Warframe without Warframes

Warframes are ugly. Corpus and Grineer are ugly. Most of the human beings in Warframe are ugly as fuck. Even the cats and dogs can be absolutely hideous if you get unlucky. When you think about it, most living things in Warframe are really horrible, the result of hundreds, if not thousands of years of everything going to hell in a hand basket. You have endless wars between the Grineer and Corpus, you have the Infested biting at everyone’s heels and the few normal outposts filled with normal human beings generally have something terrorizing them every night. No wonder they’re all ugly, they’re all incredibly stressed out.

But when you look past that and look at the bigger picture, there’s something… wonderful behind it all. There’s hidden beauties everywhere.

The most obvious place to look for beauty is the Plains of Eidolon. By taking a stealth or tank frame, you can quite happily wander around, only being interrupted by the occasional Grineer patrol. My favourite time of day is sunset, and sunrise, where everything is bathed in brilliant shades of pink and orange. Night in particular is a lovely place, especially when you walk along the two shores to the east and west, gazing out into the distance, while the stars shine above you. Curiously, you can actually follow the Teralyst around. As long as nothing attacks the Teralyst, it will leave everything alone, wandering around from sentient bone to sentient bone, mourning for its lost siblings.

Sadly the Teralyst and a lot of other things don’t spawn in the Plains of Eidolon Captura (by far the best thing to get for free when you reach the Kin rank in Cetus). But Captura, with its multitude of tilesets available, provides a wonderful backdrop, whether you’re posing. Or, in some cases, they can be the center of attention. The Tomb of Inaros in particular is both haunting and gives a sense of adventure. The Chains of Harrow scene is simply haunting. The War Within Captura is also incredibly nice, a stark contrast to almost everything else in the game, it’s just a shame that it’s so limited.

But that’s ignoring the entirety of the rest of the game. We’re space ninjas. We can go anywhere in the solar system. Often though, we’re going so fast that no one actually sees anything. We see our objectives, we run to our objectives then we get the fuck out of there. There’s a lot more beauty to be seen.

The most beautiful places (at least in my opinion) are that of the Void and of Lua. These places are strange. Both cold and empty and damaged, but also filled with wonder and strangeness. Although beauty can be found almost everywhere. Except for the Eris Infested Corpus Ship tileset. Fuck that place.

Of course, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to take a stroll with your perhaps rather ugly Warframe in the way. But don’t worry, if you want screenshots, there’s two ways around this.

The first trick is to stick your Warframe somewhere out of sight, switch to Operator Mode then sit down using the Sit gesture. Look upwards and your Space Kid should (hopefully) disappear from view, giving you ample time to take screenshots.

The second way is simpler. Simply grab your Codex or Synthesis Scanner and use that to zoom into things, taking screenshots while scoped in. Sniper rifles do the same job but their scopes can be a little bit… all over the place. The downside to this is that sometimes your Sentinels, Kubrows and Kavats can get in the way, and your Warframe’s idle animations or particle effects can also ruin a shot.

Remember, if you want to take screenshots and not include the HUD, use the F6 key and disable the “Show UI in screenshots” option in the, uh, options menu. Whatever key you have bound to Steam screenshots will NOT honour this option and will always show your HUD unless you disable it completely.

If you’re looking for a good place to start, then Exterminate missions are always good. Once you’ve defeated all enemies, most rooms will remain somewhat clear, allowing you to explore more freely. Syndicate missions are even better, since you should be exploring anyway to find medallions.

There’s one last place of beauty though. One hidden gem, which can be random as all heck. The Warframe login screen. I kid you not, when you’re using maximum graphics, those login screens are wonderful. Particularly the ones for the Void and for Lua.

Next time you are wondering what to do, sitting there bored in your ship, set your matchmaking to solo, grab your favourite Warframe and a scanner, and wander around. You’ll never know the beauties you might find…