On Sounding Like an Idiot while Explaining Things

So the other day, I helped aabicus complete Vor’s Prize, the tutorial quest of Warframe. We played for about three hours, getting aabicus to Mastery Rank 1 and unlocking Venus as a place he can visit. From what I heard, aabicus enjoyed himself, and as I thought, he very much liked the game’s mobility, accessible to all Warframes no matter what you use. But as I slowly explained everything, I realised how 1. I had never noticed some things and 2. I sounded like an idiot when I thought about what I had just said.

On the not-noticing side of things, I never realised that the icon for credits, the generic in-game free-to-earn currency, looked like Word documents of some sort. So now credits will forever be Word Documents. We had a good old laugh about that. Another fun thing was calling Ferrite, a common metal resource, ferrets. That amused me more than it should.

But it was weird, explaining all these things to someone new. I had been incredibly excited to be able to teach someone, not just because no one taught me, but also because I like teaching and like sharing my knowledge.

The things I said though. Trying to explain the arsenal, and how to use mods, and what they do, I must have sounded like a mad man.

What made it worse was that I accidentally killed Captain Vor, the first boss. By accidentally punching him when I was aiming for his minions. Admitttedly I left aabicus alone mostly in that fight, taking the heat off him by focusing on the smaller enemies, but I felt bad for stealing the kill.

Other things sounded dumb as well. Explaining bullet jumps was fine, but the name bullet jump sounds so… Odd. As do the little things, like Mag’s gender, explaining the in-game market and telling aaby to only ever buy blueprints, pointing out sensor bars and security cameras after I’ve already broken them and the whole Mastery Rank system in general. From an outsider’s perspective, I sound insane. From a Warframe player’s perspective, I’m probably doing a shit job of explaining things.

Another awkward thing is explaining game features and turning them into lore. Particularly the difference between Tenno and Warframe. And what about Solar Rails? Why does everyone have to fight a miniboss to pass? I don’t really know, I always assumed it was a Tenno-only fast travel system, but aabicus brought up the valid point of what non-Tenno do. I guess they just fly normally, considering their gigantic ships. Goodness knows how I’m going to explain later key lore things without spoiling any of the goodies.

Of course, the stupidest thing of all was that I didn’t really take any screenshots of it all. We had a really good time, and all I have as souvenirs are a picture of aabicus’s pink Mag holding her bow funny, and my Taxon sentinel healing a ghost.

Still, was a ton of fun. We played for nearly four hours and it was 5am when I finally went to bed.

10/10 would sound like an idiot and accidentally kill Captain Vor again.