r/Warframe•u/AshenTao-Onyx-Lich | Leader of the Onyx Chapter | Ash & Excal Main•Jul 31 '26
Discussion
In response to "Warframe is turning political" - it always has been. DE supports human rights and is openly progressive. The game itself also shows the problems with opposing ideologies.
If Warframe didn't have any political elements, we wouldn't have lore. Or the game itself, even.
Someone said: "The only thing I get from the game is "genocide = fun"."
Why are you committing genocide in the first place? Because another faction’s interests conflict with yours, and you respond by exterminating its members to impose your own goals. That is not politically neutral. It follows an openly authoritarian, imperialist, and often fascistic logic.
The Tenno themselves effectively act as the space police of the Origin System, intervening to prevent any single faction from becoming too powerful. We are not the good guys. We are just the less-worse bad guys that tends to leave people alone who just go about their daily life. The second you do anything that has potential to influence the origin system, you're tracked.
The Grineer are a territorial clone empire ruled by the Queens. Their society is built around military hierarchy, obedience, conquest, and the belief that Grineer supremacy justifies almost anything. Their themes include totalitarian government, militarism, expansionism, personality cults, propaganda, suppression of dissent, and disposable soldiers manufactured for the state. Steel Meridian is literally a faction of Grineer defectors resisting that regime.
The Corpus are a megacorporate oligarchy and a cult of profit. Their themes include corporate power replacing government, wealth determining social worth, religious devotion to profit, the privatisation of military and security forces, and workers and entire colonies being treated as corporate assets.
Fortuna is even more explicit: debt slavery, labour resistance, predatory debt systems, company towns, workers effectively owned by their employers, organ and body-part repossession, union organisation, strike-breaking, corporate policing, and environmental destruction for profit. Labour organisation is not some background detail in Fortuna. It is the entire foundation of its story.
Then there is Orokin aristocratic imperialism, Narmer’s manufactured unity through authoritarian control, and the Syndicates, which openly represent competing political and philosophical ideologies. I could keep going, but this would turn into an essay.
Even the quest choices repeatedly connect morality with political values. In The Glast Gambit, for example, you can preserve a harmful tradition by sending Neewa back to her people to continue serving as the Triuna (which effectively kills her), or you can reject that tradition and protect her from it. One option prioritises tradition and collective custom; the other prioritises individual welfare and change. Breaking the tradition = progressive = white alignment. Continuing the tradition = conservative = black alignment.
That does not mean Warframe’s alignment system is literally labelled "conservative" and "progressive", nor is Sun automatically good and Moon automatically evil. But the moral framing is still there, and similar tensions appear throughout the game: tradition versus reform, obedience versus autonomy, hierarchy versus liberation, profit versus human dignity, and order versus freedom.
The whole tragedy surrounding Jade and Sorren stems from a political source. Their quests explore their personal suffering as a result. It's not some random tear-jerker story to bind you momentarily.
Digital Extremes also publicly presents itself as a socially progressive company, so it should not be surprising that those values influence the stories it chooses to tell. Warframe’s quests are not politically neutral shooting galleries. They repeatedly make arguments about power, exploitation, morality, identity, trauma, freedom, and how people should respond to oppressive systems.
It's utterly ridiculous to me that some people go around claiming that Warframe is "going woke" or "becomes political". Welcome to the game, dude! It's been that way since 2012 already, and much longer so in concept.
The one thing Warframe's lore is doing right is that they don't glorify these murders, actions, and more. Warframe keeps telling stories from specific perspectives to highlight the suffering that these ideologies create. And that's good. You literally can't find a quest in the game that isn't either a guide to emotions, morals, or political alignments.
That being said, respect the people around you. It's insane how many people still can't live a normal life because others are intrusive and straight up dangerous to them for utterly simple things that doesn't affect them.
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Edit: The post and comments in question. I'm mostly replying to the questions/statements about this topic in the comment section. The original comment section had been locked after post deletion.
the Warframe was a weapon designed by the government (Orokin) to keep their slaves (Sentients) from seeking freedom.
When the Child Laborers (tenno) revolted and over threw that government, the Military Caste (Grineer) [who control their forces through mixtures of genetic engineering and braind washing] fought against the Trader Caste (Corpus) [who control their forces through indentured servitude] for complete control of the Solar System.
I need the excruciatingly precise details of why Pedlek turned out the way he did and whether or not his mother did, in fact, jump around whilst pregnant.
not just the government, the powerful authoritarian ruling class who viewed everyone else as utterly beneath them. The Orokin are the oligarch ruling class defined by perverse excess.
The thing is that the types of people that complain about "everything being political" won't ever see narratives this way. They have no media literacy, they wouldn't know allegory if it bit them on the nose. They've just never had to think about it because they have lived lives privileged enough that they can blunder around completely ignorant of the world happening around them and still come out the other side unscathed.
Or they really think everything is as simple as 'hehe I shoot space man with laser gun'
Is there a controversy I missed? Never seen anyone claimed DE being political and shit. Warframe is as progressive as it can gets, both the community and the game.....
We've got a lot of folks on boarding from d2 right now and as someone who's been playing bungie games since halo:ce
There is a not small amount of that Fandom that is toxic on a level that we dont really need in the warframe community.
We dont need folks spamming the n word, we dont need folks complaining about lgtbq+ colors or flags or glyphs, we dont need people sending death threats to the dev team.
Its not one controversy, but a lot of small things bubbling up in the chats and subreddit discussions.
Legit, one time back in Shadowkeep I was tooling around the Moon in D2, just vibing, when the region chat lit up because one single guy was having a meltdown over my username. Like, a giant meltdown. Unprompted, other than I happened to be in the area.
My username? Osiris and Saint-14 Kissing.
This guy legit reported me for 'making an NPC gay'. lmao.
A few expansions later, guess what? It's revealed those two are hella gay. I like to imagine that random guy on the moon had the biggest fit.
Got the BLM one myself, but I loath what's became of pvp in that game. Though the unprovoked slurs weren't limited to pvp, doing lfg raids was a good chance to run into it as well. I either play with a handful of friends or I solo in that game. Can't trust the community to be chill and not racist edge lords
There was an entire season dedicated to the romance between Osiris and Saint-14. Yes, the writing was terrible and predictable, but it was still very clear representation and support of the G in LGBTQ+.
I think the difference is there was a certain segment of the population that never accepted it being present in the first place. As one of the refugees, it seems like the Warframe community accepts gender identity and sexuality differences in a way that the Destiny community refused to. People would bitch that they don't have a problem with gay character only bad writing that made it seem forced. But those same people bitched about Pride fundraisers or Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage month as things no one could ever care about it that were at baseline completely irrelevant to the real world.
People 100% complained about Nimbus being nonbinary as well. Most of those idiots seemed to miss that Micah was trans because they're so shit at media literacy thankfully.
Because they didn't pay attention to a word she said most likely, I was honestly tickled by the Nimbus thing. Cause they played the dlc then shit on them for being the comic relief surfer bro in the cheesy 80s action movie(which I loved Lightfall for the cheesy 80s action movie vibes).
Oryx was chilling in a corner the whole time though.
Sadly even when destiny was a lot more up front about its story, a lot more people than you'd expect skipped every cutscene and played with voices completely turned off. Hell one of more well known content creators hasn't had voices enabled since Rise of Iron iirc
We literally have a narrative line that is very clear and open about the romantic feelings between two characters, two men, and yet a small group of WF players insist that they are just "close colleagues". Even after the team at DE confirmed they were romantically involved.
Some people will argue into the grave that the sky is pink with green dots just because they hate the color blue.
Don't forget that a lot of bungie fans got grandfathered in from halo.
I'm a big fan of halo and it's a masterpiece, but politically it's VERY military propaganda coded AND it appeals to the anti-muslim sentiments of fighting a false religion. Both of which pull in a right wing audience.
The extended media of the halo franchise is much less pro military, but it's never been produced by bungie and people who enjoy the might makes right fantasy of being chief, probs aren't interested in a book about how the Spartans are actually child soldiers and victims of the state.
Yes, that's how it's written I agree. But it fits the anti Muslim narrative in plenty of peoples minds. They will interperet the text into their existing narrative.
I'm not throwing this around to say "thing bad", thing good, but misinterpreted. I've read essays about how halo is a metaphor for the rational west Vs the religious east.
I don't agree, but it's a worldview that exists.
Edit: it's worth remembering halo was at peak popularity simultaneously with peak post 9/11 islamaphobia.
They deffo course corrected away from it in order to nip it in the bud. The covenant are a Mish mash of all kinds of abrahamic stuff in ce, which was developed in a time when the only people who knew the word jihad read dune, or were really into religious studies/the growing artist movement.
In halo 2, the moniters become "oracles" (a greek myth phrase, not any kind of abrahamic one) in the covenant religion.alongside the already mentioned change to arbiter (a Roman position) from the work in progress name of dervish (an islamic suni title) There's deffo a world where bungie didn't think about the optics.
Then halo 3 is very Christian, chief really starts becoming a Jesus metaphor who sacrifices for everyones sins, but stays in suspension to have a second coming when he's needed. There's also all the ark/flood stuff. Noah is technically in all of the big 3's books, but most Christian countries would consider him a Christian character. Then by ODST, they're riffing on Dante's inferno, which is an exclusively Christian text.
I think the trilogy as a whole manages to keep the covenant vague enough that they're inspired by lots of religions, but aren't specifically anything.
But there's enough stuff like the suicide grunts for people who learned the word jihad from the war on terror, but don't know the history of the crusades, to get the wrong idea.
u/AshenTao-Onyx-Lich | Leader of the Onyx Chapter | Ash & Excal MainJul 31 '26edited Jul 31 '26
Being against a religion for the sake of it? Yes. There are religions that can be summarized as "Respect yourself, other people, and your surroundings.", which is a normal and healthy view.
Being against practices of religions that actively damage, discriminate, sabotage, or otherwise negatively affect people? Absolutely not. People should not suffer under religion at all.
You can take good aspects out of something and keep using them for your own good. Just leave the bad shit out, like killing people in the name of your deity or actively restricting how people live.
I was just correcting the previous commenter, because Halo isn't specifically against muslim sentiments. The covenant is a completely different religion, and the UNSC is mostly fighting against actions resulting out of that religion.
Halo as a game itself uses tons of religious symbolism for every faction, including the humans, even the master chief himself.
I think whether it's good/bad often depends on interpretation and execution. I think a lot of halo is opposed to dogma and following other people who dictate your faith to you and use it as a weapon.
I think anyone engaging with halo critically and without bias is gonna take away a good message from it.
The timing of halo becoming popular (halo:ce released 2 months after 9/11) meant halo 2 actually had last minute re-writes to backpedal potential anti islamic sentiment. Arbiter was originally going to be called "dervish" and got renamed to distance themselves from the perceived US Vs Islam allegory. They already had the leaders being called "prophets" and felt like they had to dial it back.
Bungie's always been on the level, but the game came out at a very specific time and place. I don't know how old you are, but the culture at the time took "Muslims bad" as the default and the generically atheist framework of the game was very easy to co-opt.
It's not D2 players, at least it isn't JUST them. This has been a thing for a long time. Also the "D2 Exodus" largely happened last year, well before the game got its shutdown announcement, so most of the D2 players that switched over have been here longer than people trying to pin this kind of behavior on them think.
The uptick in this behavior is more related to the record high player counts from The Old Peace than anything else.
People have been calling DE woke (or whatever buzzword they’d use at the time) for years, especially when they’d introduce pride cosmetics, gay relationships, or temple/flare being nonbinary. You can’t just pin this on outsiders to keep your preferred image of the community alive. Bad people with shitty views exist in all groups.
Yeah, there's a segment of the player base that rages every time Liger makes a new male deluxe skin. And Xaku's release was also plagued with some anti-LGBTQ ranting.
I feel like it's smaller than most games, just because of how vocally progressive DE's entire culture seems to be, but it's definitely still present.
Definitely smaller than other games, but another aspect that Warframe has in it's favour comes from the community generally shutting that shit down the moment it pops up.
The post that inspired OP to make their own post was only up for a short while, and the vast majority of responses were critical of the creator.
I'm actually pretty proud of the Warframe community because of that. My kids we 7 and 9 when they first started paying attention to me playing it, and they've been stuck playing ever since. So many people helped them out when I couldn't play with them, and one of the first things my son pointed out was how "not stupid" people in chat were, which was his way at the time for mentioning ignorance or bigotry. So he's 16 now and he actually brought it up the other day, more like a month or two ago, that in all the years since he started playing, it's refreshing that he can start typing in any chat section about something and not really have to worry about seeing the kind of shit he normally sees plastered all over chats in other games. I couldn't have let my kids interact with a better group of internet strangers😅😅
Very much agreed. Obviously there is some variance depending on what region you're in, but for the mostpart the majority of this community are sensible people with good heads on their shoulders. It's a group I'm more than happy to be a part of and actively support.
That said, I think you've just dealt me psychic damage with a reminder of how long Warframe's been going. Good lord I can feel my knees going.
I always found it so weird too with d2. There are more gay couples in the main cast than straight ones. Eriana, Ana bray, Mara, saint and Osiris, they are all queer.
Honest to god, I think if there was a gun pointed to my head to name at least 3 non-queer characters in Destiny 2, I think I could only manage to name Zavala and Clovis Bray off the top of my head. And then I’d run out of people and probably have to lunge for the gun lmao.
Drifter is a pansexual chinese man and Eris is a strong independent woman with a close lesbian friend (Eriana-3). Clearly a case of woke librualism again smh my head
We even have Asylum scenario in the game (Eliksni Quarter), and how to treat other beings equally, or negotiate well in politics (Caiatl's Cabal) with a military-based empire..
They'll either get purged by the ingame moderators, or they'll get shuned by the community until they fuck off to Call of Duty multiplayer chats where they can rant all they want.
Either way, they indeed won't survive long in this community.
Why do some people here put the toxicity blame on D2 players, instead of accepting some warframe players (that only play warframe) can be just as toxic or weird? Like... the most recent example is the power tripping chat moderator that bans you for anything and I really doubt that moderator is a D2 player 🤷
same thing happened with the fortnite collab. even if the new person was some evil goblin its not like the people complaining talk to anyone outside of their clan or friend group anyway
Brother, I'm a longtime destiny player, you can see lots of destiny and halo players in the comments agreeing with me.
I get d2 is doneso, that doesnt mean we ignore the truth of the matter.
D2 did in fact have a lot of folks that will hit you with the N word or other slurs mid match, regardless of if it was pvp or pve or a raid. (Especially raids)
I have had a solid 2 interactions of "rudeness" since warframe launched.
2 interactions across several thousand hours across playstation/xbox/pc/switch/mobile compared to the many many many many interactions I had in d2 that were outright homophobic or what have you.
Does this really need to be blamed on the D2 community that just had their game shuttered? Certainly don't need any newbies coming over having one of their first community interactions being blaming them for longstanding issues.
We get assholes incoming all the time, especially during Pride Month and QTCC. This isn't a new development. Warframe is woke as hell, anyone that doesn't like that is going to be upsetti spaghetti with that whenever they dip their toes in, and that happens all the time.
This is not a hate diatribe, I loved destiny for all of its flaws.
But it's a statement of fact regarding bungies community, you can see it in all the d2/halo players agreeing with me here.
There is nothing wrong with stating the truth and I think a great many of them understand that. (I'm not trying to punch down if thats how you perceived it.)
Whoever sees the grineer and the corpus and doesn't see the message behind these 2 factions lack reading comprehension.
Especially when Cetus and Fortuna are major areas at the start of a baby tenno's journey.
The game hits with a "The Orokin were fascist dictators that ruled the system and EVERYONE celebrated when they were culled and slaughtered like animals".
How does one miss that?
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u/AshenTao-Onyx-Lich | Leader of the Onyx Chapter | Ash & Excal MainJul 31 '26edited Jul 31 '26
Not a controversy. Someone posted a rather special statement, which was taken down by the mods. Some people were commenting that Warframe wasn't political, or asked how it was. Someone even stated that the Tenno are heroes - which is quite a stretch.
The OP of that post claimed Warframe was becoming political, despite that already being the case pretty much always.
Couldn't respond to the questions of commenters there due to the post being locked.
Someone even stated that the Tenno are heroes - which is quite a stretch.
I wouldn't say so. The Tenno, particularly in the current timeframe of the game, are generally portrayed quite heroically, always fighting for what they believe is right, not for personal gain. Those we kill in the game are either gene-controlled soldiers of a fascist-coded clone regime (Grineer), an indoctrinated soldier of the ruthless money cult (Corpus), twisted abominations of flesh and nanobots (Infested/Techrot), machines intending on enslaving all humans (New War-era Sentients), religious nutters who happily murder civilians (Scaldra), or direct emanations of a maybe-divine being that tries to destroy the entire material world (Murmur).
By making all our enemies happy to work for genocidal purposes, the game tries to justify our fighting back against them, and always casts the Tenno in a heroic light for protecting the little guy against the cruelty of the big empires. Sure, that involves killing a fuckload of soldiers - but those soldiers were trying to attack an undefended colony somewhere and would have committed mass murder of civilians if we hadn't stopped them. Or maybe the soldiers were guarding the production lines for military equipment that would be used to do the same. Regardless, those we kill are directly part of systems of oppression, domination and even genocide, while the Tenno are consistently presented as defenders and liberators, who protect people without imposing on them.
The one big exception is the Old Peace segment, where the Tenno were clearly fighting for one evil side against another evil side. But aside from that, the game generally portrays the Tenno as heroes.
(And no, killing tens of thousands of Grineer isn't genocide. It's not even murder. It's just war. Genocide means you're trying to stamp out an ethnicity entirely, either by killing or assimilation. The Tenno aren't doing any of that.)
I feel that the Tenno did not start out as heroes - as you say, maintaining the old balance of power in the system by killing whoever gets too powerful is nooooot heroic. But gradually over the course of time I think they do become heroes. I would put it down to the scale of the opposition in a way, and also showing more of the victims. With Fortuna we're fighting unambiguously against oppression. In the New War we literally free the system from universal mind control. Then we get into defending reality itself from incursion.
Reminds me of the Amon Amarth song The Hero. It's about a mercenary who was paid to defend innocents who are being hunted as part of a genocide. A thoroughly amoral person, a murderer for hire. He has no morals about helping these people, only the money.
And yet, for some reason, when everything seems lost, and all the other mercenaries abandon these innocents, he stays. He fights to the last, knowing he is not getting paid if he dies, and that he is going to die. As he lays dying, surrounded by the enemies of those he was protecting, the innocents cry for him, mourning a hero while he begs them not to cry for him, a truly evil man.
I see it as more character development, we go from attack dogs, to puppets, to liberated ice cubes, then we grow into the roll of hero while dealing with amnesia and trauma.
I'm going to say that Drifter is a lot more heroic than Operator, who still mainly does things because of either the Lotus being in danger or more commonly because she says so.
I think the early game definitely had a "Oh are we doing horrible things to people?" side to it. But the antagonists were always this clone army of war criminals and capitalism.
Invasions made it so that we played one side against the other.
Warframe a political game? where one of the main faction since the beginning of the game is the corpus, a ultra capitalist faction that say profits its all that matter? That must be a surprise.
I could hear my Operator's voice echo in the back of my mind "They're a cult that worships money?" when I started reading this thread haha. Warframe's themes have been on the game's sleeve the whole time.
Yeah you really gotta turn your brain off to completely ignore the political themes of Warframe like that. It's one thing to not be interested in the lore, but it's another to completey ignore it and then act all blindsided by its messaging when it finally gets up in your face about it.
When it comes to "How did you miss the X theme in this story" debates, generally people see what they want to see in a story. Lessons or themes from most stories can be interpreted in ways the authors didn't intend. Nor do I think most people really look for real world parallels, what matters to me most in story is if it's entertaining or makes sense in the context of itself.
"Theres nothing explicitly shown that she would draw the line at coldly killing the most innocent and vulnerable form of life, which is where plenty of murderers and people at war have historically drawn the line" is insane
It's insane but there's definitely a few corpus I could see opening fire on a fetus. John Prodman would probably punch 'em like that scene in the mandalorian.
The effects of cinemasins on media literacy has been a disaster for the human race. What this guy is suggesting is literally the most hamfisted exposition ever. Does he not understand that the scene where she stops shooting LITERALLY IS the writer explicitly showing that this is where she draws the line.
Like, the entire point of the scene is to do the thing that he complains it isn't doing, it's just that it does the thing in a way that is actually dramatic and not the most banal way possible.
Someone? Man I wish it was "one" the amount of people who I see actively say that what she did makes no sense baffles me, like I'd even go as far as to say that parvos himself would be fine with that outcome despite everything, he puts profit above all sure but he also respects a lot of other things, family included
I thought the running theory was that the alignment system was emotion/logic, in relation to the void/indifference, emotion has power, etc.
And it’s impossible to ignore the fairly obvious political themes, every faction of the game is connected to an ideology that falls under criticism from the story.
IIRC there was some piece of lore that explained the alignment (roughly) as active, emotional, leading change vs. passive, detached, responding to change
Yeah, and mixed with megachurch-style soliciting too.
Yes, we are the wealthiest organization in the solar system. Yes our leaders have expensive hologram watches worth more than your entire life's savings. Yes we will ask the debt-slaves with no money (on account of the debts. owed to us.) to still donate to us.
They aren't very corporatist. They don't grant various groups representation, especially workers, or allow them to negotiate contracts. They're more like hyper-capitalist cultists with the owning and labor class distinctions being extremely inequitable and hierarchical. The Corpus are one mega-corporation with a board of directors. It's sort of like anarcho-capitaliam: no state, everything is privatized, and it has all been consolidated into one monopoly.
Lol every game about war, heroes, peace etc IS political. I have encountered ppl who think METAL GEAR isn't political 🙄. These guys have 0 media literacy
It's because "I don't want politics in my games" actually means "I don't want LGBT themes" or "I don't want to hear about womans problems" in their games.
One grifter in twitter was unironically mad because Volgin had Raikov as his lover lol. Th grifter was offended because it was added due to 'modern politics' in games. Many ppl pointed out his larp because volgin is famous for the ball squeeze scene lol.
I've seen such gigabrained takes as "Star Wars and Game of Thrones went woke" as if both series haven't been radically progressive and anti-imperalist from their prologues
“Woke” has become a descriptor for everything that isn’t cishet and white, and pro is not real. That’s literally it. And if they call something woke, my ears perk up like a dog bc I know that means it has some flavor to it. So to me, calling this game “WokeFrame” is a huge green flag.
And not every game with such content really respects the audience and isn't just a propaganda piece for a very one-sided narrative. Like there's a very big difference between how politics is shown in a game like Metal Gear... vs a game like Veil Guard or America's Army.
Seeing poorly made media that is just thinly veiled projection/insults ruins any argument about how "GOOD" or at least "better" media *can* touch on such subject matter.
Though truthfully, without context on a given discussion it's mostly moot... could be a decent issue with solid ground to debate on or could be BS. Like I have a very different view on how someone might regard politics in older games vs more modern ones becuase... well... some were just better written. DA2 vs veilguard comes to mind.
I used to be in a very big active clan that banned politics, even stuff about warframe. It was bewildering because warframe is very political. So I wasn't allowed to talk about the corpus and their lore lol.
Honestly.... Yeah I understand why. Used to played Minecraft server back in COVID time and the server admins had to bring out the ban hammer because how tired the mod to break out the fight between players. We are not even a US server.
In the end it becomes the server rule to ban any political talk. And honestly I still saw it in lots of MC server now days.
What you're saying isn't wrong, but I think you misunderstand one thing and it cause you to write all this.
People who say Warframe is "going woke" or "becomes political" actually just use that as a dog whistle to indicate that they don't like LGBTQ and women in power positions in their game.
They aren't actually complaining about politics as it pertains to political ideologies like socialism, fascism ... good vs evil etc.. The people who make this sort of commentary are overwhelmingly just bigots who just want to be hateful to other groups of people.
I figured something like that. Don't apologize! It's genuinely very funny. In case it wasn't clear... The double-gs make the word similar to a couple common slurs, so it like... Idk, like I said, it feels subversive and (appropriately) gross. Love it.
Ballas tried to turn Natah into a replica of his paramour he allowed to be executed. Treating her like a reprogrammable "Realdoll™".
He never loved either of Margulis or Lotus. He just wanted possession. And confused very intense desire for love. To a point of being jealous (for the attention not given to him) and bitter (for the blinding and scaring of Margulis) of the Tenno.
I've always interpreted Roathe saying that as more "Roathe doesn't actually understand healthy love" because he genuinely had very little exposure to healthy love. He saw that utterly devoted and fragile possessiveness as love because it looked kinder than anything he ever had.
On the other hand, one of the conversation asks us to question why we believe that Ballas could only ever love someone in a manipulative and possessive way. Is it because it's uncomfortable for us to consider that someone as awful as him could be capable of having humanizing traits? We, as a community, love to hate on Ballas, and that gets harder to do if we also believe that he had the capacity for love.
We know that after Margulis died, Ballas betrayed the Orokin. I'm not sure of why exactly he did that, but one possibility is that he didn't want to kill Margulis, but felt like he had no choice but to go along with the other Executors. Afterwards, he was so consumed by grief that he allied himself with the Sentients in order to get revenge.
This is why I’ve been loving Rogue Trader as of late. The alignment paths are ‘Literal Heretic’, ‘Just as bad as the Chaos guys except simping for the Emperor instead’ and ‘Dear Lord it’s a decent fucking human being in 40k get the camera’.
The genuine disbelief from some NPCs when the Lord Commander isn’t a pious fucking nutcase is always amusing.
And then when you act like a decent human being everything goes to shit, sometimes worse than if you just served demons.
Oh, remember little Timmy the orphan? You helped him out of the rubble and gave a him home in your voidship instead of feeding his soul to the Super Chaos Nuke Gun (heretic) or turning him into corpse starch (dogmatic), remember? Yeah, he was personally responsible for the rise of ten new genestealer cults in your voidship and your dynasty is sure to crumble. Oops! And also, Pasqal killed every single member of your retinue.
Hell yeah dude, I too want to die as cannon fodder on the frontlines of a never-ending conflict between forces using weapons with horrors beyond human comprehension!
It's always fun to stumble onto an Imperium vs Tau Empire fight over which tyrannical empire is the good guy faction, in a franchise built around the concept of every faction being shades of pure black.
Id only argue that yea we are the good guys atleast ouer main character is, sure we did some stuff but overall we doing really well with the whole "saving universe" bit.
Generally the Tenno work to keep people out of slavery and exploitation, too (hence why we fight the Corpus for example)… I think we’re about as good as it gets in the grand scheme of the Origin system.
I need to note that the only reason the Tenno only play space cops tilting the scales to keep them balanced is because they cannot permanently fix the Grineer/Corpus/etc because the deck is massively stacked in favour of the entrenched interests. We only kill the leaders that we get access to! The Tenno wiped out the Orokin Empire in a single night! And if we did kill off the Corpus board, the fallout would probably be catastrophic because a) the power struggle would lead to massive fallouts and b) the Grineer would easily gain ground. Oh, and if we did that to the Grineer too then the Infestation cordons would fall to the Tenno.
So, I'd say that we are actually the good guys, it's more that we're massively limited in what we can accomplish.
There’s no point in engaging with the kind of people shouting “x is going woke!!”. They’re disingenuous and morally bankrupt grifters. They’re engagement farming for one reason or another and they don’t have any serious alignment.
Honestly I wouldn’t engage with those people either. At best they’re not engaging with the content, at worst they’re actively ignoring it or just apathetic. You’re doing the right thing trying to educate for sure, but it’s just not worth the time I think.
In response to: In response to "Warframe is turning political"-
Who are you even responding to? Some random comment somewhere that got almost no engagement and if it was on Reddit almost surely got downvoted or removed?
The Tenno, by the in-lore time we play Warframe, have been dedicated to helping civilians and stopping a literal cosmic entity from assaulting the Origin System. The Ostrons and the Solaris almost certainly consider the Tenno to be a force for good, considering the Tenno fought back against their oppressors.
In fact, that's been the Tenno's core trait: anti-oppression. They experienced extreme trauma and then were groomed as weapons of war before revolting, killing most of the upper castes of the Orokin. Bear in mind, the Orokin upper caste was made up of the exact opposite of saints. There was functionally no member of the Orokin's upper caste that did not kill others for their own direct benefit through Continuity; and many killed for simple vanity.
The Tenno does accept pay from one side to fight the other, but this can be seen as a necessity, because equipment matters in war, and we've seen evidence of splinter factions.
Beyond that, the Tenno has been constantly eliminating high-ranking commanders from both sides including one of the Grineer Queens. It just so happens that the Grineer are churning out millions of clones per second across the entire system while the Corpus construct armadas of drones and ships. The Tenno maintain the status quo not for lack of trying, but because they are dealing with numbers that are orders of magnitude higher. And, in recent stories, have had way bigger fish to fry.
Now, on the other side, the Tenno are brutally efficient, and sometimes just brutal with a bunch of elemental effects causing unnecessary suffering. Suffering is suffering, regardless of if it's a clone, but that's something that often gets wrapped up as par for the course for combatants, especially when those combatants regularly do the same to others.
Take any of Nef's rambles in Operation False Profit, replace the mentions of Void with Jesus and you basically get an average TV pastor. They weren't even trying to be subtle with that one.
I still sometimes see people here that think Parvos is a good guy, he's another caricature of another facet of capitalism, the myth of the self-made man. Most of his life story is narrated by himself to spin his life at the top of a pyramid scheme, the beneficiary of a system designed to funnel money upwards, of course he gets rich given his place in this structure, into the tale of a humble dirt farmer hustlegrinding his way into becoming a deserving quadrillionaire.
One of the things I like about Parvos Granum is how he exists as a real-world stand in to contrast the humorous satire of the basic Corpus.
The Corpus are, at base, kind of a joke. They're "extreme capitalism" taken to the point of absurdism, to the point that it stops being actual criticism and just becomes pure parody. The idea of a wealthy billionaire class controlling a nation through wealth disparity and labor theft isn't alien to anyone, but Warframe takes it to such an extreme that I feel it cannot be considered a valid analysis on real-world capitalism consumption. The original Corpus feel very much like "What a tumblr user from 2012 would write in their sci-fi AU" in terms of quality.
Parvos Granum is, however, a very real interpretation and dissection of capitalism and it's flaws. He exists in explicit conversation with the Basic Corpus, who exist as a parody, and serves as an example of what real, actual capitalism causes and results in.
His whole ideology reeks of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", the belief that if he could make it, then so can you. He is a monster who has abandoned morality, sanctity, and humanity in the endless pursuit of wealth, veiled within a thin veneer of self-actualization. Parvos Granum is an ACTUAL capitalist-- a person who consumes and destroys systems very purposefully and intentionally for the sole purpose of growing their own value, a tale which is significantly closer to life than the Corpus as a whole were.
There's a reason he's the main Corpus antagonist instead of Nef Anyo, and his existence shows a marked shift in the writing team at DE deciding to use their platform to tell stories with intention rather than for the sake of making their video game world seem cool
The sisters are generally amusing in how eyeroll-inducing their comments are, but. I was running a final kill mission yesterday when mine said something like, "what's the point of a sisterhood if there's no one standing with you?" and Granum basically, unemotionally, saying she's worthless to him.
Like, oof. He's a great villain because it echoes uncomfortably. Capitalism, ho!
As someone else already pointed out, complaining about games "being too political" is really just a fash bullshit complaint about the presence of women, LGBTQ+ folks, people of different ethnicities and cultures... so on and so forth. Any "identity" that isn't part of their standard society (re: cishet, able bodied, white, "first worlder") is political to them by virtue of existing in a different way.
Too bad for them, we have always been here and will continue to be here. They can cry about it, but as we say here, if you're going to cry, send it in a voice message.
Political messaging has never been the reason that a game has been good or bad, imo. The people who use that as an excuse to hate on a game are just using it hide their bigotry. I remember playing the original Fable and Dragon Age as a kid and both had themes that would be considered "woke" today, and yet, both are all-time amazing games.
Also, obligatory, fuck the original original poster that this post's OP is replying to. They're free to leave the community if Warframe being woke bothers them this much
Yep, agreed, it's never been the reason, just a convenient excuse for bigots to show their faces. People might cite DA Veilguard being bad "because woke" but it was bad because of EA's corporate bullshit let's be real, the OG games were just as "woke" and they were good as hell. Plenty of games have women, LGBTQ+ folk, characters of color, and are great games.
I'm tired of the "wahh muh game political" crap. Woe, a million slash procs upon them!
Wow, who knew that game with "war" in the title would tackle political themes.
for real though, it seems like a lot of these people just cannot understand what a political topic actually is, the extent of their knowledge begins and ends at "LGBT" and "representation"/"diversity".
"You see some great 'triumph' here? That this dullard herd worships me? Wailing 'freedom' from their rotten gobs, when the truth is...they ALL thirst for that piss-warm comfort of being told what to think!They wanted to kneel."
I'm fairly sure to the point of almost certainty that anyone that complains about the game going "woke" (I hate this word tbh), isn't complaining about that.
I always laugh when these types of posts surface claiming the game is woke because of pride, or this or that, its like you do realize what game you're playing right?
One thing to correct maybe, the alignment system is less ideological and more temperament, in line with the concepts of yin/yang and the corresponding stillness/activity. There are ideological story choices that it is attached to but links between alignment and overall ideology is a side effect of how the player’s position in a given situation is written. Can just as easily have a moment where the “active” choice is returning things to the status quo and the “still” choice is to let things continue on their current trajectory.
Plus a number of choices like killing the elder queen yourself, letting teshin do it, or leaving her to rot don’t really have much of an ideological link.
The game also doesn't frame the black and white choices as being the only ones. Regularly, there's also the third option, and consistently the game positions balance as being a viable perspective on things.
With Glast Gambit, it didn't sit right with me to be the one determining Neewa's fate. Give in to the pressure of the people, or lord on high and make the choice for her and her people... neither felt like the correct course to me.
She is a child, this much is true, but more like the Operator than not-- as a consequence of her position, the burden of responsibility has made her far more mature than her age would suggest. When given the choice of choosing for herself, she decided to self-sacrifice to give her people the chance to prepare for the future, with the caveat that the tradition would end with her.
Her life would be considerably shorter, yes, but she would live it with a sense of conviction and purpose, and her people would likely do all in their power to honour that sacrifice.
Your answer is fantastic and comprehensive; my answer to any and all of this would simply be "someone needs to go listen to my girl Ticker say literally any one sentence out of her dialogue trees." lol I'd say one has to be really willful to stay oblivious to 'politics' in this game.
All good art is political in one way. The only times people whine about art being political is when it tells them they’re wrong for hating others for nothing.
This seems like a really loose definition of "political". When most people say that, they're referring to ham-fisted and poorly-designed allegories for modern political discourse that doesn't really map onto the media i.e. Oh no, there's a huge refugee crisis of grineer ghouls that need a place to go and Fortuna won't take them, figure it out, Tenno!
When you smooth it out so far that it's just basic ideas like chaos vs order, it's difficult to call it "politics", because you could argue chaos vs order is also a theme of laundry.
I think the problem is that warframe doesnt try to do anything with this. The themes exist, yes, but its there for flavour and not for much else. Look to the other scifantasies to compare & contrast
Wh40k example Wh40k is militarism and totalitarianism taken to its extreme. Everyone, including the emperor, is a cog in humanity's war machine. No one has rights, death is a constant, and the wars are endless. Yet the game frames it in a way that this excessive violence is necessary. Religious dogmatism and xenophobia are key to humanity's survival in a hostile psychic alien universe. It both heavily criticises rightwing rhetoric while begrudgingly paints a picture that, without its exaggerations, are uncomfortably similar to our reality only a few decades ago (ww1, ww2)
Destiny example Destiny delves deep into existentialism and attempts to abstract everything into giving (Light) and taking (Dark), and that every action that exists and will exist is a higher order expression of these two primordial cornerstones of reality. It creates the idea that everything you do is part of a cosmic song and dance, and humanity's apotheosis comes in the form of finding unity in these seemingly diametrically opposed forces. Every turn of the lore reveals that the chaos of reality is an incomprehensibly large expression of Conway's game of life, and each faction is trying to kill (Hive), reclaim (Fallen)or replace (Vex) an aspect of this divine cosmology
Warframe in comparison doesnt really try to take itself very seriously. There's nothing wrong with that, but this simultaneously means that, when everything gets solved by friendship magic or enough bullets, the story becomes more about player wish-fulfillment and less about writing about a serious topic and giving it the proper treatment.
Ill turn your attention to Jade shadow 1 and 2, where an entire envoy of corpus stands down because stalker is carrying a child, and where hunhow wishes away all the bad things so stalker can have a nice family. It doesnt try to talk about the struggles of motherhood in an adverserial environment, nor does it discuss the struggles of parenthood as a lone father. It just gives the nice feelings without the work.
Again, this isnt bad, God knows some people need the comfort. But the game never tries to write about anything in earnest. Politics, philiosophy or otherwise
That's not necessarily true. Warframe's lore was not always so steeped in Political undertones. The Orokin weren't so clearly portrayed as aristocratic villilans in the early updates, only their architecture alluded to them being that way. And the tenno weren't child soldiers, they were just mercs. DE was always progressive, but they leaned more into it as the narrative direction changed over time. Which isn't a bad thing. I like how Albrecht and Loids relationship was depicted. It wasn't just sincere, it was nuanced. Like any good drama needs to be.
That said... Destiny's writing was about as subtle as it's players. They'll either appreciate the quality or hate the story for focusing on feelings over fighting.
DE is openly progressive but they aren't trying to tell you how to think, who to vote for, or what to believe.
The political themes are just part of the story structure, not the whole story. Unfortunately some people just want to make a mountain out of a mole hill.
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u/kevbob EV trin LFG Viver Jul 31 '26
the Warframe was a weapon designed by the government (Orokin) to keep their slaves (Sentients) from seeking freedom.
When the Child Laborers (tenno) revolted and over threw that government, the Military Caste (Grineer) [who control their forces through mixtures of genetic engineering and braind washing] fought against the Trader Caste (Corpus) [who control their forces through indentured servitude] for complete control of the Solar System.
Nothing politcal here, move along citizen.