A Love-Hate Relationship with Lua

Lua is a very strange thing. None of it makes sense. It basically should not exist as it is. To many people, it’s a pretty cool thing. To others, it’s horrible. For me, I’m on the fence about it.

Lua in this case is referring to the planet unlocked after the Second Dream in Warframe, not to the programming language often used in gaming, for example what people use to make add-ons for Garry’s Mod. Honestly that too has a very love-hate feel about it, simply because it’s a programming language.

But yeah, Lua is both cool and not cool.

Well, Lua definitely has to be cool. It doesn’t have a visible atmosphere. At all. It’s not like the other, smaller planets like Europa, Ceres and Phobos where there could feasibly be an atmosphere, one was made and looks like it’s still there, everything’s been terraformed and turned into manufacturing or it’s all underground or in ships so it doesn’t matter anyway. There’s no sign of an atmosphere on Lua. It never had one. Then again I can’t complain about that because in reality, Phobos is potato-shaped and is basically a big meteor.

But still, Lua is weirdly cold. It’s a strange combination of dull, grey moon rock and the standard Orokin white and gold. It’s weirdly beautiful as well. Seeing how everything is falling apart, not because of invading Grineer or the Infested taking root, but because it’s all just been left alone for so long.

What bothers me most is why is any of it there? I mean outside of gameplay reasons of course. The entirety of Lua makes no sense, especially when it’s so much more Orokin-ified than everything else. Okay, yeah, it’s been in the Void for a while, but nowhere else compares to the amount of Orokin-ness that Lua has.

For example, Lua has puzzles everywhere. Not traps the same way other Orokin places have. Just random puzzles. I mean, I assume that Lua was used to train soldiers but why are these rooms scattered around like candy for soldiers to stumble into? How does that train anyone? Not to mention that there are very few large areas that could hold a lot of soldiers. The terrain, even when you ignore the ruins, is incredibly similar to normal Orokin stuff with beauty over function.

Lua Spy missions are no fun either. A slightly different bit of insanity. Not only are they among the more complicated of Spy missions but they’re also the most cheese-able. With just a Nova or a Nezha with their teleporting abilities, they can do an entire Lua Spy mission in minutes. If you’re not cheesing them though… I mean, these Vaults require going back and forth in time. Is it really necessary to risk the Space Time Continuum just for some data? Don’t even ever find out what that data even is, just that the Lotus needs it.

Speaking of her, there are also Sentients on Lua for some reason. Which is weird because that place is probably still teeming with Void radiation or something like that. But they ONLY appear on Lua. Or Earth. Or very, very briefly on Uranus before disappearing in a flash of light. But mostly Lua. Not only should they be insanely weak because of any leftover Void traces, but really, they should have murdered a ton of Tenno by now, since, even after Hunhow’s death, they know exactly where a lot of other Tenno are located. The question is, when we pull the moon out of the Void in the Second Dream, are we making Lua accessible for everyone or just ourselves? Are there still sleeping Tenno there or not?

The thing that really pisses me off though? How the fuck did the Lotus get that thing in the Void in the first place? Just how powerful was she? Lotus is one single Sentient. Even with an army of human and possibly Sentient and Orokin allies, there’s no way she could have moved the entirety of the MOON into the Void.

This action suggests a power scale way above literally anything else. Even if it was more akin to moving the Moon the same way Limbo moves in the Rift, the amount of sheer power to do so is staggering. And on top of that, NO ONE KNEW WHERE THE MOON WENT? One of the biggest triumphs of the Orokin empire, one of the jewels in their crown, and it was shunted off into the Void without anyone finding out? And what about the poor people on the moon already? Did they all just get brutally killed or consumed by the Void? What happened to them? Every single Tenno was stored there, until they wake up in the Second Dream. Were the Tenno the only survivors on Lua?

And on top of that, shouldn’t everything on Lua be irradiated? It was in the Void for a long time, even if you assume every Tenno wakes up at roughly the same time. It should still be filled with mind-altering Void goodness. It should be driving the Grineer and Corpus who go there insane. Heck, if Void matter is so unstable, as everyone keeps on telling me, how did Lua not fall apart?

And everyone just acts like Lua’s a perfectly fine place to visit and ransack?

Yet none of that really happens. Lua is just a place now. A place that makes no sense!

That does it. Lua is dumb. Take me somewhere where physics makes slightly more sense!

Or don’t. Because Lua is an insanely beautiful place. The epitome of both splendor and ruin.