An Ode to Ordis, for real
Ordis is a ship Cephalon and the AI controlling your home, the Orbiter, in Warframe. Damaged and slightly crazy, Ordis makes sure that everything is okay and refers to you as the Operator. He is the fourth being you’ll ever meet (after your Warframe, the Lotus and Captain Vor), and he’ll always be with you. Forever and ever. Because Ordis cares about you and will happily die for you if he has to.
But not many people care about Ordis. His repeating lines, his bad humor, his error-induced puns, his violent outburts and that damn Grineer not-a-number witticism often drive people mad, as they are repeated on a regular basis. As is often the way when a character lacks enough dialogue that it seems to repeat a lot. Being someone who is always with you, essentially your room mate, I can see why people would get annoyed with him.
Aabicus’s first interaction with Ordis was him endlessly repeating a phrase, because aabicus couldn’t work out what to do. On the other hand, sister Lilskully didn’t have that problem because she can follow instructions from deranged ship Cephalons. Many people just hear the same old jokes over and over, then roll their eyes and get off their ship as soon as possible. After all, there’s only a handful of lines for each of your actions.
Luckily, Ordis can be muted. His hint transmissions can be turned off and his volume can be set to zero, so he can’t be heard. You can also start a quest, and Ordis will not say anything other than quest dialogue – while this backfires with quests like The Limbo Theorem, he will remain silent during the Glast Gambit and will be gone for almost forever if you stall the replayable quest Octavia’s Anthem.
But my response to that is that we’re being overly mean to Ordis.
Most people only ever see the surface of Ordis. They see the crazy Cephalon and that’s it. Maybe they’ll hear some extra dialogue during quests, but that’s about it. But Ordis is much deeper than we all thought. The majority of this information comes from Cephalon Fragments that can be scanned (with either your Codex Scanner or your pansy little scanner from Simaris) in missions across the solar system. You scan them all, and not only do you get a nice picture and some tidbits of lore about each planet, but there are also secret areas on the images that get Ordis to start talking.
It turns out, Ordis was actually someone called Ordan Karris. Ordan Karris was a mercenary that worked for the Orokin elite, known as the Butcher of Bones. A vicious madman, as he neared the end of his life, rather than be blessed by the Orokin and made immortal, he decided to chop as many of them into pieces as possible in a suicidal rage.
Ordan doesn’t die though. He’s revived by the Orokin and turned into Cephalon Ordis, so he’ll mindlessly serve the Orokin and the Tenno for all time. He serves them until the Tenno are put into cryosleep. But while they’re all asleep, Ordis begins to remember the horrible things he did. The murder and the destruction. To the point where Ordis considers committing suicide and destroying himself. For fear of the anger of Ordan Karris returning, fearing that he might upset or harm the Operators.
Ordis though never does. Because he cares about the Operators so much, he purges his memories so he can continue to serve you. Ordis loves you. And Ordis is willing to give his life for you, other Tenno and other Cephalons.
Unlike Cephalon Suda, who just wants you to kill things; unlike Cephalon Simaris, who just wants you to do menial tasks for him; unlike people like Darvo, Maroo and Clem, who are in it for the profit; unlike the Lotus, who makes herself out to be a kindly mother but also sends all her kids out to ‘bring balance to the system’; unlike all of them, Ordis genuinely cares for you.
And that’s why I like Ordis.