Warframe Quests and how they treat women.

[Khornelia]

I did not like the Jade Shadows quest for reasons best summed up by ChangelingRain in this post. 

Jade, supposedly the headliner of the update and quest, was reduced to almost literally a birthing machine and motivational device for the Stalker. Also consieder this: the first Warframe to have a major quirk was Umbra (male), because he was sentient. Meanwhile Jade, the first female warframe to have a major quirk is literally... being pregnant. Yikes.

This goes along with the game's continued tendency to tell us stories driven by men, with women being reduced to motivating/supporting roles in those men's stories. (Lotus in the new War. Jade in this new quest.)

We've also had 5 non-tenno characters to play now; Teshin, Kahl, Veso, Arthur, Stalker. All of them men. 

I love this game and world, but this has come up again and again and has started make me tune out the story more and more, which is a shame. 

I also have a lot of love for you people at DE, and I think you could do much better and hope that you will. <3

[Quest]

3 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

Also consieder this: the first Warframe to have a major quirk was Umbra (male), because he was sentient. Meanwhile Jade, the first female warframe to have a major quirk is literally... being pregnant. Yikes.

This is not really a fair statement. Pretty much every warframe has some kind of interesting story behind it.

5 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

This goes along with the game's continued tendency to tell us stories driven by men, with women being reduced to motivating/supporting roles in those men's stories. (Lotus in the new War. Jade in this new quest.)

Uh... dude... the lotus is one of the most powerful and influential figures in the game.

And Jade is currently flying around maps and nuking everyone within view.

[Khornelia]

13 minutes ago, Quest said:

This is not really a fair statement. Pretty much every warframe has some kind of interesting story behind it.

I maintain that being sentient or being pregnant are both very different from any other frame's background or theme, as both clearly hint at and connect to their their human origin.

 

13 minutes ago, Quest said:

Uh... dude... the lotus is one of the most powerful and influential figures in the game.

And Jade is currently flying around maps and nuking everyone within view.

And yet, in the story we got to play, Lotus spent most of the time as a victim, being manipulated and held captive.

Also gameplay balance has zero to do with any of my points.

Edited June 23 by Khornelia

[CephalonCarnage]

Sometimes the story is about the hero and everyone else in it is there to tell the hero's story. Its not a conspiracy against women to have a pregnant one be part of this story in a supporting role.

 

I think you're also being selective, All warframes have a major quirk, whether that's Titania's forest or Yareli's Merulina or Dagath's lack of head or Citrine's crystals. For playable characters, Kahl, Veso and Teshin only came about for very small parts in TNW, Arthur's a teaser for the original Excalibur and we've yet to see if we can play the Mag equivalent Aoi yet (chances are we will, unless she remains as the mission director)

But all that said, my operator is female (rolled like that, not my choice but I like it) and has been a significant playable character throughout the game. Lotus is still the most significant part of the game beyond your warframe. For every male supporting NPC there's a female - for every Biz, there's a Eudico. For every Alad, there's Mother. For every Baro there's Nora. I don't think it fair to say DE is oppressing the women here. And even if there's is a (slight) imbalance male to female, that's fair because soldiery is traditionally male oriented as is the vast majority of the playerbase.

[CephalonCarnage]

1 minute ago, Khornelia said:

And yet, in the story we got to play, Lotus spent most of the time as a victim, being manipulated and held captive

you mean like she did to Ballas previously? Or is that to be conveniently forgotten about?

[KIREEK]

30 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

the first female warframe to have a major quirk is literally... being pregnant

Well, if we apply our world reality to the warframe reality, that is something a male warframe could not do.
If you bring the subject up (pregancy), it will have to involve a female warframe.

[Khornelia]

19 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

Sometimes the story is about the hero and everyone else in it is there to tell the hero's story. Its not a conspiracy against women to have a pregnant one be part of this story in a supporting role.

 

I think you're also being selective, All warframes have a major quirk, whether that's Titania's forest or Yareli's Merulina or Dagath's lack of head or Citrine's crystals. For playable characters, Kahl, Veso and Teshin only came about for very small parts in TNW, Arthur's a teaser for the original Excalibur and we've yet to see if we can play the Mag equivalent Aoi yet (chances are we will, unless she remains as the mission director)

But all that said, my operator is female (rolled like that, not my choice but I like it) and has been a significant playable character throughout the game. Lotus is still the most significant part of the game beyond your warframe. For every male supporting NPC there's a female - for every Biz, there's a Eudico. For every Alad, there's Mother. For every Baro there's Nora. I don't think it fair to say DE is oppressing the women here. And even if there's is a (slight) imbalance male to female, that's fair because soldiery is traditionally male oriented as is the vast majority of the playerbase.

Yet it does represent a bias when, again and again, the hero is a man.

By quirk I mean characteristics that make them stand out from the other frames in ways that go beyond regular themes like simply "fire", "pet", "sword guy" or "faery". And yes, clearly you can see that all of those characters mentioned were men. Thanks for repeating that I guess?

The operator is not set in gender, so no they do not really represent what you claim. 

Lotus is by definition a supporting character, not one that drives the plot on her own beyond waking the tenno.

And yes, there are a bunch of great minor female characters. That doesn't have anything to do with my point though.

Also spare me the condescension and straw-manning. I didn't once accuse anyone of oppressing women, and none of what you wrote refutes the biases I merely pointed out.

 

10 minutes ago, KIREEK said:

Well, if we apply our world reality to the warframe reality, that is something a male warframe could not do.
If you bring the subject up (pregancy), it will have to involve a female warframe.

Except no, women are not in fact the only ones who can get pregnant. You're also ignoring the reason I brought this point up: a man got to be sentient while a woman got to be pregnant. 

Edited June 23 by Khornelia

[Quest]

22 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

Yet it does represent a bias when, again and again, the hero is a man.

nevermind

Edited June 23 by Quest

[KIREEK]

Regading representation, fear not, while it's not certain, it's possible DE has requested "overpriced professional guidance" for their scripts.

These are individuals that offer protection at huge inflated costs to protect companies from the big bad bullies online, these bullies are often designated as "gamming journalists", they often have these fluffy colored websites and have female leads who deal with the issues you're bringing up, they work with many gamming companies to extort as much as they can, often bringing features such as the uglyfication of virtual woman or making sure that the story breaks the immersion due to the overall sillyness (last of us part 2 is such a great example)

If you're concerned for the future and how things will be represented, don't worry, expert female leads may be analyzing the game as we speak.

[CephalonCarnage]

1 minute ago, Khornelia said:

Yet it does represent a bias when, again and again, the hero is a man.

By quirk I mean characteristics that make them stand out from the other frames in ways that go beyond regular themes like simply "fire", "pet", "sword guy" or "faery". And yes, clearly you can see that all of those characters mentioned were men. Thanks for repeating that I guess?

They are all quirks for warframes. Every one has a unique feature that makes them different in some way. Jade's main abilities are that executioner light beam, but that doesn't matter when we can gaslight about her being pregant to tell stalker's story. The story was about Stalker. Maybe they should have gven Jade her own story to introduce her as a warframe, where she is the angel of death, but I guess getting a new plat sale pack out was more important. Still, the story that was told was Stalker's, not Jade's.

 

2 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

The operator is not set in gender, so no they do not really represent what you claim. 

And yes, there are a bunch of great minor female characters. That doesn't have anything to do with my point though

It does exactly that. You have the game as you want with whichever gender you want to be and that is the single biggest character in the game (let alone being able to play as any of the many female warframes). As you say, there are plenty of supporting female NPCs so it shouldn't matter that you got to play these 3 male characters that were only bit parts in small sections in the new war, and they were onyl there because of existing unit models. How many female corpus soldiers are there, besides the Sisters? (hmm, why are there no male corpus supersoldiers when even the Kuva ones are mixed sex? Bias, clearly!)

 

4 minutes ago, Khornelia said:

Also spare me the condescension and straw-manning. I didn't once accuse anyone of oppressing women, and none of what you wrote refutes the biases I merely pointed out

You did though, the entire post is about how DE doesn't treat women right, when they clearly do. When even your own example of Lotus being held captive as biased is so easily disproved by the Ballas story. You have blinded yourself here, the game is not biased against women, its very fair in how it treats everyone even when they get flak for it.

[Khornelia]

2 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

They are all quirks for warframes. Every one has a unique feature that makes them different in some way. Jade's main abilities are that executioner light beam, but that doesn't matter when we can gaslight about her being pregant to tell stalker's story. The story was about Stalker. Maybe they should have gven Jade her own story to introduce her as a warframe, where she is the angel of death, but I guess getting a new plat sale pack out was more important. Still, the story that was told was Stalker's, not Jade's.

Again, the kind of quirk I am talking about goes beyond the regular themes..

And yes exactly. She did not get a story, she was part of his. I literally said this.

4 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

It does exactly that. You have the game as you want with whichever gender you want to be and that is the single biggest character in the game (let alone being able to play as any of the many female warframes). As you say, there are plenty of supporting female NPCs so it shouldn't matter that you got to play these 3 male characters that were only bit parts in small sections in the new war, and they were onyl there because of existing unit models. How many female corpus soldiers are there, besides the Sisters? (hmm, why are there no male corpus supersoldiers when even the Kuva ones are mixed sex? Bias, clearly!)

If the game does not specify the operator's gender, than no it does not count as just one of them by default. The story should be considered from each perspective.

You're still not saying anything. Yes, female supporting characters exist. I mentioned this in my post. 

And there have been FIVE male characters we got to play as outside of the operator, not 3. Idk what you're trying with that corpus gotcha line other than demonstrate that you are arguing in bad faith. 

[CephalonCarnage]

1 minute ago, Khornelia said:

And there have been FIVE male characters we got to play as outside of the operator, not 3. Idk what you're trying with that corpus gotcha line other than demonstrate that you are arguing in bad faith. 

You are arguing in bad faith. These 5 playable characters are very minor (even Excalibur so far, but then it is his game and you don't know what part Aoi will play). Teshin's been there for ages so its natural he got his moment, but still he was a very small part of that NW quest. these don't count as major characters to play, they were just bits to remind you of the old game before they moved to Duviri. Nothing particularly special about them at all. Except for the Kahl minigame that I try hard to forget, but even that is not there to be a bias, its just a character they reused for more content that players demanded post NW.

And you are arguing that the game is biased against females, yet in so many areas the opposite is true. You seem to have taken some idea and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

[Khornelia]

12 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

You are arguing in bad faith. These 5 playable characters are very minor (even Excalibur so far, but then it is his game and you don't know what part Aoi will play). Teshin's been there for ages so its natural he got his moment, but still he was a very small part of that NW quest. these don't count as major characters to play, they were just bits to remind you of the old game before they moved to Duviri. Nothing particularly special about them at all. Except for the Kahl minigame that I try hard to forget, but even that is not there to be a bias, its just a character they reused for more content that players demanded post NW.

Try to bend it however you want, fact is those "minor" characters were all men. And bringing up that we *might* get to play Aoi as a counter argument goes to show that you do recognize the bias lmao

13 minutes ago, CephalonCarnage said:

You seem to have taken some idea and ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Right back at you.

[0bsi]

I actually feel that Warframe is one of the better games out there in terms of how well (fair and evenly) it tends to portray women. 

There's a more or less even split of male to female frames and the female frames aren't all just relegated to support - there are strong female frames.
Of the faction Syndicates we have a roughly even split in leaders (Female: Suda, Loka, Meridian.  Male: Hexis, Perrin.. and Veil?)
Open world Syndicates - Solaris, Vox Solaris and Entrati run by females (Ostron, Holdfasts by male)
The Kuva Queens, Sisters of Parvos, some of the Liches are female. 
Then you have Maroo, Varzia, Nora.
Obviously we have Lotus who is a very major character
 

Importantly I feel that all the female NPCs (excluding perhaps Varzia, since she's a little flirty :D ), are just "normal" - not sexualised, not lesser in any way - just characters who happen to be female.  So overall I think the way females are portrayed in the game is fairly good.
 

While there's often the argument that many of the female frames are highly sexualised (Wisp/Mesa Prime etc.) {and yes, they are} - there are also a few examples of that for male frames too (Granted not as many), and then there are also female frames who aren't overtly sexual (base Mesa for example)
 

Which is why Jade being "fridged" in this quest felt particularly aggravating for me, because I feel like it goes against the female-positive aspect this game generally has.  Now I assume it's likely that the Devs were thinking more about the "Jade is the giver of life and that's important" aspect (Which is how some in the forum see it too), and not the fact that making her sole purpose to be a womb that dies for Stalker's story to progress.  It's just disappointing that they didn't put more thought in and give her more of an actual role in the quest, which would have allowed for the same story, but without her feeling like a prop in Stalker's story.

The pregnant belly on her playable frame is (among the other issues people have with it) a reminder of that.

Edited June 23 by 0bsi

[Shinoyami65]

Yeah, I'm surprised that some people are trying to claim Jade's design is the result of DEI or pin it on Gamergate nonsense when a quest that portrays the morally correct decision as a female character giving up her life, personality and autonomy to give birth is the exact opposite of female empowerment. Compared to the stories of other female frames like Dagath (literally coming back from the dead to take revenge against the people who abused and discarded her), Voruna (rebelling against the Continuity ritual she once guarded and choosing her wolf pack over the Orokin) or even Mirage (who also dies, but gets a chance to express herself through the riddles she leaves behind and Lotus's recollections of her), Jade's characterisation felt hollow. 

[Bearssi]

Writing Jades story, i would have had her appear behind Stalker somehow as "protector" in the after death cutscenes, "opaque angel figure". Make the player speculate "was that her?" Just a thought how the story would have been even more impactful.

[Marvelous_A]

I think you have no respect to Jade's own choice of being a mother. She chose to be a mother and died to deliver her child and you are doing whatever thing you trying to do here and being disrespectful to it. Do you speak to your parents like this too? You literally judged a female with her childbirth and you think you are the woman right fighter here? Laughable.

Edited June 23 by Marvelous_A

[Shinoyami65]

6 minutes ago, Marvelous_A said:

I think you have no respect to Jade's own choice of being a mother. She chose to be a mother and died to deliver her child and you are doing whatever thing you trying to do here and being disrespectful to it. Do you speak to your parents like this too? You literally judged a female with her childbirth and you think you are the woman right fighter here? Laughable.

She's a fictional character. Her 'choices' are a result of how the writers chose to write her.

[Marvelous_A]

2 hours ago, Shinoyami65 said:

She's a fictional character. Her 'choices' are a result of how the writers chose to write her.

But if imaginary fictional female was to give birth to an imaginary fictional child it's a real problem to you? God forbids the writers breaking the male stereotype by making Stalker a single dad. Actually, it's kinda funny because no one cried when we found out Umbra was a dad. Maybe there was, but I guess men just don't give a...wait am I doing stereotype again? Bad habit in a clown society.

Edited June 23 by Marvelous_A

[L3512]

SHe'S a FIcTIonAl ChARaCteR.

Truly those who read the forums are blessed by such cutting insights.

[Waeleto]

11 hours ago, Khornelia said:

women being reduced to motivating/supporting roles in those men's stories. (Lotus in the new War. Jade in this new quest.)

Lotus literally killed Ballas and ended the new war 

[Shinoyami65]

On 2024-06-23 at 5:17 AM, Marvelous_A said:

But if imaginary fictional female was to give birth to an imaginary fictional child it's a real problem to you? God forbids the writers breaking the male stereotype by making Stalker a single dad. Actually, it's kinda funny because no one cried when we found out Umbra was a dad. Maybe there was, but I guess men just don't give a...wait am I doing stereotype again? Bad habit in a clown society.

"Breaking the male stereotype" by re-using a plotline from The Last of Us, the Mandalorian, Taken, Logan and every "badass man with a child" story is not the groundbreaking narrative you seem to think it is.  

And yes, people can have issues with the usage of the characters because they're intended to convey a message or moral to people in the real world. There were no complaints when people found out Umbra was a father because it gave us more insight into the character's personality and he actively takes charge of his fate by rebelling against Ballas. In contrast, Jade barely features in the quest aside from flashbacks, is passive/dying for the entirety of it and her personality isn't elaborated on at all.

 

[Rexis12]

12 hours ago, Khornelia said:

Meanwhile Jade, the first female warframe to have a major quirk is literally... being pregnant. Yikes.

Valkyr is right #*!%ing there. 

 

[Rexis12]

Actually screw it. 

Citrine was indirectly responsible for a Void Tunnel between Mars and Venus.

Yarelli inspired an entire sub-culture in Fortuna.

Dagath is a Halloween story because she was apparently that prolific in her rampage as a Warframe. 

Titania convinced the Earth Nazis to be less Earth Nazis. Posthumously I might add. 

Octavia was the one that made the music that all Tenno used to coordinate their slaughter. 

 

Like a whole bunch of female Warframes had major quirks already? Why ignore them to complain and then falsely say that this is the first and the worst of the bunch? 

[RLanzinger]

@Khornelia : "Meanwhile Jade, the first female warframe to have a major quirk is literally... being pregnant. Yikes."

The Stalker being pregnant will be WEIRD... any male being pregnant aside from NIDUS will be very weird.

@Khornelia : "Teshin, Kahl, Veso, Arthur, Stalker. All of them men."

We also have operator and drifters that can be female; Teshin and Veso ARE DEAD. All others are "short timer" not casual play...

Also Arthur and Stalker are warframe kind... (duviri play confirm it for stalky )

@Khornelia : "has started make me tune out the story more and more, which is a shame.  ..."

I remark that you gently completely forgot and ignore that 

• The main screen time enemy is XETO, a female corpus ... who were more Wise that any corpus and more Mercifull that all of them.
• Aside Arthur in W1999 there IS AOI, THE PROTO-MAG... a FEMALE counter part form Arthur.
• The character that had more SCREEN TIME in the entire the game during 10years IS MOMMY LOTUS...

 

99% of game play is YOUR CHOICE... only 2 quests on 37 are male characters only FOR narration purpose.