Octavia’s Anthem – The Trouble with Cephalons

On Friday 24th, Update 20 came out for Warframe. Dubbed Octavia’s Anthem, it boasted “30 pages” of updates, fixes and changes. They were not wrong. The update was just over 1GB to download, amd featured the new Warframe Octavia, as well as the quest to obtain her. Octavia’s Anthem is an… interesting quest to say the least.

NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD. I can’t really write a non-spoiler-y review of this quest as it is SUPER lore-heavy.

As always, you have to talk to someone. If you have access to the quest (which requires the War Within to be completed), you can head to Cephalon Suda, one of the Syndicate things, in any relay. As you approach, everyone’s second least favourite Cephalon Simaris interrupts, insulting Suda, calling her broken. Of course, everyone ignores him and speaks to Suda anyway, who talks about music and instructs you to follow it.

You zip off to a Corpus-controlled area where a singing glowing orb is waiting for you. It floats around the level, leading you to the three parts of the Mandachord, a musical instrument.

Of course, you and Ordis are all like “huh?” and ask Suda to explain, but she doesn’t seem to remember. She sends you to Lua, ignoring Simaris’s warnings, then doesn’t remember why she sent you there.

So you go anyway and work out how the device works. Then Suda realises she is totally fucked up and there’s someone in her mind.

It’s fucking Hunhow, the sentient dick that we destroyed in the Second Dream. Probably explains why Lotus hasn’t said anything so far. Either way, Suda loses it as we work out how the Mandachord works (it’s a sort of minigame where you match the icons on the device to the song playing above) and we return to the ship, where Ordis and Simaris have a massive arguement about whether they should save her. Simaris says no, but Ordis says he should follow his precepts (fancy Cephalon talk for his in-built morality) and help Suda.

We head to the Void, only to find Sentients, who are supposed to be instantly killed by the Void. Hunhow is using Suda to protect them. Ordis believes that music will save Suda, and thus gets us to play music, amplifying it twice and both times fending off (weakened) Sentients. It starts to work, but Hunhow is too strong and Ordis has to go inside Suda to help her while we extract.

When we get back to the ship, Ordis sends a gut-wrenching message saying he’s failed and Hunhow has him. At this point I screamed “NOOOOOO!” and immediately set off to avenge him.

We charge back to the relay where Simaris is and demand that he helps. Simaris refuses because he only cares about himself, even if he has some respect for Ordis (after all, he tried to feed me to a feral Chroma in order to get Ordis to work for him) but he sends me into Suda’s mind on my own.

Somehow, Suda’s mind is a giant Manachord. Except deadly. Oh and it’s controlled by Hunhow.

So basically I play three rounds of the Mandachord minigame, with me jumping onto the correct platforms. But for the first time ever, it turns out that falling ACTUALLY DAMAGES YOU. Yep, miss-jumping and falling into Suda’s mind damages your healtg directly. Hence why I… cheesed this part of the quest by using Titania, the flying Warframe.

On the second iteration, Ordis wakes up and tries to help you, finally fulfillinh his dream of joining you in battle. In the third iteration, Hunhow gets pissed and Simaris suddenly joins in the fight, bringing in allies from the Sanctuary/Codex to help. They’re not as useful as Ordis but oh well, Simaris tried.

Eventually, the lacking-in-battle final level finishes, Hunhow is kicked out and everyone is happy. Ordis thanks Simaris, Simaris claims he was only doing it for Ordis, not Suda, citing a loyalty-precept not too different from Ordis’s one.

Suda thanks us and gives me the blueprint for Octavia.

And that’s it. Hopefully Hunhow has buggered off for good, because he’s a bastard for messing with my beloved Ordis!

Overall, it’s a good quest. A billion times better than the Glast Gambit and the Limbo Theorum. The final ‘fight’ is tedious though, as will be obtaining Octavia’s parts, which require three separate missions at minimum. And they could have told me that falling would damage my health, something that simply doesn’t happen almost anywhere else in the game.

Still, fun. Now to swim through all those other changes. Seriously, Digital Extremes outdid themselves this time.