I love mindcontrol stuff, this quest was a treat! Had some of my favorite stuff from Crysis 2, [Prototype] and Evangelion in it. Spoilers below.



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Earlier I made a post detailing my worries before playing the quest, so to wrap that up: Very happy none of them held up! Teshin wasn’t involved, Lotus barely, and Ballas ended up being a very hateable sadist! I’m really happy they decided to take it more slowly and flesh out characters like Ballas and the Operator. I don’t care about spectacle if I don’t care about the characters.

I’m mostly very happy that this quest delivered on a narrative execution level. Cool what-ifs are always easier than satisfying deliveries. Umbra got a pretty complete arc. The Warframe face reveal didn’t look monstrous enough for me at first, but grew on me as the quest emphasized that behind their monster facade Warframes are meant to be messed up, but relatively mundane and relatable. The flavor of “power of friendship” our Operators got also fits Warframe’s world quite well I think!

The one thing I was disappointed by was the part where Umbra accepts the Operator and Ballas has an unintentionally heartwarming monologue. Deserved more interesting visuals IMO. This was supposed to be the big turnaround moment that everything else had led up to. The Operator’s “hospital visit” looked cool but couldn’t sell that our words were getting through to Umbra. Give the man a cooldown hug or a shoulder to howl on or something!

Also, did I get that right - Ballas was creating Warframes when he was already allied with the Sentients? Why? Did he want us to rebel? Are actually keeping the system locked in perpetual war for the Natah/Ballas sentient faction? I was gonna sweep that part under the ludonarrative dissonance rug, but maybe there’s something to it.