Even with Deimos, the Infested are Still Boring

The Heart of Deimos is the first Infested open world area. You venture through an icky, gooey, biting landscape. A place where everything wants to eat you. The Cambion Drift is an awful place. But, deep down, it’s not a completely infested hellhole. There’s Orokin architecture buried underneath. This place isn’t all Infested, it’s an amalgam of both Infested and Orokin.

And the more interesting stuff is definitely the Orokin.

The fact is, the Infested aren’t that… interesting.

That probably seems a little mean at first. The Infested can’t help the fact that they’re the generic alien-like enemy. I suppose they do get bonus points for not actually being aliens. But they’re not that unique. Weird technology that turns people into mutant horrors. The Infested were originally some sort of bio-weapon to be used against the Sentients, but it clearly got out of control. Some of it escaped and went on to infect other places as well.

But really, it’s just another endless army of monsters that infect others and eats things. And even in their own open world, the Infested are the side characters to the Orokin-based protagonists.

The Infested are the same everywhere.

The Infested also have very little variation. While the Grineer and Corpus have different variants based on location, most Infested are identical. Deimos Infested are slightly different, but the changes aren’t that noticeable, and they’re still the same shape. Really, they just have a few tendrils on their backs. Elsewhere, from Mercury to Sedna, it’s the same old stuff. We don’t even get colour variants.

We have weird, infested technology but no one who actually uses it.

Did you know that only a handful of Infested weapons have been used by actual Infested enemies? It’s basically just some infested claws and a pistol. The ones that came out with the Heart of Deimos update. They were used by Emissary enemies in series 2 of Nightwave, and that’s basically it. Everything else is simply too feral to actually use weapons. Which begs the question: where did these weapons all come from?

Well, except for the Mutalist Cernos. That’s pretty obvious.

The only interesting Infested are those only partially infected.

Seriously, everything aside from the Infested are interesting. On the Cambion Drift, it’s the partially-infested Entrati that steal the spotlight. They’re the ones that talk and actually have personality. Outside of Deimos, only the Jordas Golem is left. Alad V was cured of the Infestation, and everything else is just big, evil boss monsters.

All other Infested are screaming masses. There’s a hive mind sure, but we only really see it when a boss is around. And even then, it’s the same old “join us” stuff, just in different forms.

The Emissary is the only thing to attempt to change this. A weird, infested cult, duped into wanting to spread Infestation where it can’t normally reach. But they’re all essentially humanoid. We did get a nice little bit of information about them, however, we haven’t seen them since. The only trace of their existence now is a single node on Deimos. Which is just the old Derelict.

The Heart of Deimos only offered little Infested Lore.

And most of that lore is that the Entrati’s stupid son brought them in and got everyone infected. There’s hints that the Infestation is intelligent and has greater plans, but we’ll never actually get close to seeing them. Because they’re just the scary zombies that we mindlessly slaughter.