[Spoiler] The Second Dream Open Letter, Review Of Subjective Experience: A Player Alienated

[Pizzarugi]

I'm glad we have an operator that is supposed to personify us, the player. I personally felt switching from a male to female warframe, or female to male, wasn't all that immersive. Now I have an operator that cements my gender choice and I can finally look at warframes as remote-controlled... things?

 

 

I would find that premise very interesting and i'd rewatch the film to look for subtle clues of the trickery and maybe discuss what it means in the context of the story that was given to me.

 

....

 

....

 

Another massive piece of the puzzle has been revealed, all I want to do now is look back at my previous concepts and see where they fit now and where they don't fit anymore within the rules and confines what has been shown.

 

The veil has been lifted. The door has been shown. The dream has been split.

 

 

Undertale kinda sorta did something like that as well. Something is revealed that completely changes your outlook and you go back to find clues that hinted you might (or might not) be what you think you are.

The character you play is not the character you name. Hell, I've even written hypotheses on who the character you play as really is.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Pizzarugi

[Volkovyi]

I'm glad we have an operator that is supposed to personify us, the player. I personally felt switching from a male to female warframe, or female to male, wasn't all that immersive. Now I have an operator that cements my gender choice and I can finally look at warframes as remote-controlled... things?

 

 

 

 

Undertale kinda sorta did something like that as well. Something is revealed that completely changes your outlook and you go back to find clues that hinted you might (or might not) be what you think (or don't think) you are.

The character you play is not the character you name. Hell, I've even written hypotheses on who the character you play as really is.

 

That is how it seems the two sides of this interpretation is. On one hand if you were to consider your Warframe inventory as a whole, yes it is strange how we could freely change between Warframes and their genders and we would seek and explanation for this discrepancy. However, what I wish to point out is that how I saw it, the point of my letter, is that I chose to be one single Warframe. I identify with one, my favorite, and there is no need or pressure to having more than one Warframe. That is were our investment lies.

   

In every mission, cutscene, interaction in the game,  you play as one Warframe at a time and only ever see one at a time from one player. We simply might interpret the Warframe inventory as a game mechanic that is separate from the Warframe lore. As in, this is only a mechanic present in a video game and not actually relevant in the story.

 

As for your reference to Undertale, as fine and interesting of a story twist that game is I admit, it is still a finite story experience with a beginning and end with the way you choose to play it. Yes you can replay it several times, the story unfolds differently depending on your choices, but you are a given character in that playthrough, and you can finish that story in several hours.

      I find it unfair to compare a finite experience such as Undertale to the ongoing identify of Warframe (with your own Warframes), which I have been playing for over 2~3 years and thousands of hours. That is a much larger amount of investment and subsequent shock of identity crisis from the story's reveal.

 

Warframe is named after the Warframes, they are the main characters of this game. I am quite...unhappy to say lightly that The Second Dream is forcing this new identity upon me.

 

Nonetheless thank you for commenting.

[motorfirebox]

They say "we" because there is more than one Tenno in existence and, likely, within the same mission. I think you're reading too far into it to think that "we" refers to both the Operator AND the Warframe.

 

It could go either way. We know from the Rhino Prime codex entry that Warframes definitely have some kind of life/intelligence beyond just what the operator gives them. So it's possible the operator is talking to their Warframe, especially since in practice, none of the other players can hear your transmissions.

[xRufus7x]

This outcome also kind of makes Limbo's and Mirage's deaths in their respective quest lines having less of an impact, as well as fate of valkyr/zanuka being much less dramatic as there is no hint of the consciousness of the operator not being able to leave the body without a device. Why does Lotus seem emotional about Mirage's fate in such a case?

 

The thing is we really don't have enough information yet. Throughout the game we never see a warframe being completely incinerated, ripped apart or dissected. Our Warframes don't take this sort of damage. Even the most powerful attacks leave the frames in one piece. We don't know how much the operator feels or if they can survive the complete destruction of their frame.

[motorfirebox]

The thing is we really don't have enough information yet. Throughout the game we never see a warframe being completely incinerated, ripped apart or dissected. Our Warframes don't take this sort of damage. Even the most powerful attacks leave the frames in one piece. We don't know how much the operator feels or if they can survive the complete destruction of their frame.

That's not entirely true. We've seen an Excal get dissected by Alad V, and we've seen Stalker carrying a Loki's head. And we can be fairly certain that that Loki's operator survived, because the ability of the Tenno to survive no matter how many times the Stalker kills their frames is the whole reason Stalker was talking to Hunhow in the first place.

Edited December 27, 2015 by motorfirebox