Warframe's Lore and its implications: are we all playing as the same character?

[Artekkor]

This question have been becoming bigger and bigger with each new addition to the Lore, ever since The Second Dream.

We all played the quests. We all saw and progressed through the story. But we all did it in the same way, little sifferences aside (gear and customisation).

So the question is: who are other Tenno in relation to OUR character? Is it cannon that they all been through the same thing? (waking up, fighting the queens)

How OTHER Tenno woke up, how OTHER Tenno learned to use transference and their void powers? Because they totally did, considering that we play in cooperation of 4 and can clearly see other Tenno doing the same things as we are.

What about Ordis? Is he a unique separate entity or is he a standart issue cephalon assigned to all Tenno ships in mass? Are there other cephalons?

Such questions are something i would love to clarify, for science purposes. The Answers won't change my view on the game, only will clarify some things and open the road for new food for thought.

[artemisfortune]

Basically look at it like this, from a lore standpoint, the other tenno you play as are just that, other tenno. They didn't also fight the queens or stalker or anything like that, they're just other tenno who have been awoken by the lotus and obtained their power through, well, it doesn't really matter through what, they just have.

This being an MMO, it goes probably the best conceivable route of you're the super cool guy and everyone else that you see in game isn't. Again from a lore standpoint. See what I mean?

[texrei]

You are the only one tho had this experience, there are other tenno for sure, but they have their own past. Something like this

[(PSN)auwsomestgamer]

All the tenno are the same yet different at the same time.

[Krion112]

This is actually the lore implication I don't like with conventional story-telling game-play being mixed in such persistent world games, like Warframe or the countless MMO's on the market.

Essentially, each player is treated like, for the time of the quest, they are the most important of all the major heroes/villains/whatevers (ie, the players), and that everyone else is on the backburner. And characters like Ordis being shared across all players, despite there only being one (which, doesn't apply to Lotus because unlike Ordis there is no insinuation of where she is, whereas Ordis is expressly the ship cephalon).

Ie, you're expected to suspend your disbelief, and accept for a moment that you're the only one important enough or imperative enough to do something, despite every other player experiencing the same situation at a different time, before and after you, and despite featuring a persistent world design that would suggest world progression at the pace of the community.

There is no lore implication; it exists to satiate game-play, which I might add it fails to as it does not reflect the persistent design of the rest of Warframe. Linear plot in this form does not suit the game-play we have been provided.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Krion112

[Rekkou]

5 minutes ago, Krion112 said:

-snip-

To be fair, how do you make a story where a major captain can be repeatedly killed 500000th time by more than 100000 different players? While some dude in black keeping a tab who killed who.

[Suncake]

15 minutes ago, (PS4)auwsomestgamer said:

All the tenno are the same yet different at the same time.

[Matt89Connor]

31 minutes ago, Artek94 said:

This question have been becoming bigger and bigger with each new addition to the Lore, ever since The Second Dream.

We all played the quests. We all saw and progressed through the story. But we all did it in the same way, little sifferences aside (gear and customisation).

So the question is: who are other Tenno in relation to OUR character? Is it cannon that they all been through the same thing? (waking up, fighting the queens)

How OTHER Tenno woke up, how OTHER Tenno learned to use transference and their void powers? Because they totally did, considering that we play in cooperation of 4 and can clearly see other Tenno doing the same things as we are.

What about Ordis? Is he a unique separate entity or is he a standart issue cephalon assigned to all Tenno ships in mass? Are there other cephalons?

Such questions are something i would love to clarify, for science purposes. The Answers won't change my view on the game, only will clarify some things and open the road for new food for thought.

history of 1 is the history of all, the quest is only here for thech us the past of warframe and the path of the warriors

[(PSN)T0katax]

If you are in dire need of a explanation fusing lore and gameplay of a mmo together, how about this:

During 2nd Dream, Lotus told us "another one (stalker) has found out the truth and gone mad", implying, that the truth may be too much to handle for the tenno, therefore some of our memories has been wiped.

Now, at one point in history, some unknown tenno did the things we see in the 2nd dream, tww and so on. He found out all those things. And we don't know what happened to him. Maybe he is still one of the tenno we find beside us on one of our countless missions, maybe he is the one referenced by the lotus as the one "going mad" - the stalker.

Now, Lotus has a bunch of tenno's performing missions for her, and this bunch of tennos has their memories partly wiped. She wants to reinfuse their memories, but do it in a more "gentle" way, or, in case of "learning something", it might be nececcary to let them experiance what the original one who did all this experianced. 

Now, for the experiance to function the tenno mustn't feel like they are watching a moovie, but like they are actually there, learning the things the first one, and i'll just assume its the stalker from here on, experianced. So she creates a VR for the tenno to temporarily life in, while doing the "story quests to uncover their past". The tenno don't know his body and warframe are safe aboard the orbiter, but feels like he/she is experiancing the story first hand.

Now there are some questions if you take this as granted:

Q But we play it with different warframes in different ways! 

A Think of Assassins Creed. Desmond relived the past of his ancestors through the animus, but still had some amount of influence to walk around in this past, even equiping other clothes and weapons. Consider it to be like this for the tenno

Q But how did our operators body inside the liset if 2nd dream was just vr?

A It has always been there. Noticed how the door was closed all the time, until you were in there? Think about what other thing lotus hides from us in our own ship. The bodies of all tennos were probaply recovered by other tennos once lua was revealed, and placed into a fleet of lisets, equipped with copys or the ordis cephalon. Cracked, because the lotus didn't want it to tell us everything.

Q But lua wasn't there on the starchart bevore!

A: For many tenno, it was. Lotus hid it from your startchart until 2nd dream, to not destroy the immersion

Q But we never talked about it to other tenno? Shoudn't we find out that way?

A: first of all, tenno doesn't seem to be the types to do a lot of chit-chatting. Truth is, we don't know much about their socieity. But you can assume, that showing off with their achivments and what they did isn't something common for them. Have you ever heard of "the glamerous tenno xy, who decapitated z and did a and b? No? Probaply because he shut his mouth about it. so do we.". Maybe, lotus is also enough in our heads to just prevent us from speaking about this topic.

And I'm sure there are more, but if you want to, you'll be able to answer them in your headcannon, and peacefully life everafter, assuming warframe lore and the mmo style game match 100%, no player is "the tenno", and every player is "the tenno" (at least from their memories) (Good thing this is a sci fi game, would be much harder to explain otherwise^^)

Edited November 23, 2016 by (PS4)T0katax

[Krion112]

11 hours ago, Rekkou said:

To be fair, how do you make a story where a major captain can be repeatedly killed 500000th time by more than 100000 different players? While some dude in black keeping a tab who killed who.

Actually, pretty easily. The technology in the Warframe universe already would have supported us fighting major characters over and over.

Oro is described as a force that allows an individual to be revived, likely through complete regeneration, and given the Orokin tech that Tyl Regor and Sargas Ruk have access to, I wouldn't doubt they each have the Oro to be revived after death. Vor's Janus Key was able to completely revive him, and eventually imbued him with void energy. The original Lech Kril could have been cloned an indeterminate amount of times, as his war-hero like status would have made his particular genes very appealing to be replicated, and all we've been fighting are his endless replications that he may possibly be preserved by method of Kuva. Vay Hek doesn't even die during his boss-fight; he merely flees. Similarly, Stalker doesn't die either.

For Corpus, most of their bosses are Robotic, so they can just be salvaged and rebuilt. Nef Anyo seems cowardly enough to run away, like Vay Hek. Alad V was obsessed with Warframes, and since our Warframes wield some kind of Oro due to their ability to revive, I wouldn't doubt he has Oro to be revived as well.

Finally, Infested Bosses can be killed infinitely and retain their character, due to the method of how the Infestation works. It doesn't seem like the Infested has to infect a Lancer to create a Charger; it has a blueprint for a charger, and uses similar materials to construct the same exact design. This would mean any boss can be destroyed, and can be generated elsewhere regardless of the components in those locations. Similarly, I'd suspect Alad V and Infested Alad V are two different people right now; the Infestation has a blueprint for an Infested Alad V, and rebuilds him, regardless of if it has the original in its possession or not.

The one thing they could have done is made the writing reflect this. For example, Lotus should have had lines for the first time you defeated a boss, and then a second set of lines for any subsequent run. And Stalker's justifications for attacking us should be different.

Just because persistent world story-telling is different from conventional story-telling doesn't mean it's impossible to portray. It's my one gripe about where Warframe is heading; it used to have persistent story-telling, now it's going linear, which is precisely my reason for not playing major MMO's.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Krion112

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

11 hours ago, Suncake said:

ah beat me to it xD

[Snargleflax]

to be specific on this STUPID &#! QUESTION the codex says when they returned from the void they were the god warriorS not the god warrior

[Cubewano]

It's been shown numerous times within the game that there are other operators within the warframe universe, DE just decided storyline wise instead of going to more difficult route of creating a tale that could allow for all us players to all feel linked together they would make a more singular storyline where the each player would  take the role of one character and everyone else would be seen as uninvolved. 

Would have been cool if they went that other direction though, could have made a much more interesting and well developed story. 

[Shreiko]

You forgot to ask if the slug queen whose head Teshin lopped off at my behest picked her head up after I left and put it back on just so you could command Teshin to do the same during your run.

Edited November 25, 2016 by Shreiko

[Othergrunty]

I'm under the impression we are basicly having two storylines DE puts us in.

First there is the community story. Which are spun via the events. In this one, we are basicly a "common" Tenno like everyone else. Working as faction on a single goal or for one of our chosing if the choice is given (Gradivus, Tubemen). This is also the part were you can put the most of your "personal story" for your Tenno into.

The other is a single character storyline. Which is spun via the cinematic quests. In that we are THE HERO!!!, the single most important Tenno in the entire galaxy! *Dramatic music!*

I'm actualy somewhat bothered by the second one, because it has the dumb element of being a single hero story in a game focused around community play. Though this is a rabbit hole many developers of MMOs have stepped into.

There is also the problem of time line. Since the cinematic quest are affected by things which have become status quo via the events. Which would imply the Tenno were allready active before the events of Vor's Price. But the quests make it sound like the "HERO!" was the only Tenno around to do anything.

To be honest. I'm actualy getting quite interested in wanting to know how the "common" Tenno actualy experienced the events of Second Dream and War Within. Like how does one react to the moon popping out of the Void and learning what you are without the Stalker and Sentients on your tail.

[Gwaiyn]

MAJOR SPOILERS

 

i always assumed there were two different things going on

the first is that there's THE tenno, this tenno is the one who wakes up, overpowers vor, encounters the moon, fights the queens, everything involving the quests and is pretty much the main protagonist of the entire game

and then there's the pleb tennos, the ones who go through the star chart unlocking planets, fighting bosses, doing events, basically everything not related to quests. these tenno encompass every other tenno that isn't the main protag.

The player plays both of them at the same time. when your doing quests, your THE tenno, the main protag of the game, but when your doing star charts and void relic runs and other multiplayer stuff, your just another pleb tenno to everyone else, completely unrelated to the main protag tenno, and like wise every other tenno you play with is just another pleb tenno with their own unrelated story to you.

 

lore-wise, you could probably come up with your own head-canon on how you want it all to work, maybe you ARE the main protag tenno with your almighty excalibur protag frame, or maybe your not the main protag and your just another tenno who somehow got out of the moon when it was collapsing and rediscovered your other powers without any sort of dramatic moments happening in your life

maybe your somewhere in the middle and have your own story based on your experiences and just pick and choose which events apply to you

Edited November 25, 2016 by Gwaiyn

[Blakrana]

2 hours ago, Othergrunty said:

To be honest. I'm actualy getting quite interested in wanting to know how the "common" Tenno actualy experienced the events of Second Dream and War Within. Like how does one react to the moon popping out of the Void and learning what you are without the Stalker and Sentients on your tail.

Second this sentiment. It's a pretty potent social/communal matter.

I mean...did the Tenno raid Lua enmasse due to the severe risk, or was it small splinter units filtering in whilst those either already done/waiting for the order were keeping the Grineer and Corpus away from any reservoirs; after all in War Within Lotus tells to head to a Reservoir, not the Reservoir...ergo there's many that have been reclaimed. (I may need to replay though to check I'm remembering rightly). To say nothing of the aftermath reassessment of everything either. Would be interesting if there were some effort to consolidate as many recollections of the Five Paths though, try and reclaim a vague foundation at least to start anew from perhaps.

Can't pretend I wouldn't have enjoyed some sort of 'Defence of Lua' event where the return is met by a mass Tenno effort to hold territory for as long as possible to 'save themselves'; frontliners either take the fight directly to Grineer, Corpus and Sentient raiding parties in the standard form, whilst others assault vessels, fortified locations and generally deny as much turf as possible assaulting the supply lines as it were...heck, it would have been a great way to really expand on the Five Paths and their different methodologies, though I suspect being limited to a certain 'role' based on the Focus one chose wouldn't have swam well with people. Still, it's a fun idea at least.

Alas, so long as we're not able to see that side of events, it'll likely remain a matter for fanfic to explore more than anything else.

[GrinningMary]

On 2016-11-23 at 0:10 AM, Rekkou said:

To be fair, how do you make a story where a major captain can be repeatedly killed 500000th time by more than 100000 different players? While some dude in black keeping a tab who killed who.

 

 

 

Because he's canonically, a clone, that canonically, has died a dozen times over, and has voice lines reflecting that. If you get to the point of fighting him in the old T4's, he'll eventually just start monologuing about how you killed him, but he's still alive, because of his Janus Key.

 Stalker is also obsessed with Tenno's sins, in general, and hunts them all relentlessly for things they did that they can't remember.

 

On 2016-11-23 at 0:33 AM, (PS4)T0katax said:

Q But lua wasn't there on the starchart bevore!

A: For many tenno, it was. Lotus hid it from your startchart until 2nd dream, to not destroy the immersion

 

 

 

What? Lotus explicitly stated she hid the moon. It wasn't on the star chart because it physically did not exist in observable space, for any faction, on any level. In terms of gameplay, it effectively isn't even real until you've done Second Dream, as you can't even party into it until that point.

Edited November 25, 2016 by IneffableCupidity

[Ailissa]

Warframe has MMO syndrome.

 

As far as the world lore is concerned, you are the central part of the story and everyone else is just there.

 

So, yes, we're all playing the lead character of our own stories. 

Edited November 25, 2016 by Ailissa