What the Fuck is up with Warframe’s Lore? Too Many Puppets!

Ugh, everyone in Warframe is a damn puppet. Almost literally everyone. Warframe’s lore is incredibly all over the place. However you look at it, it’s easy to miss some details. Most of the lore in Warframe is buried away, or hidden in little crevices. But no matter what, even if you are completely lost, you can assume that someone is a puppet to someone else.

You are a puppet as soon as the game starts.

In the very introduction to Warframe, the first thing you experience is Captain Vor sticking a device on you so he can control you. He wants to make Warframes into his slaves, with the hopes of finding out more about them. Rather than just murdering them while they’re asleep.

So you go through the quest and stop yourself from being Vor’s slave. Then you break out into the real world and realise that you’re basically the Lotus’s bitch, doing missions for her.

Puppets! Puppet everywhere!

As you continue on through Warframe’s story, you realise there are more puppets around. Namely, your Warframe. It turns out that your Warframe is literally a puppet made of meat, controlled by a child. A child that was used as a puppet of war by the Orokin. And you discover this in a quest while fighting Shadow Stalker. Shadow Stalker is also a puppet, being manipulated by Hunhow. Hunhow also controlled the Lotus briefly.

Everyone is like this. Rell and his Warframe Harrow ended up becoming mere puppets to the Man in the Wall. Teshin was a puppet to the Twin Queens. Eudico was a puppet for Nef Anyo for a while until she revived Solaris United.

We also run into Alad V. Alad V has been a puppet about 20 billion times. He was a puppet to the Corpus board originally, until he fucked up and got fired. Then he started working on Infested stuff and became a puppet to the Infested hive minds. We save him from that mess, only for him to get caught up later on by becoming a puppet of the Sentients. Poor guy just can’t win.

And then there’s Ballas…

Ballas is the most puppet-y puppet of them all.

On the one hand, Ballas used Umbra and his son as puppets, to punish and manipulate Umbra. But, according to Natah, she was made into a puppet by Ballas as well. Her change from Lotus back into Natah was caused by Ballas making her into his puppet again. This however failed miserably, and Ballas suddenly became NATAH’S PUPPET.

But IS he actually the puppet here? Because every little cut scene with Natah, Ballas and Natah’s brother Erra have been hinting that there’s some INSANE puppetry around! It looks like Natah and Erra are controlling Ballas, but then it looks like Erra is controlling Natah, but maybe Ballas is manipulating Erra as well? Who the fuck knows any more?

It’s just puppetry all the way down.

Even background characters are puppets.

Seriously, no one can escape being a puppet. For example, both Jordas, Alad V and the events of the Emissary all ended up as Infested puppets. We literally have an entire faction of puppets! The Corrupted are literally just a massive army of slaves, mind-controlled by the Neural Sentries in Orokin towers.

Even the strong independent woman that is Little Duck is not immune. She used to be a protege of the Business. And now she’s basically a puppet on the strings of the Quills. And we are all puppets when it comes to the Void Trader Baro Ki’Teer, as we mindlessly bring him Primed Warframe and weapon parts, in exchange for Ducats, which we then exchange back to him for the shit he sells.

If anything, the only non-puppets around here are Darvo and Clem, who seem to just do whatever the hell they want.

It’s all the same.

So yeah, basically everyone is a puppet. And it’s getting pretty damn boring…

Also, I’m now very sick of the word “puppet”.