Theories on Warframe 1999
Seeing the Warframe 1999 trailer at Tennocon still blows my mind. I’ve found myself watching the whole reveal of Whispers in the Walls and Warframe 1999 multiple times now, and damn it, it makes me really hyped up. I’m way more hyped up for these two than I was for both the New War and the Duviri Paradox. Okay, granted, those two updates were good, but they took a long time to actually come out, and they didn’t really match what we saw in the original trailers. While Whispers in the Walls is still rather mindblowing, I want to focus on Warframe 1999.
Why? Well, I can kinda make some generic predictions when it comes to Whispers in the Walls. We’ve been hyping up the Man in the Wall as a threat or at least a… thing for a long time. It’s been slowly building since Chains of Harrow, and we know it’s all going to just get bigger from here. Warframe 1999 on the other hand is so insanely strange and bewildering that I HAVE to talk about it and make up some theories. I’ve spoken to multiple friends who don’t really play (or haven’t even played) Warframe, and Warframe 1999 is just so strange and out there that, well, it’s so disconnected that I can talk about it with people who haven’t played. After all, “High Sci-Fi game set in the fare future, its next expansion is set in 1999” is a hell of a ride.
But what theories do I even have? A big part of me thinks it’s some sort of simulation or something, but I really doubt that DE would put all this effort into a thing, only for it not to be real. Plus, we already have simulation-like settings, in Octavia’s Anthem and pretty much everything Cephalon Simaris does. And we’ve already done dream-like stuff repeatedly. The only real avenue left is timey-wimey stuff.
We have had timey-wimey stuff in the past though. In Protea’s quest, we discover the Granum Void, where time works differently, and the final battle involves fighting Protea, ending up with a situation that people (namely the player, Eudico, the Biz and Parvos Granum) all remember. But that time travel happened over approximately an hour, and there weren’t any meaningful consequences because of it.In Warframe 1999 (and partly in Whispers in the Walls), it’s quite clearly actual time travel. After all, Albrecht Entrati didn’t get those old IBMs from just anywhere. Not in that pristine condition. We also see a bit more time travel just before we wake up Loid, with a subway train blazing through the penultimate room.
There are some obvious things about what we saw in the Warframe 1999 trailer though. Albrecht Entrati is definitely present, as is the Man in the Wall. The Voidtongue at the end proves that. The question is, has it been the Man in the Wall all along, or does Albrecht get taken over by the Man in the Wall at the last moment? I think both things happen. Albrecht travels back to 1999, only to get possessed by Wally at the last moment.
What I also think is that Arthur is actually there not from the far future, but from the more recent future or even the recent past. Like, from the year 2000. Or even potentially from earlier in the year 1999. Aoi, the voice telling Arthur what to do, begs to know if Arthur “made it” and to get to a terminal, suggesting he was teleported from somewhere and ended up in that train carriage, not that he was there all along. We also get a message from Aoi saying that she wishes they had found Dr. Entrati from the very start.
As to how we have someone with the head of a human and the body of an Excalibur Warframe in the year 1999, I actually think that maybe Albrecht Entrati bought some… seeds with him. He probably has some Orokin technology on his person, not just the normal real-world tech we see in the beginning of Whispers in the Walls. After all, the enemies we see in Warframe 1999 look a LOT like infested beings, specifically Infested Runners. If Entrati had a way to make Infested, he almost certainly has to have the pieces to make Warframes. Warframes are basically Infested after all.
My basic theory so far is that we’re fighting Albrecht Entrati, but we’re also helping him, and both Albrecht and the Man in the Wall know this. That’s why Dr. Entrati goes “You’re late!” at the end, because, well, we’re too late to stop the Man in the Wall from possessing Albrecht. This is probably the point where everything resets, and we get dumped back into the past to try again. And maybe, this time, Arthur and Aoi have more time to find Dr. Entrati and try and stop him.
What I really do hope is that we have a choice, that we don’t have to only play as Arthur. I very much doubt we’ll have Warframe 1999 versions of every Warframe, but I can see DE doing at least the three starters, maybe, hopefully, the original 8 Warframes. Because playing as Loki or Rhino would be fun.
Either way, I can’t wait for Warframe 1999. And I really hope that all my little theories are wrong. Because I genuinely want to be surprised by all of this. I’m genuinely hyped up, Warframe 1999 is going to be so cool.