Chimera Prologue – A New Mini Quest

I’ll be honest, I was surprised when I heard that there was a new quest included in the recent Warframe update. The fact that it was 3GB suggested that there was more behind the scenes, but I just assumed that 3GB was all part of the huge number of bug fixes and changes or something. Nope, there’s a mini quest.

Heads up! Spoilers ahead, because this quest is basically a HUGE spoiler of what’s to come. If you want to play it, you need to have completed every other main quest up until now, including the Sacrifice.

Chimera Prologue has a LOT in common with Apostasy Prologue. It starts in pretty much the same way and is mostly the same aside from the bit at the end and the inclusion of some enemies.

Yes, there are enemies. Not particularly hard or dangerous ones, just enough that I’d recommend not talking an unmodded, unranked Warframe with no weapons. If anything, the sudden explosion of a ring of fire made me jump more. Only the first time.

Anyway, just like Apostasy Prologue, the quest starts by you touching the Lotus helmet in your ship. The Man in the Wall appears, wearing Lotus’s helmet, then disappears. Immediately, you appear in your landing craft and are dropped off at Lua.

A quick note. I actually remembered to record it this time.

Same place as before.

Same path mostly as well.

There’s no real talking though. You don’t hear Lotus or Ballas. Just the Man in the Wall whispering and laughing at you, leading you on.

After a few empty rooms, the Man in the Wall disappears, spawning a wall of flames and forcing you to kill a bunch of… Lotus zombies, I guess. They’re like the emotion shadows fought in the Chains of Harrow quest, but they die to normal weaponry. This will happen a couple of times, you’ll follow the Man in the Wall through some rooms, then he’ll trap you with a fiery ring and send Lotus zombies at you.

It’s pretty obvious what he’s preparing us for. Killing Lotus-related things.

Eventually, we end up at a familiar location, the reservoir where we found our Tenno selves. Once again, just like in Apostasy Prologue, there’s a massive hole in the middle. One you can jump down…

And yet again, jumping down it transfers you to Operator mode. Your Warframe is goodness knows where. It’s the same corridor we all walked down before, the one in which we watched the Lotus take Ballas’s hand and disappear. This time though, the Man in the Wall is mocking us and the Lotus, but… we can follow.

There’s a glowing doorway at the end. One that leads you to a dark, shadowy realm. Not the Void, something closer to Hunhow’s lair. Everything is dark and gloomy. The only way you can travel is to Void Dash to various flickering lights in the darkness.

Guess who’s there.

Ballas. But he’s broken. Devastated. Cut in half. Half Orokin, half Sentient, his lower body replaced with that horrible, weird, sentient material, one of his old, human legs dangling off lamely.

“Hello? No. No hope.”

Ballas starts talking to himself. As he does so, he writhes in pain. A blinding light is emitted from one eye, a light that blinds and burns you if you try to approach. Our only option is to dash between points, listening to Ballas ramble while hiding away in the shadows.

This broken being, one that we all loathed and hated, has been tricked, the same way we were. There is no Lotus, there was no Margulis left inside her. It was all a trick. Ballas was fooled by her love the same way we were, and he has paid the price for it, trapped in the darkness, suffering. As he rambles and pleads to uncaring darkness, Ballas starts putting something together. A sword.

His ramble soon ends. He knows we’re there. He closes his burning eyes, giving us a chance to touch this sword, take away its idea, so we can create it ourselves.

Before we know it, we’re back on our ship. Ballas is gone. So is the Man in the Wall. All that’s left is that horrible, purple helmet and a blueprint for the Paracesis, the Sentient Slayer.

And that’s where the quest ends. With even more unanswered questions.

There’s one thing that’s clear though. We are going to have to fight and maybe even kill the Lotus.