before childbirth.

2. Our built Jade isn't pregnant, or she would be constantly drained of strength by the baby. She just looks like it because of the Jade Light container built into her belly. You don't actually see a baby shape in there, but a glowing orb of light.

I love your opinion on the matter. I completely agree with you!

[Raarsi]

7 hours ago, Prof-Dante said:

Does anybody else feel kind of eerie from the realization that we are playing as Stalker's dead pregnant wife, and God knows if that's a real cloned baby in there or some sort of infested mumbo jumbo?

Pretty sure we do actually know and that it's likely just a power source.  Otherwise, our version of Jade would just go the way of the original.

As you've pointed out, we've had far worse origins for frames, and not just by the hands of the Orokin either.  I'll definitely admit to some initial surprise to the notion of a pregnant warframe, but I've found it easier to think more about other aspects of Jade like how she appears to identify as a fighter jet or how whoever wrote Jade's initial story probably needs at least a hug.

[Aruquae]

8 hours ago, Prof-Dante said:

Does anybody else feel kind of eerie from the realization that we are playing as Stalker's dead pregnant wife, and God knows if that's a real cloned baby in there or some sort of infested mumbo jumbo? 

No, why?
I found it weirder how my OPERATOR contributed to giving birth, and how Stalker left to get the milk, and took the baby with him. Didn't even ask if I wanted to keep little Sirius smh

[SneakyErvin]

11 hours ago, Prof-Dante said:

I was caught of guard when I realized there was a new update going on, I haven't played the game for a while and thought I'd start by watching the quest first.

first of all, great quest, short but really emotional, and this is really what we all want out of story missions, although I'm kind of sick of getting more questions than answers.

it's great that DE wants to keep the continuity going, but give us some temporary closure guys, every new quest gets ever more confusing.

 

BUT

Does anybody else feel kind of eerie from the realization that we are playing as Stalker's dead pregnant wife, and God knows if that's a real cloned baby in there or some sort of infested mumbo jumbo? 

I mean, Warframe is used to carrying out suggestive and violent themes (you should see Dagath lore), but I think this is crossing the line just a little bit, don't you think?

the message itself is beautiful, and the quest was great, but there is odd and there is odd and right now, this is odd.

But... we arent. Have you just watched someone else do the quest and then tuned out or did you do it and then completely miss the context in the mail you recieve?

Spoiler

Jade dies by getting 100% disintegrated. Hunhow gives us the main blueprint that he has managed to create, that is the blueprint of Jade only. Saying it is probably what Jade would have wanted.

The baby just happened to grow in her Jade Light chamber. Which isnt exactly odd, since the Jade Light is both a source of life and destruction. And since she was pregnant when she turned into a frame it somehow grew inside her for an abnormally long time i.e 1000+ years instead of 9 months.

 

[Culaio]

3 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Jade dies by getting 100% disintegrated. Hunhow gives us the main blueprint that he has managed to create, that is the blueprint of Jade only. Saying it is probably what Jade would have wanted.

The baby just happened to grow in her Jade Light chamber. Which isnt exactly odd, since the Jade Light is both a source of life and destruction. And since she was pregnant when she turned into a frame it somehow grew inside her for an abnormally long time i.e 1000+ years instead of 9 months.

 

I am assuming that she isnt pregnant but there is some evidence that she may be, the light the chamber is moving like its alive when she touches her belly, another evidence is the fact that she has two aura slots, and from the beginning it was implied that second slot represents her baby...

I dont think that DE expected that community would look that deeply into this, many things in this game exist to represent some visual themes even if they dont make sense, but they are there to look cool.

So I assume that Jade is supposed to visually represent theme of pregnancy(and also angel), but we arent supposed to feel like we are literally a pregnant character who constantly puts itself and its baby at risk for dying from fire, corrosion, toxins, radiation and more.

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, Culaio said:

I am assuming that she isnt pregnant but there is some evidence that she may be, the light the chamber is moving like its alive when she touches her belly, another evidence is the fact that she has two aura slots, and from the beginning it was implied that second slot represents her baby...

I dont think that DE expected that community would look that deeply into this, many things in this game exist to represent some visual themes even if they dont make sense, but they are there to look cool.

So I assume that Jade is supposed to visually represent theme of pregnancy(and also angel), but we arent supposed to feel like we are literally a pregnant character who constantly puts itself and its baby at risk for dying from fire, corrosion, toxins, radiation and more.

Those moving things are the motes of the Jade Light. Her belly is practically a miniature version of the capsule we escort in ascension.

[TARINunit9]

14 hours ago, Prof-Dante said:

Does anybody else feel kind of eerie from the realization that we are playing as Stalker's dead pregnant wife, and God knows if that's a real cloned baby in there or some sort of infested mumbo jumbo? 

The fact that a woman may be pregnant isn't written into her DNA. When you clone someone (and all the playable frames in your inventory are clones) you only get a clone of what their DNA tells the cloning machine to build. Which does not include any unborn fetuses

Unless you're in the movie Alien Resurrection, that's like the one piece of media that has the alien child "infect" the mother's DNA

[EverdarkRaven]

11 hours ago, Aruquae said:

No, why?
I found it weirder how my OPERATOR contributed to giving birth, and how Stalker left to get the milk, and took the baby with him. Didn't even ask if I wanted to keep little Sirius smh

I posted it in another thread, but I think this bit of lore doesn't get talked about enough. 

How have we learned so much about Warframes and their biology? We know what Stalker needs exactly to help Jade and we know how to help deliver an infested/Warframe baby? Are we working on our biology and medical degrees in between missions? 

[BloodKitten]

 

is probebly the only apropriate response here.

[trst]

33 minutes ago, EverdarkRaven said:

How have we learned so much about Warframes and their biology? We know what Stalker needs exactly to help Jade and we know how to help deliver an infested/Warframe baby? Are we working on our biology and medical degrees in between missions?

Why wouldn't the Tenno know about Warframe biology? They were turned into soldiers piloting these to fight for the Orokin. And just as actual soldiers are taught first aid it'd only make sense for the Tenno to have been taught how to tend to frame injuries. As well since we're now flying solo for the most part it'd only make more sense for the Operator to have spent time learning these things. Don't want to be asking Ordis to read you "Warframe biology 101" when dealing with an issue that Helminth can't solve on its own.

The real question would be what is Stalker doing to take care of himself? Clearly he has some knowledge if he's stealing medical gel for Jade but not enough to know about infested remedies. And we've not seen anything to indicate that Stalker has access to his own Helminth.

[EverdarkRaven]

1 minute ago, trst said:

Why wouldn't the Tenno know about Warframe biology? They were turned into soldiers piloting these to fight for the Orokin. And just as actual soldiers are taught first aid it'd only make sense for the Tenno to have been taught how to tend to frame injuries. As well since we're now flying solo for the most part it'd only make more sense for the Operator to have spent time learning these things. Don't want to be asking Ordis to read you "Warframe biology 101" when dealing with an issue that Helminth can't solve on its own.

The real question would be what is Stalker doing to take care of himself? Clearly he has some knowledge if he's stealing medical gel for Jade but not enough to know about infested remedies. And we've not seen anything to indicate that Stalker has access to his own Helminth.

I thought we didn't remember anything from before we were awoken?

[trst]

7 minutes ago, EverdarkRaven said:

I thought we didn't remember anything from before we were awoken?

Even if that's still the case plenty of time has passed between being awoken, remembering we're a Tenno and not a frame (or however pre Second Dream was), and regaining access to our Helminth. Plus there's the whole timeline mess of New War so who knows how much has actually happened between then and Jade Shadows.

[Cram_Duahcim]

This quest also just makes Ballas to be 1000× more evil.

My only complaint with this quest is that they didn't do anything to cover The Collapse and why he really hates the Tenno.

I mean they could've also retconed it, since he could hate what he is because he and Jade were turned into warframes as a punishment for conceiving a child but....

I wish we got to see The Collapse.

Great quest though.

 

[OrangeSphere]

The Blueprint Hunhow sends us was derived from the remnants of her disintegration, which happened *after* she gave birth. We can therefore assume that our Jade is not pregnant because the original she's based on was not pregnant when she died. She just happens to still have the belly because that's part of her physical design. You can blame whomever created her for using her baby bump as the basis for an execution-beam battery.

We can also assume, however, that our Jade is a complete duplicate of the original Jade, memories and all. We know from The Sacrifice that reconstructed Warframes retain all of the memories their originals had at the time the Blueprint was made. The original Excalibur Umbra got vaporized by Natah, but the version we rebuild is a functional resurrection of the original Warframe. Likewise, the Jade we rebuild is also likely a functional resurrection of the original Jade. She got Ship-of-Theseus'd, but it's really her. Hunhow even says that she lives on before handing us the Blueprint and referring to it as if it is her.

And before anyone starts wondering whether it's ethical to use her as a Warframe, remember that our operators are effective space therapists. Jade has gone through a hell of a lot, including dying to give her child life. She is going to need our help restoring herself and reuniting with her family, and that's why the new sad-dad Hunhow passes us the Blueprint.

Edited June 23 by OrangeSphere

[TARINunit9]

3 hours ago, EverdarkRaven said:

How have we learned so much about Warframes and their biology? We know what Stalker needs exactly to help Jade

Helminth probably had a hand in telling us about the Juggernaut medicine 

Honestly that section was a good call-back. "Oh we need a Juggernaut's entrails? Well I know where the biggest one lives" because we've already done the Atlas/Jordas quest way back when

[ScytheG]

I think our constructed frames are not meant to actually be conscious or alive, we're way into the sci fi morality of androids/cyborgs and stuff so hard to say what even counts as real and not.

I mean, what happens to our unused frames that sit in whatever storage they're in for years on end? That's like solitary confinement except you can literally not move a muscle. Lot of this kind of thing has to be handwaved away as it would be pretty monstrous if it were real, also subsuming frames.

[ReddyDisco]

It's normal to feel awkward about childbirth, it's a very stressful time for everyone involved. The way DE made the scene wasn't messy but looked very touching, don't think it's crossing any line.

[0bsi]

10 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

The fact that a woman may be pregnant isn't written into her DNA. When you clone someone (and all the playable frames in your inventory are clones) you only get a clone of what their DNA tells the cloning machine to build. Which does not include any unborn fetuses

So by that argument, if the blueprints are a clone of the DNA of the person, then the playable frame shouldn't have the pregnant belly because that's not part of the DNA.

[C11H22O1]

29 minutes ago, 0bsi said:

So by that argument, if the blueprints are a clone of the DNA of the person, then the playable frame shouldn't have the pregnant belly because that's not part of the DNA.

Not really, before she died and after giving birth she still has the belly so it just looks like it's part of her design, pregnant or not.

Edited June 23 by C11H22O1

[0bsi]

14 minutes ago, C11H22O1 said:

Not really, before she died and after giving birth she still has the belly so it just looks like it's part of her design, pregnant or not.

I assume TARINunit9's argument (that I was replying to) for why there is no baby in the belly of the playable frame is because the baby isn't in the DNA.....  so that's why I was pointing out that by that same argument, a pregnant belly shape is also not included in DNA.

As to whether or not the Jade blueprint should have a pregnant belly or not kinda depends on what exactly the blueprint is created from, which has never really been fully explained... whether it's the original blueprint created when the frame was (in this case would include the pregnancy, since Jade was made into a frame while pregnant), or if the blueprint is created upon the death of the frame (in which case there is no baby)....   

... and yes there is the argument that a woman's belly does not go completely flat after delivery (I've had a baby, so I am well aware) - but it's not a full pregnant belly shape either.