The Problem with Primed Warframes and Lore

Primed Warframes look awesome. They are more decorated than normal Warframes, and have pre-existing polarity slots, as well some small buffs. Primed Warframes however still share the abilities of their normal Warframe variants. While a Primed Warframe will often be shinier and laced with gold, the base Warframe can be seen underneath. This can lead to some curious questions. Are the Primed Warframes the originals, as originally planned by the Orokin? Or are our old, normal Warframes the older version, with the best among them being made into Primed versions.

Are Primes the originals or not?

At first glance, the answer to the question is yes, the Primes are the originals. They are advertised as being better and shinier, so maybe they were what the Orokin made first. On the flip side, normal Warframes may have been the originals, while Primed Warframes were made once a frame had proved itself.

While the idea of being the original, gold-trimmed warriors sounds nice, the lore does kinda fall apart around them. The Prime being the first makes sense on older Warframes like Rhino and Ember. But many later Warframes just don’t fit in. If the Limbo that blew itself up in the Void was originally the Prime, why are we getting normal Limbo from completing his quest?

Valkyr’s lore is where things really break

The Valkyr Warframe has a pretty unique origin story. It turned out that Valkyr wasn’t always a half-torn-apart monster. At one point, Valkyr had the Gersemi skin, which is apparently what Valkyr looked like BEFORE Alad V captured and tortured her.

Because of this, people assumed that Valkyr Prime would be based on the Gersemi skin, rather than the war-torn Valkyr obtained on Jupiter. However, Valkyr Prime looks a LOT like normal Valkyr. The battle scars are less obvious, but it is clear that Gersemi wasn’t really considered here.

Varzia confirms but doesn’t

To pour more gasoline on the fire, we have a new being hanging around. Varzia is a Dax soldier that was saved by the Tenno. She’s also managed to somehow stay alive for all these years, and she seems excited to make friends and comment on us Tenno and Warframes. Speaking to Varzia however can produce random voice lines, both of which… don’t make much sense. On the one hand, she says that the Primes were the originals. But she also has a voice line stating the opposite, that the normal Warframes were the originals, and they would get gilded later.

It gets even messier when you look at frames like Octavia and Harrow. Harrow in particular has real problems because, according to the Red Veil, they helped make the Harrow Warframe. We’ve seen the original Harrow, chained up with Rell trying to keep the Man in the Wall away. How do you prime something that we essentially killed in a quest?

It makes no sense.

An easy alternative

Frankly, the Prime VS non-Prime argument will never end with a simple, clean answer. It’s a little bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Either the original was the Prime or it wasn’t. You can go back and forth easily on this, especially with quest-based Warframes. It started years ago, with the Mirage and Limbo quests, and only becomes more difficult as quest-based Warframes are added.

Really though, the solution is pretty simple. We just have to go on a case-by-case basis. There’s no clear answer that covers everyone, but we can have multiple answers. Maybe Limbo Prime did blow himself up, but the remains that we find are normal Limbo parts, because people scavenged the Orokin gold parts. This still doesn’t answer for Harrow, but it is a step forward.

Either way though, it doesn’t matter. Digital Extremes will be making Primes of every Warframe anyway, because they’re cool. The rule of cool always beats the rule of lore…