My take on sacrifice

[Cortanis]

Let's start with the get go and obvious issues. The bad as it were...

Starting with getting bum rushed by ghouls before we're even out of the gate makes for a rather unpleasant initial experience. Literally as I was still loading in and textures were loading, I started to come under fire and the bum rush of ghouls. Maybe I don't know, set a gated are for where they'll even start spawning in about the same manner as Vay Hek's dialog begins for his boss fight?

Starting out the quest with the then unknown Natah reducing Umbra to dust was rather an interesting choice and more on that point at the end of this....

The real ugly part starts with the acquisition and selection of Umbra after you make him and he bails on us. I'm told now that being able to select anything to do with him is a bug, but if the equip point is where this really comes into play to cause the bugs related too him in inventory, then maybe don't put the equip part in at that point at all and have the trigger be at the claim point of making him? I think the scene would play out with more sense if that was the case and doubly so given that the camera at the arsenal area is apparently the Tenno sitting there in a physical form. Maybe at that point it would have been better if Umbra had actually snatched us out of the already equipped frame?

Now let's talk about the actual fights with pokeUmbra as well. Like many have said before and I can only imagine will continue so scream into the wind, stop with the mandatory operator fights. Besides the fact that they're not really geared to mesh with the rest of the game, Umbra I have to take particular issue with in that he can apparently see through void mode and even hit/stun lock you in void mode or even mid void dash. Those are literally the only two things that we have defensive in operator mode and they're removed as any kind of defense. This is particularly an issue in the third fight when you can't just get tossed back into your frame and have to go through a really badly done loading/respawning screen. I apparently fared better than a lot of people with only three deaths to get the win, but then again I have a particularly noted understanding about the AI and it's tracking that basically allowed me to cheese it. Others on the other hand... I've seen some people take a good dozen or more deaths to do it. It's honestly just bad design and mechanics starting all the way down to the focus trees and basic stats.

Now let's talk about the good here...

The story, despite being aggravatingly short, was particularly great. Not surprising really, but great. We all should have known and seen coming a mile away that Lotus was going to have to depart her role and return to being Natah, but I expected that to come a bit later in all honesty. Her teaming up with Ballas I'm greatly on the fence about for a number of reasons that the community seems to be missing some lore points on. I do find it a bit miffing that we can't access Ballas's recording after we've basically been handed the encyclopedia and how to make a warframe as well. Maybe that might come into play with the kingpin system?

Now let's look at some of the ugly that I really have to focus in as the writing.

Let's start with the one of the things that I seem to be at odds with the over all community about... Everyone assumes that Natah attacked us at the end, but I had to take that as a warning shot to force us back for her departure. If she really had wanted us dead, she could have reduced us to multiple piles of dust and fragments the way she did Umbra. This should have been made clearer what the intention was or was this intentionally left as more of a grey area given the ending?

Killing Ballas... yeah, the community seems to have missed a particular point in regards to the lore on the Orokin as per failing a Kuva mission and Ordis's memory fragments. Killing an Orokin isn't exactly a permanent state as they have the nasty habit of resurrecting themselves. This could have been made clearer in the end scene and I would suggest an edit to the scene to make it more clear on that point and why Natah took his body.

The far more nuanced part of this that people seem to have missed or the fact that DE ether intentionally made a grey area or I'm totally missing on is Natah's departure. I have to note for everyone here as a disclaimer that their was no mention of returning to her FATHER. She specifically described a deplorable and desperate state her MOTHER was put in and left in. She specifically stated she was going to her mother and not the father that she has had open hate and fear for. The connotations of this are quite interesting as it implies that their are in fact Sentient factions and their own civil war of sorts. We saw from the second dream that Lotus wasn't exactly bound to her pod to begin with and Ballas's speech about being enslaved and imprisoned when they departed wasn't necessarily related to the pod. Given the end of this mission, I suspect Ballas was in fact speaking about her father as the ruling with an iron fist dictator over the Sentients.

Granted, I could be wrong about these story points, but this is what the feedback is for. The problem I see here is that story wise we really only have one thing and area that we have to progress to. Something that DE has said that they didn't want to do anyway before. We would be progressing to outside of the solar system and to a new solar system to actually engage the Sentient threat. Regardless of where we go from here, it does seem that this is the beginning of resuming the Sentient and Orokin war with the added aggravation that the Orokin players seem to be in hiding where as we know who the Sentient players are so far. So when are we going to see that Sentient carrier unit in action Steve? Hmmmmmmm?