The Duviri Paradox, or, How to Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

[Fallowsthorn]

  

(side note, there really ought to be a story/quests tag)

(side note the second: please note that while I really like Duviri, it's been a while since I played The Duviri Paradox, and I don't often get to play Duviri proper because it takes a million years to load and hangs the game when I leave)

 

Here's the paradox: Duviri is set up for new players, but the Duviri Paradox quest involves a lot of story elements those new players don't have context for yet, and in experiencing those story elements out of narrative order (ie, before The New War), they're accidentally ruining the reveals for themselves.

Here's my solution: keep the helmet on.

Well, okay, it's a little more complicated than that. The short version is "decouple normal Duviri gameplay from the Duviri Paradox quest, move the quest where it should be after The New War, and disallow Drifter customization outside of suit colors until the reveal that they're an older AU Operator." But "keep the helmet on" is snappier.

This not only solves the continuity snarl created by, for example, the player assuming their Operator and Drifter are two separate people and making them different genders (which is what the streamer I've been watching did), it actually integrates Duviri into the story better than simply moving the whole thing after The New War.

Just to recap, Duviri's basic narrative is that the Drifter is running a Groundhog Day time loop: they're on the run from Dominus Thrax and his courtiers, who are all exaggerated morality plays about emotional regulation, and after completing a series of tasks that provoke the currently dominant courtier into a higher and further frenzy, defeat the Orowyrm that the courtier has either transformed into or manifested via their breakdown and loss of control. The Drifter stops the Orowyrm/courtier from wreaking havoc, the courtier calms down, the Drifter gets some shinies, and the day resets into the next spiral, aka the usual sort of setup for a roguelike. Before the Paradox, it's more or less the same except instead of the Orowyrm bit, the Drifter just gets caught by Thrax and executed, and that resets the loop.

Notably, none of that relies in any way on information from the base universe. Superficially, it's completely unrelated, and that's a good thing, because it means nothing is spoiled as long as the player doesn't know what the Drifter looks or sounds like (iirc the Drifter has no voice lines outside of the quest, or at least doesn't have to have them). More importantly, it turns anything that would be a spoiler into the writer's best friend, retroactive foreshadowing. Player-customized Warframes and weapons appear in the starter cave? Weird, wonder what that's about. Duviri characters have lines that reference the Zariman? How mysterious! And so on and so forth.

One of the reasons The Second Dream works so well and is so impactful emotionally is, to put it simply, familiarity. The player has spent probably hundreds of hours learning the ins and outs of Warframe, and they're fairly confident they know what's going on. The reveal that they don't wouldn't work nearly as well without that background assumption; it'd be like putting the twist ending twenty minutes into the movie. Allowing the players into the normal gameplay loop before encountering the Paradox does exactly the same thing for Duviri. They've gotten used to the idea that there's a unrelated game tacked on to Warframe for no apparent reason, they've learned who the courtiers are*, they understand the mechanics and the pacing, they think, once again, that they've got Duviri down pat. Surprise! Not only is Duviri deeply and inextricably connected to the main game, it has been all along.

* When I played TDP, I was... very confused about who these people were, why there were so many of them, what they all wanted, and what if anything they had to do with Dominus Thrax. I don't know if there's something written down that I accidentally missed reading - I have a "Tales of Duviri Storybook" in my Orbiter decorations that I don't remember the provenance of - but there was a certain amount of simply accepting that I wasn't going to understand what was happening that is unfortunately somewhat typical for Warframe quests IMX. Doing the normal loop before the quest (and they'll almost certainly go through all... five? six? spirals by the time they hit New War) both solves this problem and highlights how out of the ordinary the Paradox is.

 

Naturally, there are some mechanical issues with this proposal, chief among them the Intrinsics system, the tutorial, and a bunch of the activities. Intrinsics is easier, or at least simpler:

• Allow only tiers 1 and 2
• Swap Riding's 2 (dismount resistance) with 4 (Materlith fast travel)
• Swap Opportunity's 2 (extra weapon choice) with 3 (free decree)

The tutorial is harder because it's embedded in the Paradox narrative, and because I can't remember if Teshin is supposed to be introduced then or has been there all along. I do know the Drifter isn't supposed to have the magic hand until the Paradox happens (or more accurately, until it's cut off in The New War), but since we're already screwing around with time, it might be possible to just handwave (heh) that with "eternalism." In that case, potentially the easiest solution would be to break up the tutorial from TDP proper, although personally I wouldn't go for that, because you want players to see that stab + hand moment and immediately connect it with Ballas killing the Operator, and the further apart those get the less likely they are to remember it. To be honest, I'm not sure what the appropriate balance here is between lore compatibility, the least amount of extra work, and the fewest possible restrictions on Duviri gameplay. I can tell you what I'd do if I had eighty billion dollars, complete creative control, and a time machine, but since I don't, that's neither useful nor feasible, so it's in the spoiler box as more of a thought exercise:

Spoiler

No hand, no Warframes, no powers, no Teshin, no Undercroft. Cave still exists as a way to change colors/appearance in limited form. Drifter starts the cycle with Sirocco as a normal sidearm and maybe a Skana, or whatever that cheapo first sword is called, or maybe the Rumblejack. Spawn location is wherever the current courtier hangs out when it's not their spiral, or the little village area. First time around there's an abbreviated tutorial for the Kaithe and melee, then spiral progresses normally until the last stage. Instead of the Orowyrm, the last stage is something like, "Reach Dominus Thrax at his palace." Once you get there, you walk into the swirly portal, screen goes black, you hear Thrax say "begin again," and you get the mission summary screen and get booted back to your Orbiter. Intrinsics points are banked for after you finish the quest.

Then of course some of the activities can't happen until after the quest, like the one where you walk around a table opposite your Operator and meet in the middle, but there are enough left that I don't think this is too big of a deal. Even if you take out the Undercroft, there's still plenty.

 

"Hey but what about--?" Yeah, I dunno. I dunno how to fix it. I just think Duviri should be a thing you can do without spoiling yourself, or whatever the reverse of spoiling yourself is. My head hurts and I've had this tab open for four days, it's time to release this thing into the wild.

[Fallowsthorn]

Oh, and on a similar note, Heart of Deimos really ought to be moved to after The Second Dream. Possibly after The War Within. I'm not sure how it's even supposed to work without an Operator, or without knowing about Transference.