Warframe as a Veeky Forums setting

Because then you have to come up with a way to explain how the same human can jump from fitting in a rhino to fitting in a nekros.

It's fun as fuck, but I don't know how you'd play it. Half the game would be mowing down small armies of mooks, the other half would be meditating in your dropships, occasionally building stuff. All the while mystic stuff is happening.

Best way I can think of is to use the setting, but not use Tenno. You can play as Grineer, Corpus, Consortium and maybe Lotus monk.
Either surviving in a mad solar system, doing pseudo-shadowruns on bases or ships while trying to avoid the attention of factions that can crush you without noticing. Maybe doing some Rogue Tradery bollocks as you sail about space and void gathering loot and maybe orokin tech if it doesn't indoctrinate you.
And making DOUBLE sure you don't get on the bad side of those insane archeotech biotech ninja samurai assassins with angel wings made of spaceship guns. You might as well piss off a force of nature.

There are no aliens in warframe.
The closest thing to aliens are these fuckers, and they are heavily implied to be the creations of the Orrokin, the super advanced humans that also created the Grineer, the Warframes, and the Technocyte plague.

The basic gist of the setting is this:

Far of future humans, called the Orrokin, are massive dicks, create all sorts of fantastic shit, but eventually are destroyed in a great war, leaving the solar system in ruins and chaos. From this chaos, emerge the Grineer, a race of space fascist clones with brutal military mindset, and total devotion to their two queens, the Corpus, basically ultimate warprofiteering capitalist cunts in spesh, who literally worship profit and use their robots and basically enslaved workers to do their bidding, and finally, a techno organic plague that turns everything it touches into monstrous abominations hellbent on assimilating everything they encounter.
You play as a Tenno, a master of the Warframe combat suit originating from the age of the Orrokin, that awakens from eons long slumber, and you are guided by a mysterious woman called Lotus, who is rallying all the Tenno across the origin system to fight for her mysterious purposes.

That is the short version of the lore. There is tons of more, but simply put, it is post human craziness with insane technology and mystical powers, tons of mystery, all set in our solar system, though due to massive Orrokin terraforming, we would hardly recognize it as our own.

Cocoons. They get in one, render themselves down into mush and reconstitute themselves as a new warframe. More matter added or removed by the cocoon/stasis pod as required.
Really push the "transhuman" angle. They're totally fine with metamorphosing into a new form.

For me it looks like a cool setting. However, I would not play as the Tenno, rather the normal humans.

Tenno = Horrific Space Ninja Daemons you could (sometimes) make deals with

Grineer = Oppressive empire

Corpus = Weeeird machine cult

Game happens between these weird entities. Rather like playing a member of a Syndicate?

At that point it's not armor taking control of a human, it's just a meat/tech slurry jello mold.

not a fan of the potato kids. personally I wish they had them being controlled by century old masters whose bodies had broken/withered away, but their minds/skills/spirits were still strong, leaving them reliant on their warframe puppets

that and warframes essentially being made by exposing a controllable strain of the infestation to a human, with the blueprint parts helping direct and tailor the subjects body mutation to desired result, but the metamorphasis driving them insane,requiring them to be either euthanised or medically comatose, and then controlled remotely by the Tenno.

probably not the best attempt at improving the lore, but anything is better than the 'get in the warframe shinji!' potato kids.

Why not both? A human got in the suit, and they've changed over time to become that. They were originally human.

Now they're.. not. As we'd recognise it, anyway.

I'm ok with it. It works to somewhat humanize the Warframes, which is a good thing imo, as previously they had zero character in them, and seemed like just unthinking agents of the Lotus.

Though, the whole transferance stuff could have been handled better, and it should be emphasized more that the Tenno are fucked up mutants full of void energy that can barely keep themselves from blowing everything around themselves to smithereens.

If the only way to switch suits is to go meat slurry, you wouldn't put a baseline human into one at the start, you'd meat slurry him and pour him in.

>rather the normal humans.
This actually begs the question of if there even are "normal" humans left in the system?
Sure, there are humans that LOOK like us on the outside, but for example, the captives you have to rescue, can fucking KEEP UP with the warframes in terms of agility and speed.
That is fucking superhuman feat in itself.

Seeing how the setting takes place in the far future, with extremely advanced biotech present, I think that it is safe to assume that the "normal" humans of the Warframe universe, are still post human supermen by our standards.

>This actually begs the question of if there even are "normal" humans left in the system?
We never directly interact with them because tenno showing up at a colony is a good way to have the grineer show up and purge everything, but it is stated in places that there are colonies out there of baseline humans.

>you can now keep the operators hood zipped up permanently
thank fuck

but there is no humans in the setting, thats the point

Superhuman to us they may appear, but they are far more relatable as player characters as immortal body-hopping children. Also have more challenge to game, compared to the Tenno who just own shipfuls of enemies in one o.

Yeah, true that.

Honestly, it sorta begs the question of how the average human of the setting even gets by.
Being under the bootheel of the Grineer sounds horrible, and slavery to the Corpus mega jews probably isn't that nice either.

Syndicates are probably the factions that offer the most options for pen&paper style player characters.

We really don't have much of a window into the general life, they probably get by by sticking to their colonies and not interacting with people any more than they absolutely need to.

Corpus interactions possibly aren't too bad as long as you don't fuck up and end up owing them anything, grineer are bad news in general.

The lore and gameplay seem to imply that most human settlements are space stations.
Outside of Mars, pretty much all the planets and their moons seem rather inhospitable, including Earth, which is a noxious jungle world that even the Grineer have hard time holding onto.

The thing I find weird was the berserker warframe valkyr was discovered by corpus before the tenno so they did weird torture experiments on her apparently her torture and suffering were so immense that that single warframe changed every single other valkyr into the science experiment form.

I've run it before with basically no rules. No stat sheets for players beyond descriptions of their frame's powers. That was really fun for a single session, but I'm never going to do it again. Had players really get into the acrobatic movement and the sniping. They had a lot of fun, but I'd need to make more of a system around it to run it again.

Because the corpus not only skinned her but they also forcibly put alot of there own tech directly into her skin.

and she was awake during the entire thing

Also consider that giving the acquisition method for her parts, it's not exactly like you're building her from an unmolested version and spess magic is causing it to warp to the corpusfuckery version.

Now, if we end up with a Valkyr Prime that has the corpusfuckery, then there's some 'splaining to do.

The game's lore doesn't really ever address the fact that the Tenno switch between the frames anyways.
Neither Lotus or Ordis mention the fact that you got a fucking army of frames on your ship, and even the Space Babby always speaks of a Single Warfame, as in "My Warframe is SRONK!" during combat etc.

Before the space babby reveal, there was really no clue how the fucking frames worked, if it was the same entity switching between different suits of armor, or if it was the same being, morphing into a new shape.
Or if it was tons of distinct entities.

The game's lore seems to imply that each Warframe was unique however, and specific to a single operator.

I'm guessing they found the template, and tortured the fuck out of it.
So when the Tenno reclaimed it, they couldn't just rollback to a non-fucked with version because she WAS supposed to be that version.

But then they realised that despite everything the Corpus had done it somehow still worked so whatever let's use it.

I'm sticking with my meat slurry theory.

If normal humans do not deal with others that much, it would sound okay for the Players to be the adventurous types who venture out of the safe stations to actually do stuff - negotiations with Grineer/Corpus/Tenno/Syndicates, recon, scouting, adventuring in old stations / Orokin remnants, rescuing people from the Infestation and so forth.

Or living as a grindeer/corpus soldier trying to work up your rank as you perform more and more dubious missions for your empite and fighting against the Infestation.

Hopefully with the War Within we'll get some more insight into everything.

The War Within looks pretty dank.
youtube.com/watch?v=_Al9kj18svE

You're building the fucked-up Valkyr from the blueprints of the fucked-up Valkyr. Though if you like you can buy the skin that makes her look like she did before the experiments and run around with that one.

I sometimes wonder WHAT are those guns shooting. Really, what sort of materials would you need to make firearms capable of slicing power armoured humans apart in a few shots, and annihilating almost anything that doesn't look like a ninja in a handful of mags?

Bullets, but at extreme velocities for most Tenno and Grineer guns.
Corpus and infected weapons fire stranger stuff.

Cat Frame is cute!

Why do warframes have tits?

Why are you surprised that when humanity makes technorganic proxy ninja soldiers we added tits?

Also they're sort of mutated humans so I guess it was originally based on a woman.

Better question is how arrow weaponry manages to keep pace.
I mean I love my bows, but seriously now a rifle should be just better.

Why did there have to be something inside to begin with? They could just be living armor.

Because they have enough presence of mind to have meditation and thoughtfulness.

>Shrug
It's got enough of something inside it to break War when completely disconnected from the Tenno controlling it.

>The game's lore seems to imply that each Warframe was unique however, and specific to a single operator.
The way I justify it in my head, there is/was a set of 'prime' tenno based around the survivors of the original void ship fuckup thing, with fancy prototype frames. Once the orokin scientists figured out how to reliably replicate the voidfuckery that resulted in the tenno, they used the original frames as templates for a mass-produced model, which would be the primes we are familiar with.

and take toxin damage.

And enough of a biological body to expel cold breath and have a need for life support.

Really at this point though, it's not any different. I look at it as jamming cyberbrained biomorphs from the safety of your ship in eclipse phase.

Warframe in fact inspired me to do that, and it has been helpful sometimes (Re; being the only person who remembers what happened)

Restroy aus tenno! Rans tet klem get arai!

I would probably try using death watch as a starting point. the war frame would govern physical stats, and the operator would have the mental stats.

Enemy mobs would have a base statline, with extra abilities to reflect the presence of specialists. After taking so much damage a mob would lose one of these abilities, as the specialists were killed.

One of the important things for a war frame game would be keeping movement and combat flowing fast, which I think would best be accomplished with a fair degree of abstraction.

Honest answer? The creator, Ballas, admitted that "Lust was my sin", but then he only said that for Saryn Prime, which he made/said the statement right after he put his wife to death for trying to heal a bunch of kids.

Warfram spatter! KET KLAM!

Clem! Clem clem. Clem.

It used to be cool, but the more they explain the shittier the lore gets.

Grakata. Grakata!

...

Grakata Wraith Soon™

>Why did there have to be something inside to begin with? They could just be living armor.
Oh, but they are. That is one of the darkest things about Warframe. The actual Frames are living beings that are dominated by the space kids. That is what Transference is, the Tenno exerting control over another living thing and forcing it to fight. All while being goaded to commit atrocities and destruction by an artificial life-form that yearns to be, and fails at being, a mother.

Don't tempt me to go back, user. My wallet can't handle the impulse buys I make in that game.

>that is what Transference is, the Tenno exerting control over another living thing and forcing it to fight.
Not just control though, pain. Transference transfers the Tenno's pain to the Warframe.

It'll probably gained be Sorties or Events, don't fret your wallet
But you are free now. RUN!

I keep looking at the new primes and wanting them... I've got all of them up to Vauban Prime. But I don't want to go back to farming mastery rank. I was at like 15. Never got into running a lot of end game content because I never had anyone to play with.

You can solo most of the endgame really, but yeah they can be a bitch to do especially if the enemies get high enough that they become sponges
I'm taking a break til War Within. Hopefully we get a weapon+shield thing, or another Grineer buddy

It was less the difficulty and more needing someone to suffer through the grind with me. Which reminds me, I still haven't opened up the entire system map, and I don't really have stuff geared up for Pluto and such. That's the real reason I stopped. Could solo tier 2 and sometimes 3 Tower stuff, but kept dying on the shit in the star chart.

I'm tempted to return with you. I've actually enjoyed the story quests.

It was great until Tenno were just kids playing drone operator.

What I had concluded from the lore was this.

>Tenno are children who suffered horrific accidents involving void travel, being granted terrible powers while being mentally and physically scarred. Because of their injuries many of them were full or partial amputees, which is why many of the warframes themselves cannot actually fit a human inside.
>The Warframes themselves are suits of living fleshmetal, bonded to their wearers. Courtesy of the way they were treated however, Tenno are cannibalistic, sociopathic weapons of war that ended up turning on the Orokin after the Sentients conflict ended.

Almost spot-on, but so far we have not seen amputees.
The warframe wearer-thing is still unproven. All we know is that the warframes are made of biometal, and that they're feral and eats everything and everyone when not in control of a Tenno, which makes the events of The Second Dream a bit intriguing.

The Tenno rebelled because of Margulis. Of what Ballas and the Orokin did to her, and to them.

Your ship AI is an edgelord who managed to kill the deathless, and was punished by said deathless to forever be a fractured AI who relieves his most painful moments and his death. He was also designed to be "annoying" both to himself and possibly the Tenno.
Said edgelord may or may not be what you could call a "beast man". DE mentions colonists and "martians" but never shows them. Hell, the "mercenaries" who showed up had the models of Corpus units.

The Orokin empire is definitely wuxia out the ass.

After the fall, a heist/infiltration setting would be better.

The plot has been around since Rhino Prime; The only real mistake was that the operators should be adults by this point; there was no reason for younger operators.

The biggest mistake was making Lotus a physical being: They should have kept her hands off for the ambiguity of her existence: I honestly was banking on a distributed consciousness supported by the network of Tenno, explaining why she's omnipresent and effectively invulnerable.

Playing a Grineer boarding party or a Corpus security detail would probably be much more manageable than trying to hash out the Tenno, but the Tenno are the real appeal...

My theory is the Warframes were originally simply a infestation/technocyte weapon that was discovered to resonate on the same frequency as the Ten-0 survivor's power.

They refined and weaponized them from their original feral origins, bent them to the Tenno's will and beat back the sentients.

But the Orokin thought they were still above reproach, relying on their culture and decorum under the belief that the Tenno would never rebel agains their "proper" rule.

And that's when the Orokin empire was decapitated in vengeance for Margulis.

>I'm tempted to return with you. I've actually enjoyed the story quests
> I still haven't opened up the entire system map
That might be a bit of a problem, the new quest will require that you have at least the Sedna Junction completed.
So if you want to come back for the quest, you might need to budget in some clean up work as well. Good news, is that if you quit before junctions became a thing, the star chart missions are easier now.

I'd have to check where I'm at. I had every planet open before they did the star chart overhaul, but if they fucked that over, then I dunno. I didn't have every node on every planet done, though. Fucking Pluto, Sedna, Eris, and the Moon kept me back.

You could make OC Donut Steel without being Tenno. The Orokin were masters, being able to create species. After all, they made the Infested, and turned the Grineer into what they are now. They also made the Sentients

I guess you could make a new race and handwave it as "The Orokin did it. They did it because reasons" because really, that is the reason. They made Grineer slaves because reasons. They made Infestation because lol yeah a virus will infect grey goo. They made catdogs because reasons.

Really, DE's focus is all on Tenno, and select individuals from Grineer and Corpus. They'll mention other groups/races from time to time, but never show them. You could always say that your creation is one of those mentioned.

>And that's when the Orokin empire was decapitated in vengeance for Margulis.
"Decapitated" might be it. DE did say that the Orokin are coming back, which is very odd since we permakilled them. This'll get interesting though, since the Sentients are here, and the Orokin are coming, and both hate the Tenno..

And the Technocyte thing is all but confirmed, yeah. But this Technocyte may not be the same Technocyte of darkSector

>But this Technocyte may not be the same Technocyte of darkSector
Aye, darkSector is basically considered non-canon. A lot of plot bits, cosmetics, and names have migrated over, but basically all of them have completely different origins.

and how we have the essential question.
What are the 'frames?
Obviously it's technocyte, but it's not exactly inert.

i guess they are representations of the zaruman kid's subconcious ideas for whatever theme warrior.
Unless they are made by the orokin.
Then ballas&co have some issues.

apparently us committing small scale genocide awakened his memories.
daaaw

The Orokin were masters of biology and genetics first, and everything else second. The Warframe is probably a cloned body that's been augmented extensively, similarly to the Grineer.

don't forget the mention of corpus rebels and 'ice pirates' that are never followed up on

Super mario would be a better setting. At least the characters would be characters.
Warframe is an ok game but it's a visual experience not a narrative or emotion driven one.

Spoiler warning, the following is revealed if you finish the main campaign.
The Tenno are genetically engineered ten year olds(in a kind of physical stasis chamber that stops them aging) that pilot the death machines known as warframes.

>Can't create a narrative from the given lore

That does not require them to have something inside.

Fuck this thread made me angry fast

they have shit inside, take two sources: Lotus fucking tells you so for one, two, a
lotus from message on a certain MR (can't remember when it was put in my inbox, it's old) congratulates the tenno on bending the wills of their equipment to their own ends.

Warframes have a metal carapace but there's a "surrogate" living thing inside of questionable but apparently extant intelligence and will.

Sylvana talking in the Silver Grove suggests that each warframe is treated as though it has a personality and history because there was the original; she references a specific Titania, the first one.

the first in any warframe line might even be an actual Tenno after heavy modification, it's not clear, but the first one has a personality and individuality and the others are emptier copies from the template that produces, as far as Simaris imprints and codex scans and shit suggest

but that's wrong you fuck, making her an actual entity which exists raises a lot of new questions, and seeing her in person helps clarify some shit from the Natah quest. Just to start with there's the prevalent (and likely) theory that the human body is Margulis's corpse, and the purple wiring/helmet is Natah. We've seen Hunhow, we know she's a Sentient, and that they aren't just people. Further, Margulis was blinded in an accident with the tenno early on, and the helmet is eyeless most of the time. In the cutscene there were technically eye lenses but they had the lights over them. tangent.

all of those times we call down life support, use an excavator, or attach a nondescript suitcase to connect her to a mobile defense station, that's likely part of her, because Sentients have a DISTRIBUTED CONSCIOUSNESS. YOU GOT YOUR WISH, YOU'RE JUST BEING A DUMMY

What are the fucking sentinels anyways?

sentients*

Sentinels are some spoopy Sentient-like lifeform that have proven friendly and useful. Not sure what all actual lore exists for them.

Sentients are what became of an orokin project to terraform/otherwise prepare an extrasolar system for colonization. They were designed to be highly adaptive to threats, much in the way the borg are adaptive when it comes to attacks. As the orokin had predicted, they have turned on their masters.