An Idea for a Sergeant Rework

I have two favourite bosses in Warframe. Tyl Regor is an amazing boss with an amazing fight in a cool area, and he’s got this buttery smooth voice that taunts you, making the long, tiring farm for Equinox not nearly as awful as it should be. Tyl Regor’s boss fight is enjoyable and has good mechanics. My other favourite boss, the Sergeant? Uh, not so much.

You see, the Sergeant is a relic of the past. Back when Warframe was young, most bosses were just bigger versions of normal enemies, in a different colour. Vay Hek was originally just a Grineer with yellow accents, and now he’s an insanely fleshed out megalomaniac head in a robot mech suit thing. The massive, ship-sized Jordas Golem, so large that you must fight him with your Archwing, was LITERALLY just a red Infested Runner. I kid you not.

The Sergeant hasn’t changed much, apart from his name. Originally, he was called Sergeant Nef Anyo, but ol’Neffy actually ended up being turned into another character entirely, and the otherwise unnamed Sergeant took his place. Nef Anyo is now perpetually trying to fund things like the Index and the Ambulas Reborn project, being bankrupted by Tenno at every turn. Meanwhile, the Sergeant sits in Iliad on Phobos, getting his ass handed to him daily and dropping Mag parts by the dozen. He’s the last Corpus boss due a rework, after Ambulas got its update with Nef Anyo last year in the Ambulas Reborn event.

But how SHOULD the Sergeant be reworked? It doesn’t make sense to turn him into Nef Anyo again, especially since Nef Anyo has his own things going on elsewhere.

If we look at other reworked Corpus bosses, most notably the Raptors and Ambulas, there’s more sabotage than actual killing. The Raptor boss fight requires you to shoot down a massive Osprey and drop its power core down a vent shaft, blowing up the factory underneath that. This needs to be done three times down three separate shafts, and Raptors will keep on spawning until you do so. Ambulas requires you to defeat an Ambulas, hack the panel on its back and defend the Ambulas from repair bots. Again, this needs to be done multiple times before the mission finishes (and three failures to defend from repair bots will fail the mission) but you are treated to a cool explosion at the end.

But those are robots. In fact, apart from Alad V, all the Corpus bosses are robots. The Sergeant is obviously a person. A person who likes to insult you. A comically easy boss.

And you know what? The Sergeant has been around for so long, I think we should stick to that. The Sergeant should be an easy boss with no awkward hacking or anything like that. But he should be able to talk the talk. He should hurt you mentally, not physically.

You see, the best thing about the Sergeant is his array of insults. He specifically insults your fashion, the same way Tyl Regor does. Everyone else bitches that you won’t join them or that you’re just generic scum and things like that. Tyl and the Sergeant target how you look, with slightly more personalized insults. The New and Improved Sergeant should go one step further. He should be constantly attacking you with both enemies, guns and huge amounts of sass, bitchiness and unwanted fashion criticism.

Let’s say that you enter the mission as an uncoloured Warframe. The Sergeant will instantly point this out, calling you uninspired. Whatever cosmetics you wear, the Sergeant will call you out on them. No syandana? “You look naked without those silly capes!” Using holiday colour palettes? “Your cheapness shows!” Bringing a bright pink Rhino? “Might as well paint a massive, idiotic target on your head!”

Should you be wearing Corpus-inspired items, the Sergeant will have a slightly different tone.”You tried. Not hard enough.” “You ruin Corpus fashion with your infested suits!” “Corpus attire and X colours? Have you not heard of branding?”

What if you’re wearing Tennogen items? Well, the Sergeant has things to say about that too. He will claim that you wasted your money and complain that your items don’t match. “You spend rare currencies and you use THOSE colours?” “You’re not even dressed for a fight! You’re dressed for a childrens’ party!”

If you’re wearing Graxx skins though, that is when the Sergeant will be the rudest. He will continuously insult you, calling you a fool. “What idiot wears the colours and emblems of the dogs who want to enslave them?” “What’s the point of serving the Lotus if you’re going to pretend you’re Grineer?”

If you’re wearing the Excalibur Corpra skin or related sword, the Sergeant will simply sigh. “Shame I have to kill someone who has such good taste in fashion…”

As for the actual fight itself? Something similar to Tyl Regor or Kela De Thayme would work. I imagine it as a multi-staged Corpus arena set up inside the Sergeant’s ship. In one wall is a glass window that you can’t see through. You find yourself fighting the Sergeant and when he gets to 80% health, he explodes, spawning a wave of Corpus robotic enemies. Then the Sergeant reappears again, and once you get him to 60%, he explodes yet again, spawning a wave of Corpus bots. Only a handful though, no more than 10 – after all, this is a fight for Phobos, a rather low level area.

This repeats at 40% and 20%, until he reaches 1% health. The Sergeant does moderate damage and moves around a lot, but his health drops quickly, it only taking a couple of shots with the MK1-Paris to defeat each stage. As you fight, the Sergeant throws more and more insults at you, even insulting your squad and your clan. He’ll also call your pets ugly if you’re using them, saying that you should be using X or Y colours.

When the Sergeant gets to 1% health, he yet again explodes and the glass window above shatters. You can jump inside, where you can see the Sergeant himself watching you all, with a bunch of monitors and some sort of cloning or replicator device, with which he has been creating copies of himself to fight in the arena.

No matter how you decide to kill the Sergeant, something underneath his chair explodes, and the Sergeant is catapulted off out of the room, flying off into space. Just like Team Rocket but with one final insult on how your Warframe looks, stating that “all the Platinum in the universe can’t fix your fashion failures”.

So it’d be a fun fight with a little bit of challenge but not a huge amount.

Oh! The Sergeant also needs a name. But I’m not great at names. Let’s just call him Tim.