I first heard about Warframe way back when it originally launched in 2013. At the time I was using a dilapidated laptop from the Stone Age, so running D💫igital Extremes' wildly impressive space ninja simulator was a genuinely impossible feat. In time, I gradually began to forget that I was ever really interested in Warframe in the first place.
Years passed, other games came and went, and all the while Warframe faded quietly into obscurity - for me, at least. But that changed recently. After seeing some screenshots on Twitter and accidentally winding up in a conversation about the game, I decided that it was about time I finally gave it a whirl. The laptop I have now is capable of running pretty much anything at max specs, so𝐆 the only excuse I had left was laziness, or at the very least an unwillingness to become the space ninja Earth needed. So I installed it.
The next🥀 thing I know, I'm legging it through a forest full of dead people while bad guys in weird armor point interstellar weapons at me. Decent start.
That last part is not entirely true - at the beginning of Warframe, you're treated to a wonderful shot of a star cluster. It actually reminded me of something I wrote recently, about how games should p♌robably lean into the concept 🍸of astrophotography far more than they currently do.
Except this wasn't a star cluster - it was a zoomed-in shot of someone's eyeball. The transition was a bit Michael Bay in premise, but it wa⭕s a🌳ctually pretty stylish. And then, almost immediately afterward, the bad guys in weird armor showed up.
After running for ages, I wind up at some sort of celestial shrine. I sit down next to one of the stone sculp🎶tures there - which I now know depicted one of the Tenno, or as I call them, space ninjas - and all of a sudden I'm teleported through space and time to a battlefield. There's a guy there wearing a helmet with a massive rhino horn emblazoned on the front, accompanied by an alien dog with a big spiky nose. Together they beat up at least a million bad guys using some kind of lightning katana. I'm afraid for the dog at first, but it's alright - he's a pro.
Anyway, these guys are on my team. Good. One of them uses the Force from Star Wars to destroy an enemy space ship, while the others do all sorts of backflips and hardcore parkour. Once I finally settle in and think, "Alright, we're safe now," I'm ripped out of what was presumably just an illusion and arrive back in the shrine, now surrounded by the bad guys from earlier. You shouldn🌳't daydream when you're on the lam.
Related: 🃏5 Ways Warframe is Better Than Destiny 2 ♔(& 5 Why Destiny 2 is Better)
Something happens - before I know it, there's an extraterrestrial voice communing with me✅, advising me that it's time to awaken, to channel my true, deific power in order to access my Warframe (that's the name of the 🍸game!). I'm hit with a character select screen and instantly select Mag because the abilities sound a bit like the Asari Vanguard in Mass Effect 3.
Now I'm really strong, I think. I have special abilities and these guys have no chance against me. But their leader shows up, a guy with metal bird feet and a baboon bum. He wants to use my powers to help his Queens or som🍎ething, and all the armored guys are here to make sure I don't escape. Then he 💃disappears.
Ten seconds later 💝and I'm charging at the bad guys who are actually really weak and stupid. I use my Pull ability, which is a sort of 🔯biotic, telekinetic energy wave, and reef them sideways into nearby trees. I'm sprinting now, hurling every baddie in sight into oblivion, and there it is: a massive spear. There's a katana too, but I'm not really interested in that.
This is when I really sta▨rt to feel like a bonafide space ninja. I'm double-jumping over massive tree trunks and crashing into the ground with a lightning 🌊spear, absolutely eviscerating all the people who tried to chase me earlier on. Now I've got throwing knives, too, and I'm basically as good as Phil Taylor after eight pints.
The leader who was giving me grief earlier, who I now know is called, er... Vor... is at the place where my ship is parked. I didꦕn't even know I had a ship, but apparently this is where it is. He tries to fight me but runs away with his baboon bum between his legs after about two spear punches. His little minions swarm me in an attempt to save face but, to reiterate, they're actually just really weak and stupid.
When I eventually find my ship꧑, I'm impressed. It looks a bit like the Millennium Falc🍸on crossed with a shark.
After realizing my potential as a space ninja tasked with saving the universe from the nefarious Grineer - an alien species who look like big insect men with bumblebee shoulders - I 🐽go on a couple of missions. First, I pick myself up a comms unit - it would be very difficult to communicate without one of those. I have a bow now, by the way, that appears to kill everything in one hit (except for when I go up against other people online, because Warframe doesn't match you up with players the same level as you - honestly, that's probably the only thing I dislike about the game so far).
After about an hour of knocking about space in my shark ship - which I have named Bruce because of Finding Nemo - I eventually come face to face with Vor again, and this time I kick the 🔯absolute sh*t out of him. For someone who had apparently hacked my skull - yes, he implanted me with some kind of weird alien Gravemind mechanism - he isn't very good at fighting. I would say I probably beat him in about 18 seconds, which is probably why when I arrive at Cetus, Earth's primary social hub in Warframe, nobody really cares. Vor was just a zero who got too big for his boots - which is understandable because his metal crow feet were probably incredibly difficult to cobble shoes for.
Anyway, this guy on Cetus, Konzu, says he'll help me out, but only if I help him out firs𝄹t. So I go out, fight some Grineer, whack ꦐdown some archaeological excavators, and just sort of have a laugh. At the moment, Konzu's trust for me is about halfway there. He asks me to find a woman he hasn't spoken to in about 1 million years, but he doesn't exactly give me much to work off.
And that's pretty much where I'm at right now. Admittedly, my friend invited me to his Dojo - a kind of base for cl🍃ans - and I decided I'd piss off there for a bit to see what was up instead of worrying about Konzu 24/7. That's actually where I signed out last night, thinking I was in a safe space surrounded by pals who knew the ways of Warframe. But, just before I went to sleep, I texted my friend going, "Thanks mate, I'll have a look around the Dojo tomorrow. It's [insert name], right?"
As it turns out, no. Wrong. I am in somebody else's Dojo. I have no idea who. I was wondering why everybody was following me around while I trampled on everything and tried to nick some rare weap𝓀on research. Maybe I won't log back in after all.