My take on the Tenno

[Mimolette]

I just err, wanna throw in there that your complaint made me laugh hahaha (not in a bad way, it's just you had a certain poetic edge to it).

Though I do have to agree with the majority of you here about their personalities and attitudes. Though some of the things we say in missions can be considered to be just as stupid as what goes on in some region chats, the latter isn't corny, at least...or snot-nosed.

Okay fine, I take that back.

[KirukaChan]

It'd be cool if we could put helmets on our Tenno. Or maybe even masks. Grineer mask, perhaps?

[Zookes]

I'm not a fan of this terribly immature teenage chatterbox being the central focus of my journey through Warframe, so I'm glad for the mute option.
If I had some means to be rid of it entirely, I'd be happier, but this is fine for now.

Suggestion for future update: option to transform the Tenno into a Grineer Roller.

[MillbrookWest]

3 hours ago, CY13ERPUNK said:

one of the first things i did after the 2nd dream was turn off the incredibly stupid/awful 'operator chat' nonsense

of all the things that WF needs/needed it did NOT need some supposedly HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD WARRIOR CULTURE TENNO telling me that: 'my warframe is strong' ... orly? srsly? that's what hundreds of years being an honor-bound warrior trained to perfection have taught you? being in cryosleep for centuries and these are your pearls of wisdom?

IMHO DE needs to fire at least 50% of their writers, or just assign them to other tasks, becuz I dont play WF to experience this kind of Michael Bay-esque writing, why cant we leave the awful/terrible writing to the awful/terrible movie/tv industry, plz dont drag down our games with this idiocy

check out these awesome one-liners :

• Keep talking... we're still trying to figure out how dumb you are. - vs bosses

• They'll have plenty of Robotics. Corpus never fight for themselves. - ironic since we fight tons of crewmen
• You'd think they'd clone something a little less... ugly? - vs grineer, so my 'honorable' hundreds of years old tenno, care about how the grineer look? is this freaking Seventeen magazine? Cosmo? Keeping up with the Kardashians? FFS

as far as i can tell, every single line from the operators is designed with one purpose in mind, to pander to the immature power-fetish mind, its like the 'everyman' concept, so the tenno talks to each player as though they are just like you, they like stuff too, just like you, dont u think the grineer are UGLY? oh yeah? hey me too! YAY! [VOMIT/BARF]

I agree with this post, the dialogue from the operators are horrible. There is this particular line that they speak and it always causes me to sigh.

Regarding the OP, i don't particularly mind the Operators. It's science fiction, so im not too fussed. Wouldn't have been too fussed either if the Operators were Infested Chargers or something. 

 

[Gilmaesh]

3 hours ago, CY13ERPUNK said:

one of the first things i did after the 2nd dream was turn off the incredibly stupid/awful 'operator chat' nonsense

yep, i did that aswell, now  it's just that thing at the back of the ship where i choose focus, i tend to forget it. I wouldn't mind having an option to manage focus at the arsenal so i could bypass this.

Those one liners remind me of those commercials about kid playing with action figures. take that, you're ugly, maximum power, pew pew pew

That's what tennos are, kids playing with action figure warframes.

[Teloch]

6 hours ago, Zookes said:

Suggestion for future update: option to transform the Tenno into a Grineer Roller.

Imagine rhino and chroma playing football with a bent, blabbering and weeping teeno as improvised 'ball'

Edited March 15, 2016 by Teloch

[phoenix1992]

Issues with the "Tenno": 

a) They popped up and demand. "My warframe, my fight". Sorry but this is not the case - me as a player have done this and fought that, do not push backseat driver shenanigans.
b) It makes the story of Limbo, Mirage and Chroma straight up meaningless. Even Inaros is not so noble - oh we broke the toy, let's just leave it in the sand.
c) They don't have actual personality - They are not edgy teens, they try to act like that.  I do not mind having them wake up and grow again, or acting like a child that has seen so much.  I would expect something... nihilistic?
d) It both elevates and downgrades the stalker. He went mad, when he understood the "Truth", yet he still hunts for puppets. 

Things that are not issues :

a) You are capable of not giving a damn about them. 
b) You can mute them.
c) They are not receiving spotlight.
d) Even if they are not muted and so on, they are so hilariously bad, that it makes me laugh. 

[ZodiacShinryu]

1 hour ago, Teloch said:

Examples? I have some:
Case #1
Boar Prime codex: One of the finest examples of Tenno craftsmanship, the Boar Prime offers a higher rate of fire and clip size with a slight decrease in per-shot damage .
It takes an industry and considerable engineering capacities to manufacture weapons... Did these kids somehow manage to produce a number of weapon lines? How so?

Case #2 (partially explained)
There is such term as "unit's area of control"; If the number of tenno was limited to a thousaind or few of Zariman originals(c), Sentients would've just wipe out the Orokin heartland while avoiding confrontation with dangerous enemies. Even ten thousaind of elite soldiers may not be enough for a local conflict, not speaking about some interstellar full-scale war. 

  Reveal hidden contents

During the latest quest, however, we've been told of how Orokin extended Tenno numbers, which also hints at the technically possible way to convert people into tenno.

Case #3
Those so-called "tenno ways" (aka space Wu-Xing). Same as case #1: how can a school of thought be created from a scratch by a breed of individuals that have never met their maturity? Well, their "ways" may be just a war propaganda or enforced ideology, but that is not how they depicted in game.

Case #4
Limbo Theorem and Hidden Messages quests. Well, they were introduced back at the times when there was no solid lore, and now those quests are simply illogical. A "dead" frame? Pfft! Just manufacture another one and you're good to go. Period.
 

1.) As a Prime it was also made within orokin guidelines and probably even funding. People say that the Tenno were just mere weapons but I believe that they had a bit more autonomy than most would think (at the very least the Tenno were lead to believe they had a certain level of freedom). At least enough to build their own micro-culture within the orokin. We also don't know how the children of Zariman age, if they even do any more. We need a lot of timeline data.

2.) Based on the quests, the Sentients all but won the war with Natah but they themselves were betrayed. Yes the original number of Tenno is finite and war can be a game of numbers but the Tenno per unit were more powerful than <insert some number> of Sentient units. We know actually very little about the whole war and how it was fought. As far as Orokin extending Tenno numbers could simply mean that they put more children through the same treatment as the Tenno rather than converting adults.  The Ember Codex entry suggests that higher ups in the Orokin may have planned the Zariman incident through putting the children there in the first place and tampering and did it in secret. We still know next to nothing about the Tenno and why the void reacted in this way. Does it only affect children? Where did the adults on the ship go?

3.) Again we don't know how the Tenno age. They may not physically age but you can still mature mentally. But again still little insight to the integration of the Tenno and the orokin.  These schools could've been lead by sympathizers of the Tenno as ways to cope with what is probably a variety of power release variations or be as simple as branches of a military force.

4.) As far as our story goes there's a period of time where we wake up and know nothing at this point the frame is our body. Until the second dream it was easier to think of each frame as a separate being, switching was more a gameplay mechanic than a physical event.  That said the link to the Warframe is meant to be deep. There is a real possibility that in the event of the death of an operated frame could psychologically damage the operator or put them through shock into a coma. It might not be as simple as just getting a new frame. Failures in our missions are just game mechanics we aren't building new frames every time we die.  After all our own bodies are for the most part avatars of our brains. You damage part of your body and it doesn't hurt simply because its damaged; it hurts because your brain is telling you that it is (technically it doesn't even have to send signals to the brain for your brain to do this nor does the brain have to respond with pain). Look up Phantom/Ghost Pains, where people feel pain in areas they no longer have.

 

Now as far as the OP goes, I'm ok with the Tenno Operator and I overall loved the Second Dream. Yes the Operators need work (like everything else in the game) but things come in time. I can agree that the Operator lines are... bland, far from even the minimalist of expectations. But as far as now who do you resonate with more the Operator or the Warframe is pure choice.  You can still view yourself as the Warframe as there is actually a handful of evidence that suggests that the Warframes are living and may even possess some small amount of sentience. It is also curious that the Operator seems like they talk TO the Warframe a lot rather than referring to it as themselves, perhaps it has to do with splitting the dream. And as such the story is still ongoing there is a lot still to learn about the world, the Tenno, and most importantly the Warframes.

[Xhos]

Dunno if it's been said before, but I'd rather they make the operator faces choices "a little less ugly?". I'm really hoping for better looking faces.

[88th_Phantom]

I think it's really odd to fixate over the space kids like this.

posts above me have mentioned about the Tenno ways, Tenno craftsmanship etc. as schools of productive activity somehow above these 18-20 year old kids. we're acting like the Tenno had no means of regulation and teachings, when really to be more precise you're talking about the Tenno Operatives , that is to say it's highly likely that these space kids had (at the bare minimum) a school of mentors in philosophy, combat, service and so on that followed similar supportive roles to the children's development as Margulis and Ballas did. Look at characters such as Teshin - he represents a part of Tenno teachings in peer-to-peer combat, forever lamenting the operatives 'losing their ways' as study and practice has fallen by the way side in aid of the Lotus' initiative.

Tenno is a prefix for the society responsible for training and honing the skills of the operatives to use warframes and whilst that does include the Operatives as part of that society - it's name derived like a form of portmanteau  from the craft the anomaly was conceived - it is not  exclusive to them. Just because not many of the figures responsible for helping are physically present anymore or even currently, does not mean that they weren't a factor of their progress.

I said it once and I'll say it again. The significance of the operatives is more than just an attention grabber for 'wow factor'.

 

[Teloch]

14 minutes ago, ZodiacShinryu said:

snip

I do agree on the whole "too little information" argument, but considering their current speech lines... yeah, they don't seem to be ageless warriors with much more older mentality. 

Edited March 15, 2016 by Teloch

[SilentCircle]

1 hour ago, CY13ERPUNK said:

IMO DE has chosen to pander to what they perceive as their LCD audience [lowest common denominator], most likely for $$$ reasons, and that is sad to sell out the beauty of a potentially unique story/universe ;

The LCD would be a tough space marine type character, that you find in virtually every other game of this genre. It's pretty much the opposite of what we got.

[Rebellis]

14 hours ago, TectonicKnight said:

But the revelation of what I've really been playing as, what the Tenno really are, can only be described as awful, if not under-cooked.

110% agree. 1600+ hour vet here.

Took a break from the game in Oct/Nov, recently started playing again, and just completed the Second Dream quest yesterday.

I just want to erase that whole experience from my memory.

The Stalker. He looked bad-a$$, and at least showed signs of having a real conscience.

Me? I'm a puppet for some puny weird looking teenager with major personal issues.

Srsly? That is what I have to look at and listen to from now on?

Could not have ****ed it up more, IMO.

Edited March 15, 2016 by Rebellis

[asop73]

The only reason you need to interact with the kid is when you adjust your focus. For the rest of the time, you really ARE that 'badass ninja' that you play.

If you decide that the kid is not a part of Warframe, then bam, he or she isn't. Warframe is about YOU, you're writing the story of Warframe as you play. So write it. Maybe you rescued that kid from the Grineer, and you're delivering him or her to their parents on Earth - and you just haven't got round to doing it yet. Maybe the kid is an integral part of the ship and powers it, and he or she met you on Saturn, entered into a contract with you to help clean the galaxy of bad guys.

Like most games, the story is malleable, it doesn't have to be set in stone or not added to by the players. You can inject your own rules and lore. Let your imagination add to your Warframe experience. If there's a story element you dislike, change it. The way it is right now, the kid has little impact on the game, so go for it.

I was disappointed by the reveal too. Jaden Smith being told by mommy Lotus what a big brave boy they are. That.. uhh... that doesn't work for me. So I removed it entirely, and now it doesn't exist anymore.

Edited March 15, 2016 by asop73

[StonedMakak]

I'm in the same boat as you OP, though "embarrassed" is a bit too strong. I just find it silly, especially when people talk about how it was hinted at in the codex entries, as if it was definitive to the discussion. Foreshadowing doesn't make it automatically good. It's just a writing tool. Also, like it was already wisely stated, this obviously panders to the age-old trope of kids with superpowers saving the world. Not to mention that a human avatar opens up another revenue for monetizing cosmetics (the friggin' loading screen can be pimped out with plat, Operators will follow suit). Would be a lot harder to monetize goo. Then again you could make some sort of humanoid, Void wraith and it would make good business also. So, my bet is that recent young adult fad was the deciding factor, which is sad.

Also there is one thing that bugs me about Stalker's codex entry. Not that it directly contradicts lore, but it doesn't make sense logically. That ceremony to honour the Tenno - why were warframes even there? When you decorate war heroes, you don't decorate tanks or rifles, but the soldiers. This means that Tenno had to be somewhere in their little tubes, actively in control. Why not pull the plug when they go ballistic? Seriously, after the fiasco with Sentients, no one thought to place a killswitch in Transference technology, which is perfect for that sort of thing? Any lore specialist can shed some light on this? I'm genuinely curious if this shenanigans is explained somehow.   

[Sorkheff]

I'm hoping that due to being in stasis so long, and potentially being some sort of ticking void bomb, we will at some point be forced to transfer to another vessel.

Avatar Style. (And I thought Avatar was a terrible movie)

This is my hope that we won't be children forever but will infact inhabit our Warframes as our child-life starts to end.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Yeah, it starts off as a teenager creepily sitting in the back of the ship. But, right off the top of my head I can see some QOL changes trickling down into this component of the game.

1. New facial animations, story cutscenes. Better character renders and creation sliders being added. New hair styles.

2. New voice actors being added. New dialogue. Story Lore being flushed out. And then there's the big stretch on what might happen....

3. Eventually adult models being created. This one is where I see De just turning Warframe on its head. Male and female models created. New Warframes will use a built in focus system while now the Tenno are actually wearing the suits. Modding scrapped for focus trees prior suits upgraded with more human like skins. Say like how the Banshee's new skin is far more humanoid than the original design.  

This is all just conjecture. I have no idea what De will do with these kids. But there are avenues for De to explore and improve upon. I can't see them not sitting down and saying where does this go three years from now to avoid stagnation. 

You can almost see De pondering scrapping Archwing for the Landing Craft. The new designs are far more combative looking with moving parts and character, so it's easy to see them taking on a more active role in space combat nodes since Archwing hasn't caught on with the community's imagination. In time I can see De improving upon the Operator in the same fashion. 

[S0V3REiGN]

I too feel disconnected from my Tenno, I am not a damn teenager. He also says a lot of dialog that for one is the opposite of what I think which drives the disconnect even further. Now, it doesn't bother me as much as it does the OP, I sort of just ignore the fact that he is there. I think that whomever came up with the idea watches too much Japanese anime where every single mech is piloted by some 12 year old and thought it was a good idea to do the same. Either way, I just ignore it and move on with my missions and at this point I don't think I want to find out what is actually inside the suit itself as I know it will also disappoint me.

[Rebellis]

9 minutes ago, tisdfogg said:

So, my bet is that recent young adult fad was the deciding factor, which is sad.

Which is also very typical in the gaming business.

Skip the effort to make it "good" and just go straight to your target audience - parents money.

[Fast_98]

Aren't you guys being a bit too serious? De has said that they are going to to make the the tenno more flushed out in the future. 

Edited March 15, 2016 by Fast_98

[BornWithTeeth]

My only issue with the Operators is the dialogue. They need to sound approximately 500% more space-samurai. More falling cherry blossom metaphors and sober reflection on their sad duty to slaughter hundreds of upstart Grineer. Yes indeed. DE pls. 

 

pls

 

 

 

 

Teshin may be a complete pillock, but the Operators should probably speak more like he does.

 

 

Also, complete agreement with @SilentCircle above. The actual cheap and easy option would have been for the Tenno to be revealed as gritty spess mehreens. Making them surprisingly vulnerable and physically underdeveloped was by far the braver and more interesting narrative decision.

[Blades_In_The_Dark]

I immediately thought of child soldiers throughout history (creepy Hilter Youth, Spartan children taught to kill at an early age). While I admit, being a space brat wasn't all that interesting go me after the shock value wore off, the sky tot got put back into a coma pretty quickly once I learned I could toggle her off. Though it's still jarring every time an Astral bodied preteen pops out of my frame

[Misgenesis]

These threads are always a joy to read. I love that theyre teens, it goes against 99% of other games and other forms of media even.

Id rather they look like ''hipster teenagers'' or ''edgy kids'' (lol) than be the usual generic tough white guy (Witcher, Bshock, cawadoody, AC and many more) that saves the world.

 

[BornWithTeeth]

Seriously, I'd like to have a Tenno wearing a silk blindfold who speaks softly in haiku*.

 

"Empty seeds scatter

Borne on cold wind of the Void.

Life swept from steel shells."

 

(Translation: "I am about to kill an entire truckload of Grineer.")

 

* Haiku:

"First five syllables,

Then seven must be spoken.

Nature reference."

[Genitive]

11 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

They need to sound approximately 500% more space-samurai. More falling cherry blossom metaphors and sober reflection on their sad duty to slaughter hundreds of upstart Grineer. Yes indeed. DE pls. 

Tenno need to speak in haiku!

 

I think to myself

The Grineer are so ugly

Like a dead kubrow