The De-personalization of Warframes...

[magusat999]

I was thinking about the recent plot changes - story, lore or whatever you want to call it - and I am not 100% clear on the "Lore" of Warframe in the first place. What I thought I was secure in was that each Warframe had a distinct history, a distinct set of attributes, a mark in certain parts of time and events. I thought each one was made to  address certain events in Warframe history. I thought Warframe had, most of all, individual "personalities" if you will, or at least the mystery inhabitants were each a distinct human (Tenno) with a unique personality.

But then the Second Dream comes out and dashes all that to the wall. The Warframes are just (no longer) inhabited by anyone (I guess Hayden as the first Tenno, who actually did "wear" a Warframe is just for us to forget?) Even thought even before the Operator was cognizant, or even before the point of the Warframe meeting the Operator - I could have sworn the villians and Lotus were speaking to the "Warframe" but I am now confused - the Operator was incoherent until reaching our ships - so who were they talking to??? When lotus says "Tenno" - who was she talking to? Why would she converse with a hulking machine with no brain or spirit? Why ask, beg, plead, implore - as if she is talking to the Tenno - or more accurately, a human being, if the Warframe has no human being inside? Someone clarify this because I don't see the puzzle pieces fitting together here...

I had been for a while dreaming about doing some fan-fic - but that was based on thinking the Warframe each had a story to tell. But if they are just mindless machines I don't see too many story possibilities - at least not from that angle. A fan-fic would now have to center around chair bound kiddies locked in a basement controlling war based machinery. Not that it can't be done but I thought the Warframe as the subject would have led to more interesting paths - and varied. I don't know people... what do you think? maybe someone can clear this up, tie it all together so there are no holes?

 

I want to add this video here in case some people do not know of it. Look at 6:00 to see what is inside of Excalibur. Also - notice the usage of "Tenno"? Tenno isn't some made up terminology. Tenno is the last name of Hayden TENNO. The first "Tenno" is actually the FIRST because that is his NAME! Here is the  video:

Now here is the Alpha Trailer for  Warframe...

 

If Dark Sector is canon, as DE has said (Dev 57)... then how does what happen at 6:00 in the first video fit in the current lore changes? That was Hayden Tenno - INSIDE of an Excalibur suit...
And I forget this until I re-watched the video - do you know what "Tenno" is? The LAST NAME OF HAYDEN - his NAME is Hayden TENNO, TENNO!!! So please tell me how the current "lore" fits with this? It defintitely cannot be "forgotten" with Lotus calling people "Tenno" all the time...

Edited April 6, 2016 by magusat999
More info

[Valiant]

Regarding your title and the first half of your OP I personally disagree. I found that I felt that I had a bit more of an identity with the Operator and made it actually feel a little more personal. Probably in the minority here for that as there's a crowd with pitchforks who still complain about the concept DE went for, but I admire them sticking by it regardless. Despite that, Warframe's are still 'inhabited', but just not in the literal sense.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Naith

[CicaedaV]

But DE has said (long before the second dream) that they didn't want players feeling like they were controlling individual heroes. and if you were planning on writing fan fic with your headcanon, you still can because its still fan fiction.

[AXCrusnik]

She's talking to the Operator when she speaks to the Warframe, even pre-Second Dream. It's like were in the Matrix, and the second dream quest is the red pill.

Edited April 5, 2016 by AXCrusnik

[Insizer]

Warframes are cosmic ninja puppets, remotely piloted by Tenno "operators" via an Orokin-tech mind-machine neural link. The Lotus spoke to the warframes as humans because she was talking to the Operator piloting it. The warframes are manufactured in some type of process, designed by engineers for particular purposes, like anything else. The Operator was in a stasis and forgot that they were an actual person. You want to make a fanfic, then make one around the children survivors of the Zariman, the children who would become the Tenno, the operators of the warframes.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Insizer

[RideaTear]

The lore regarding the operators has been here for a while but The Second Dream just pulled it together. If you read Embers codex entry it tells of the ship the Zariman Ten-Zero (or Ten-Oh) and the Orokin woman found a bunch of children on board that had powers (they burnt her). Then in the Rhino entry it tells the story of when the Orokin first learned that the Tenno can control the Warframes. 

[ScorpDK]

They still talk through the warframe with you - through the link that connects you with it.

Most of the villains seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the Tenno and Warframe were no longer the same entity as they were long time ago - each Warframe used to be a Tenno Warrior, until their demise. Then the replicated suits were just filled with biometals that the Tenno children could take control of.

The first to realize this truth was, of course, Alad V. He took the warframes apart and realized there was actual corpse inside, but a mess of semi-infested tissue and metal. Which is why he aided us during the Second Dream - he knew part of the truth, and he wanted to know the full story - tho he we cut off, but not before we got an equally interesting info about him as well. That being that he was called Orokin by Hunhow.

There are way more plots and storylines going on in the back than we know.

 

[SilentMobius]

17 minutes ago, magusat999 said:

I was thinking about the recent plot changes - story, lore or whatever you want to call it - and I am not 100% clear on the "Lore" of Warframe in the first place. What I thought I was secure in was that each Warframe had a distinct history, a distinct set of attributes, a mark in certain parts of time and events. I thought each one was made to  address certain events in Warframe history. I thought Warframe had, most of all, individual "personalities" if you will, or at least the mystery inhabitants were each a distinct human (Tenno) with a unique personality.

My first post on this forum in 2013 was saying "Obviously there is only one Tenno using multiple Warframes" So, personally I think anyone who thought the Warframes came with their own Tenno simply wasn't paying attention.

[Drufo]

Remember that we still don't know the nature of Warframes and what's inside them. 

[taiiat]

meh, they can be Infested, mechanical drones - i still identify with them.
i don't identify with the Operators because there's nothing to identify with. they have no personalities. the drones they control have more personality than they do.

so we can have annoying tweens in the game, as far as i'm concerned they don't exist. they don't have a place in the game anyways.

[ViLeDeth]

23 minutes ago, Naith said:

Regarding your title and the first half of your OP I personally disagree. I found that I felt that I had a bit more of an identity with the Operator and made it actually feel a little more personal. Probably in the minority here for that as there's a crowd with pitchforks who still complain about the concept DE went for, but I admire them sticking by it regardless. Despite that, Warframe's are still 'inhabited', but just not in the literal sense.

[(XBOX)Graysmog]

2 minutes ago, Drufo said:

Remember that we still don't know the nature of Warframes and what's inside them. 

We do know the reasoning behind making them, as it appears some were created to combat specific threats, Saryn being the most prominent, as evidenced by her trailer. Others were most likely created to combat the Sentients themselves.

Do we know what is exactly inside of the Warframe? Technically, no, but all evidence suggests our Warframe's being filled with either a Surrogate Body, Infested Tissue, or a mix of both, yet I personally believe both is the most probable.
 

If you're talking about their nature in terms of whether their simply empty shells or sentient in some way, that completely up for debate. I'm still leaning on them having a connection to the Operator for so long that they gained an imprint of them (as our Tenno constantly say "we"), yet again, that's just my personal opinion.

[Heatnix.]

I feel almost the same way as OP on this one. A lot of people say "there were hints before", but there's also parts of the story/stories that contradict this and make everything that happened before meaningless at the same time.

A Tenno used to be a space, ninja warrior. Now it's a human battery with no skills or able to fight his/her own fights. Warframes (the version of space Batman) reduced to meat puppets. There were codes for the Tenno and rules and what not, does any of that matter anymore when the concept as to what people saw the Tenno as is fake?

I just feel like DE thinks they did a good move and are proud (very cliche, actually) and the forums love to defend their every decision. But when you think about it... it just feels lame and cliche and reduces the importance and consequences of the game by huge amounts. So pointless. So empty.

[RideaTear]

18 minutes ago, Drufo said:

Remember that we still don't know the nature of Warframes and what's inside them. 

We kind of have clues to the nature of the Warframes. Going back to the Rhino entry we can see that the Orokin scientist released the Warframe that was being experimented on. The uncontrolled Warframe (presumably Rhino) began slaughtering everything. Then that's when the Tenno took control of Rhino out of self preservation. Whether the slaughter was out of revenge or just primal instinct is unknown though. I'd like to think it was out of revenge since they mention the scientists mercilessly experimenting on him and many Warframes like him. They might be able to actually think for themselves or they may just be mindless infested like beings.

Edited April 5, 2016 by RideaTear

[Kaotyke]

6 minutes ago, ScorpDK said:

They still talk through the warframe with you - through the link that connects you with it.

Most of the villains seemed to be oblivious to the fact that the Tenno and Warframe were no longer the same entity as they were long time ago - each Warframe used to be a Tenno Warrior, until their demise. Then the replicated suits were just filled with biometals that the Tenno children could take control of.

The first to realize this truth was, of course, Alad V. He took the warframes apart and realized there was actual corpse inside, but a mess of semi-infested tissue and metal. Which is why he aided us during the Second Dream - he knew part of the truth, and he wanted to know the full story - tho he we cut off, but not before we got an equally interesting info about him as well. That being that he was called Orokin by Hunhow.

There are way more plots and storylines going on in the back than we know.

 

.... No. You got it all wrong.

Transference existed since the Orokin invented it, we were never inside the Warframes to begin with. In the Rhino Prime Codex we see the first time a Warframe gets near a Tenno, because Davis said "No one would believe me" as in "No one believed my theory that the Zariman children could control the Warframes".

What is possible is that the Tenno during the Old War were only permited the use of 1 Warframe only. And what happens when Zanuka captures you and you have only 1 frame? You cant do anything else but do the Escape mission, you cant escape to another Warframe, you mind is trapped inside that Warframe and you will feel everything it does.

Alad V saw what was inside the Warframes and he said that it didnt make sense. He didnt find how the Warframes could use their powers, what he found was a Bio-Suit and no source of Void energy. He knows the Moon had something to do with it, but nothing else.

The Corpus are descendants of the Orokin, so in Hunhow's eyes: Human = Orokin.

 

[Plushy]

I think part of your confusion comes from Dark Sector which, we should all be well aware of by now, is not canon to Warframe. As far as we know, the frames never had people in them. It may be that the original frames (possibly even before the primes) had people inside them and when the Tenno came around the prime frames were mass produced based on the originals but without someone inside them of course. It would make sense at least with the Limbo and Mirage lore (only if Lotus was around for that long though).

All we really have is theories. There's not a lot we can be sure of or even rightfully begin to guess at. All your "I thoughts" never had enough evidence to support them to begin with. You might still be right but now you know not to be secure in assumptions until you have something solid to back it up. Everything that points to warframes having personality might just be DE trying to make each unique instead of all of them having the same base colors and stances. THATS boring. Some things are just to make the game more fun, not to take out of context and make them center pieces in your own lore fantasies. 

Edited April 5, 2016 by Plushy

[Omnimorph]

1 hour ago, magusat999 said:

I was thinking about the recent plot changes - story, lore or whatever you want to call it - and I am not 100% clear on the "Lore" of Warframe in the first place. What I thought I was secure in was that each Warframe had a distinct history, a distinct set of attributes, a mark in certain parts of time and events. I thought each one was made to  address certain events in Warframe history. I thought Warframe had, most of all, individual "personalities" if you will, or at least the mystery inhabitants were each a distinct human (Tenno) with a unique personality.

But then the Second Dream comes out and dashes all that to the wall. The Warframes are just (no longer) inhabited by anyone (I guess Hayden as the first Tenno, who actually did "wear" a Warframe is just for us to forget?) Even thought even before the Operator was cognizant, or even before the point of the Warframe meeting the Operator - I could have sworn the villians and Lotus were speaking to the "Warframe" but I am now confused - the Operator was incoherent until reaching our ships - so who were they talking to??? When lotus says "Tenno" - who was she talking to? Why would she converse with a hulking machine with no brain or spirit? Why ask, beg, plead, implore - as if she is talking to the Tenno - or more accurately, a human being, if the Warframe has no human being inside? Someone clarify this because I don't see the puzzle pieces fitting together here...

I had been for a while dreaming about doing some fan-fic - but that was based on thinking the Warframe each had a story to tell. But if they are just mindless machines I don't see too many story possibilities - at least not from that angle. A fan-fic would now have to center around chair bound kiddies locked in a basement controlling war based machinery. Not that it can't be done but I thought the Warframe as the subject would have led to more interesting paths - and varied. I don't know people... what do you think? maybe someone can clear this up, tie it all together so there are no holes?

I think you're fundamentally misunderstanding the lore, there are no confusions, it's quite consistent.  It's just that it's still not quite complete yet.

The Warframes are very definitely "inhabited" by the Tenno, only not physically, rather Avatar-style (the movie - there's also an anime called Evangelion that has a similar idea).  That's the idea of the somatic link.  The Warframes also remotely receive and "channel" the Tenno's Void power into a "themed" form.

IOW, while controlling the Warframe, the Tenno is physically "sleeping" in their original body and feels ("dreams") like they are, or are "in", the Warframe, just like Jake Sully in Avatar is physically "sleeping" in his original body and feels like he is his Na'avi avatar.  The link is far more intimate than, say, controlling an avatar in a contemporary videogame, or controlling a drone with an iPad or something like that. 

The Tenno is seeing and feeling the world through the Warframe's sensors (visual, touch, proprioception, etc.), and the Tenno's point of view is from within the Warframe.  The Warframe is made of future materials (plastic-like, metal-like, computer-like, but also with some kind of organic component too).

The only unresolved bit of lore is just how much relative independence or sentience the Warframe itself has.  Is it a bit like Bran warging Hodor in Game of Thrones (i.e. does the Warframe has some kind of rudimentary sentience and loyalty of its own)? Is it half-way, like Jake Sully in Avatar piloting an organic construct who's brain is simply "blank" until Jake Sully's mind is in it (although perhaps it could develop a mind of its own if it were allowed to), or is the Warframe totally insentient (i.e. merely plastics, metal, and some organic components)?  The lore so far is a bit ambiguous (even the War-breaking scene is kind of ambiguous - the War-breaking could be a last-ditch remote control of the Warframe by the Tenno, or it could be the Warframe's rudimentary intelligence and sense of loyalty to its "rider").

So when the Lotus says "dream not of what you are, but of what you want to be", the idea is that the Warframes were a bit analogous to ideal "superheroes" that each of the Tenno had dreamed up (bearing in mind that when it all started they were still young).  So each Warframe design is imbued with the sort of romantic vision of the original Tenno who first designed and "wore" it (or perhaps they were designed by the Orokin for the Tenno, based on their specifications and ideals), and then later they become more mass produced and generic. Or something like that - again it's not quite clear yet, but it seems that while the Warframes have the psychological imprint and design of the original Tenno who "designed" them, ultimately any Tenno can pilot any Warframe, and the Warframe shapes the raw Void power (which the Operator has per. se.) into the more "themed" power manifest in the frames.  It's a bit like "hoover" originally being the name of one manufacturer of vacuum cleaners, but eventually becoming the generic name of vacuum cleaners in general: e.g. Nova was originally one particular Tenno's vision of an ideal Warframe that channelled Void power in a particular, cool way that suited them, and in a sense Nova (Nova Prime) was the Tenno.  But then later, that type of Warframe gets called "Nova" regardless of which Tenno is piloting it.

Re. the way the people in the lore-world view the Warframes: only the Lotus (and now the Tenno themselves) knows the real (Avatar-like) situation, most of the people in the lore-world don't (though one or two of the people who have experimenting with Warframes have had their suspicions) - they are still under the impression that the Tenno is the Warframe, that there's something physical inside the Warframe, or that the Warframe is a monstrous creature they call a "Tenno".  They have no idea that the Tenno is the Operator, asleep in another physical location entirely, in a pod (now the pod on the ship), teleoperating and remotely "living" in the Warframe. Up until the Lotus' revelations, the Tenno didn't know either (i.e. they didn't know that they were really old/young organic beings, formerly Orokin children, "asleep" in their pods and "dreaming" that they were, or were in, their Warframes).  (During the Old War, of course, they probably knew the situation, it seems, but since the re-awakening in contemporary times, the Lotus kept the knowledge hidden from them until the revelations.)

Edited April 5, 2016 by Omnimorph

[Misgenesis]

Each Warframe does have a story to tell. I dont know where you pulled that from, just look at Inaros, he was worshipped.

Obviously they dont have stories for all frames currently but thats only because theyve only recently started implementing them.

Edited April 5, 2016 by Misgenesis

[TrinityPrime]

Can confirm, Warframes are actually powersuits.

[Urlan]

I think that is pretty close to it Omnimorph, but I don't think its the Tenno that the warframes are initially having an ijmprint of per say, and I don't think the warframes were made by the Tenno initially. The warframes are probably made similar to the Proto Rhino, take test subject human and then infect them with Technocyte and then shape the resulting infested into the shape and having the infested mutations you want and then instead of letting them escape and kill their way around a lab chasing you; remove the resulting infested creature's mentality and non-essential organs so that they can't have a will of their own. Lastly, make blueprints of the lobotomized result and craft copy organisms from foundries setup to use technocyte to craft duplicates from supplied blueprints. After this a Tenno can be used to remote control the warframe and use it as a surrogate. Its possible however that void imprints might contaminate the infested organism shaping it to a repeated or long term host, as might have been the case with our current Valkyr, Limbo, and Mirage and be picked up on tertiary blueprints. This could also logically explain the method by which the War is broken.

[(PSN)MoRockaPDX]

Others have explained how it works, but I will give it a crack.

The disconnect your experiencing is that the Warframes are suits worn buy surrogates.

What the surrogates are is still a bit of a mystery, but the Rhino codex entry may provide some clues. Hayden may or may not be part of Warframe's canon.

DE only has said that Dark Sector was something like 3/5 canon. Excalibur is said to be the first Warframe, though.

The Tenno have void powers thanks to their exposure to the void, or maybe there is more to it, but thats what it looks like. They where on a ship sent to the void and came back unable to control the power. 

Margulis put them in the second dream to control the power, and in the course of doing this they found out they can control and exert their power through conduits, aka the surrogates. 

So, Warframes get developed and they go to war. Here things get sketchy as some assume that the primes where made first, but I think it is the other way around. Primes are what cam when the Orokin executors took over the program and sent the Tenno, with the neural collars, to commit genocide on the sentients. But, I don't know. 

However, if I am right then there is room for there to be stories of how each Tenno developed their Warframe.

[KYVampire]

Because the actual "Operator" is supposed to be the character who is representative of the player, I feel as if I project more onto that character than the warframe. In a way, the method Warframe uses to place the player into the world is very reminiscent of the 2 most common methods games use to place players into their setting. 

1. You play as a character. Games such as TF2, Borderlands and the upcoming Overwatch give you characters with distinct personalities who you control. In some cases these are fully fleshed out characters who have their own quirks. Alot of JRPGs such as Final Fantasy also use this model. The Warframes are very much like separate characters who we use to play our missions. I like to think they get their little quirks from the original Tenno who piloted the originals during the Old War and those quirks got imprinted into these mass produced models we use now. 

2. YOU are the character. The main character is faceless or is meant to be a representation of YOU. Games such as Bethesda's Fallout and Skyrim (to a lesser extent Halo) go by this model where they give you a character customization screen and you create your own representation in the game. Like I said before, the Operator is a representation of the player (hell they give you a character customization screen).

Personally i just find it interesting how there's this identity crisis going on with us Tenno and I really hope DE puts some of that into the upcoming story. The Operators currently need more interactions and whatnot in order to help them be more grounded in the universe, but it works well as a story element despite its slightly clichéd approach.

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, magusat999 said:

(I guess Hayden as the first Tenno, who actually did "wear" a Warframe is just for us to forget?)

Hayden died long before the Orokin Empire existed; as such he is not the first Tenno. The first Tenno just found Hayden's glaive and used it himself

[Serafim_94]

Since Inaros plotline continued to push the idea of specific personality behind warframe, it does look like each Tenno during Orokin era was allowed to use only 1 frame, and identified himself with it. Guess that's why Limbo and Mirage "died" - lost their warframes and any ways of communication with the world, effectively going into coma.

[Genitive]

4 minutes ago, KYVampire said:

2. YOU are the character. The main character is faceless or is meant to be a representation of YOU. Games such as Bethesda's Fallout and Skyrim (to a lesser extent Halo) go by this model where they give you a character customization screen and you create your own representation in the game. Like I said before, the Operator is a representation of the player (hell they give you a character customization screen).

And this is precisely the reason why operators do not have personalities. We are supposed to project ourselves onto them. True, it is difficult with the current customization options and some poor lines, but still. I'm personally more comfortable with mute protagonists.

 

1 hour ago, magusat999 said:

(I guess Hayden as the first Tenno, who actually did "wear" a Warframe is just for us to forget?)

Yes.