Warframe Is (Becoming) A Cliché Scifi Shooter

[PsychedelicSnake]

 

Yeah, because it's not like most ideas ever used haven't been used before. "It's all about the money" is such a painfully stupid thing to say, just because an idea isn't 100% original.

 

[SoulSpectre]

Unless we got some deep plot to make our enemies more colorful and unique, some personality, then were just shooting at some cliche bad guy army. Sprag and Venkra'tel are good starters, now make them colorful and unique, and not just some key dropping screamers at the other side of an Orokin sabotage.

Edited November 2, 2015 by SoulSpectre

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Space zombies, space racists, space yuppies vs. Space Power Rangers.

Well it could have been Space Teenage Mutant Turtles if this had happened in the 90s.

[PapaFragolino]

Warframe always was a clichè scifi shooter, now that DE is finally writing some lore and giving us more quests it will, hopefully and eventually, become something more unique.

[(XBOX)a salsa wizard]

how is this game anything like planetside 2? As a matter of fact how is Warframe like any of those?

[BlackCoMerc]

OP, stories exist in part to help humans conquer their fears. It's why we evolved sitting round fires, telling stories about slaying the monsters in the dark. Doing so lessened our fear and loosed the hold the dark had upon us.

The Grineer represent the worst of humanity. Greed, bloodlust, genocidal tendencies and a refusal to accept outsiders. They enforce their views with brutal military power and ruthless behavior.

The Corpus are greed and obsession mixed with an unhealthy desire to live by proxy via technology. To no longer experience first hand real risk or reward. Through money and manipulation, as well as literal Proxy Wars, they threaten to seize control of human livelihood and remove secure foundations. These are real concerns for a society still seeking a balance between real, interpersonal interaction a fascination with technology.

And the Infested and Orokin express fear of assimilation. The former: painful, forced assimilation under the boots of a tyrannical master disguising his intentions as scientific research. The latter, assimilation through unhealthy progress and fixation with technology. Being at the mercy of our own creation. Both are a modern twist on the zombie fear.

Science fiction has always expressed such fears, both to bring them into awareness and to help us cope. It's why Serenity had Reavers, or Destiny has The Taken.

It's Human Psychology reflected in storytelling.

[DuncanHydroho]

how is this game anything like planetside 2? As a matter of fact how is Warframe like any of those?

 

Because the game involves playing from different sides of planets => planetside. Huh the answer was so obvious :)))

[YasaiTsume]

Well, at least DE has the whole Sentients and Tenno thingy going on.
I think Orokin lore is vastly different than forerunners from Halo as some has raised.

For one, we know Forerunners are a more benevolent race and actually want to keep the universe safe, even if it means purging a whole galaxy to stop the Flood etcetc.

The thing is, we do not know if Orokin are even a designated "good" opposing to an "evil" 
For one, our player faction are against the Orokin.

For all we know Orokin are just a very manipulative race of higher beings that people just got sick of their control and wanted to rebel. Then who is the good guy then?

[Evanescent]

It's not what elements are present, but what you do with them. In that respect Warframe is doing fine, I believe.

[Blakrana]

If we reduce all narrative to tropes, then, surprisingly enough, everything does break down the same basic building blocks.

 

And to say something is Generic isn't necessarily to say it's bad.

 

It's not whether or not you're using a given trope or tropes, it's how you use the trope.

 

Tropes are tools and how a given writer, game dev or what have you uses those tropes is what gives them a spin. Creating a trope or concept is, well...going to be difficult unless you're at the start of history or some exceptional person who's gleaned some hidden truth.

 

I mean, for sake of argument, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a rather cliché sort of storyline. But who cares cause a) it's beautiful and b) a good game. Golden Sun has a massive problem with Flat Characters, and yet still remains pretty solid in Cult fondness.

 

Most of the time, you can boil down any storyline into 'Bad stuff happens, Good guys do things, Good stuff happens, the end'. All those shock twists and turns are still ultimately possible to reduce into such a formula.

 

Warframe is the weird result of whatever the heck DE's strange interests and creative intent boils down into. I wager that Steve would be willing to acknowledge that, yes, it's somewhat formulaic when it comes to the concerned tropes, but how they're trying to work within them is what makes Warframe the strange creature that it is.

 

Even if it's possible to draw parallels between Warframe and games like Phantasy Star, Halo, Metroid, Mass Effect and the like...it's just the nature of the genre. Very trodden paths that until we're actually at the point where such scenarios and experiences are part of the real daily life, we'll explore and navigate in fiction.

 

The one thing that sits out particularly significantly is perhaps the very nebulous, much questioned state of just what the Tenno are. We've got everything possible from 'just people in suits' to flat out 'posthumans' akin to Ghost in the Shell or Eclipse Phase. I cannot actually recall any game of the above to ever go past 'just really special people in suits' such as the Transhuman Spartans or Samus and Shephard via genetic modification or cyborgisation respectively.

 

No answers as to yet as how far, but right now, that's perhaps the big matter with the setting. Chuck in the fact that ultimately all things that the modern Origin endures is because of the hubris of the former human empire of the Orokin...it's possible to argue it's an exploration of facing the consequences for our hubrises.

 

Nothing that fights or dies in Origin would be there if not for the Orokin. An argument could be made 'just like the Ancients/Precursors/Forerunners' etc but...well...hubris is an interesting thing.

 

Who atones for the sins of the father already deceased but the lost children?

 

Apologies for going on, but hey, its what I do.

[GhostLacuna]

FFS this is not a issue of sci fi this is a issue as old as storytelling.

 

None of the major religions in this wold has a uns of originality to them. Every single one of them and their major themes can be found all over in all religions that predate them.

 

the first story that has sci fi elements is the sumerian epic of Gilgamesh from c. 2150-2000 BCE good luck trying to not use anything the human mind has fantasized about since that time. 

 

As others have said you also have the rule of 3. One of the most powerful rules ever.  its all over in storytelling, law, rethorical and public speaking, comedy and slogans just to name a few.

 

Writing a story is not a easy task, having it be original as well is extremely hard.

 

Very few stories get it right.

 

Heck some of the ones that are unique are said to be to confusing to read for many people.

 

Ulysses still have people confused to hell and back when they read it. 

[LilLemay]

Having those Cliche's is fine as long as the story behind them is innovative. Yes we have the crude militaristic faction, much like the Krogan from ME, but the difference there is that the way each of those factions fit into their respective worlds makes them interesting and alive. 

 

Yes the Orokin and Sentient are pretty similar to other Sci Fi factions, but the story we're slowly uncovering that fleshes them out and makes them alive is what makes them different from all of the other stories out there.

[DuncanHydroho]

With a deck of cards a 5 years old can do something that would generally pass for a castle, in his mind, just by putting one card against another. With the same deck of cards a 25 years old could actually build something that looks like a miniature castle.

 

The deck of cards is trivial, almost every people on the surface of Earth know what that is, but the results of a more experienced "builder" compared to those of a lesser one are a totally different thing.

 

So why do we need to reinvent the deck of cards, or concrete bricks and so on ?

[LilLemay]

^^ that

[VCaptiion]

This game is nothing more than a mix-up of different kinds of games. So we got half-baked ninja with grenade launchers, half-baked pet feeding, half-baked air fighting, half-baked everything. The true innovation of this game is merely the ways of reinforced grind and made player suffering. Why I am still there is just because I hate to restart another game from scratch. Maybe the most appealing thing for me is exploiting bugs, then wait for another overcompensating reward.

Edited November 2, 2015 by VCaptiion

[DuncanHydroho]

This game is nothing more than a mix-up of different kinds of games. So we got half-baked ninja with grenade launchers, half-baked pet feeding, half-baked air fighting, half-baked everything. Why I am still there is just because I hate to restart another game from scratch.

 

Since Doom was released, and a few other games from 1995 to 2000, almost all I've seen were mix-up kinds of games.

[Institute-Marksman]

I have read a few good explanations, and they have received my upvote.

[angias]

Perhaps not the entirety of Warframe, but if you just look at the factions we have, it's quite bad. I mean 'any good' scifi game has a militaristic crude faction hellbent on destroying anything that's not themselves.

Then theres the crazy techno-people who like to spend 'a little too much' time with technology.

And let's not forget about the animalistic zombie-esque faction that's just out there to kill anything.

Below, I quote other games besides Warframe who either show all of the aforementioned traits or at least one of them:

The Halo Universe

Mass Effect

Destiny

Planetside 2

Crysis

The Half-Life Series

Warhammer 40K

The Defiance MMO

And perhaps others I never heard of.

So now I've offended about half of all gamers, I'm still glad I finally got it off my mind. Scenarios like these are becoming more and more common and I'm starting to think it's all about the money, and not so much about making good science-fiction. When will the time come that someone comes and shakes things up a little? Try something completely different for a change. The fact that the builders of the universes mentioned above tend to stick to what a faction should look like above worries me. I thinks it's about damn time to redefine what we consider science-fiction.

The grandfathers of sci-fi are all long dead and we keep feeding off of their carcasses.

If it's even possible to get a 100% original and yet fun concept.

Then please give us some hint of what we should do.

 

These simple concept allow us to feel somehow concerned about the game. These concept are not the most original but we deffenitely like them.

[TheBrsrkr]

There isn't much else at this point that can be done. Pretty much everything has been done and overdone for about 20 years now.

[Lightsmith]

Warhammer 40k has been around before the others listed so lets use that as a basis.

Warhammer 40k was based off Warhammer. The factions in that sharing the same archetypes. Warhammer was based off DnD and from there JRR Tolken.

Simplified Distinction of groups are:

Technological - having an amount or type of technology that makes them distinctive from others

Biological -have biological traits, as part of their being or culture, this separates them from other groups.

Religious - having a set of religious devotion and /or beliefs that give them distinction.

Magical - use a magic unique or greater than other groups

Demeanour - distinct in their attitudes, typically in the extreme; passive, aggressive, etc.

Government - a unique type or scale of government that is different than others

Most games can fit in those categories. However "unique" think the concept is.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Lightsmith

[VoidNomade]

I like sci fi dragons o.o

[DuncanHydroho]

There isn't much else at this point that can be done. Pretty much everything has been done and overdone for about 20 years now.

There's always room for more, or for something new to be discovered. But for a game to be at least 80% purely genuine I don't think so.

[Chhkt]

The Sentients are actually robots controlled by green four eyed hamsters hellbent on turning our solar system into a gigantic industrial factory to produce Soylent Green pellets for the blue one eyed hamsters in the Andromeda Galaxy. The twist is that pellet food is illegal, and punishable by having your feet tickled until you die from giggling, a fate so horrible the red two tongued turtle-ferrets from the Galactic Core couldn't have bested with their creative torture techniques.

[(PSN)MoRockaPDX]

We could have an interesting and more original setting, but it would be counter what most people emotionally and intellectually respond to.

Hard science

Reject metaphysics

Embrace posthumanity

Deny universal teleology

Embrace mechanistic materialism

Pretty much the kiss of death to the 90% romantic adventure that we consume for the last several centuries.

Edited November 2, 2015 by (PS4)MoRockaPDX

[BETAOPTICS]

Right but when you take such an open ended archetypes then it is no wonder that they are seen so often. It is not that easy to try to come up with factions that do not originate from some form of general wide theme like technology or war. But when we start breaking down the sub-categories and nuance of the factions themselves, then it gets far more interesting.

Grineer is indeed a faction that is all about war and conquest. But unlike the typical stereotype, the Grineer seem to do it out of despair and necessity for their own survival rather than for the love of it. They are clearly struggling to survive and while they are large in number, they are very much like a cornered dog in a way that they are constantly only fighting to see the next day arise.

Corpus on the other hand is this kind of crazy merchant cult, a religious organization of sorts that worship the Prime times literally and try to re-establish what there once was via seeking resources and using those resources in trying to parrot the now (supposedly) extinct Orokin and their civilization. They do everything to advance their goal, ethics and morality has little meaning to them.

The Infested is probably a more general faction but even it is now getting more complex, nuanced and interesting lore. A faction once created by the Orokin to fight against the Sentient's, this organism that is seemingly mindless and aimless, only trying to spread as much as possible does actually does seem to have organized conscious of its own. However, too little is known about them so that we had any idea what their actual and seemingly " aimless " goals actually truly are.

I am not touching upon the Orokin or Sentient's lore because we know so little about them overall. But while true that you can take a look at general universal themes, then it is very easy to see patterns in our limited capacity to create concepts foreign to ourselves but if you are being more specific, then within all general universal themes, there is a lot of room for nuanced differences.