This is a heavy spoiler article for the New War. If you haven’t played the New War and don’t want to see spoilers, then please don’t read any further. The New War is a complicated quest with a LOT of spoiler content. Of course, if you don’t mind spoilers, then come right in!

SPOILERS START HERE

There is a LOT of weird and unexplained stuff in the New War. This quest jumps all over the place. We go from fighting an army to everyone being mind controlled, all the way to the, uh … sun. Of all places. Lore-wise, it’s an insanely weird and almost terrifying quest that ends on, thankfully, somewhat of a good note.

However, there was one thing that bothered me. Something that I didn’t see happen.

The Launch Screen

For the New War, we had a looping scene on the Launcher, showing off New War stuff. A non-looped version of this same scene was used as a trailer coming up to the New War. There is a memory of how the Lotus carried us into our magic chairs, seeing a Nova fighting Grineer, then getting shot in the text and revealing a pissed off Operator. This is all kinda normal, but the next scene changes things. We are then shown this unnamed Tenno, tears in her eyes, ready to fire her void laser at Natah, the being that was formerly the Lotus. Behind Natah is a massive sentient army, all aiming at the Tenno.

Despite my bad rendition of this scene, it is very tragic and really sets the New War up as the Tenno have to confront their former mother. A Tenno unable to save Natah and then trying to find the strength to kill her. Sounds tragic, right? Well, there’s a small problem.

This scene never actually happens in the New War.

The whole scene, the whole style of it all, it doesn’t exist in the New War. Heck throughout the entirety of the damn quest, Natah is hardly actually present, mostly just slunk down in a chair. She actually needs our help to save herself, and turns against Ballas very, very quickly.

In fact, the last battle is actually Natah VS Ballas, but with us Tenno helping out.

Was it cut? Or a red herring?

What makes this whole event really strange is that, well, people were expecting to fight Natah! We all had lengthy discussions about Natah’s state. In fact, many people were ready to KILL Natah for betraying us and starting a war! But it turns out, Natah was used and isn’t actually a bad guy or anything. She’s just being manipulated by Ballas. A bit like everyone else. So seeing a teaser where you face off against the Lotus and her new Sentient family seems very misleading.

Actually, now that I think about it, a lot of the teasers weren’t completely on point. The big New War poster image (the loading screen for Warframe) featured Natah’s weird split face as the main background image, with Sentients fucking shit up on both sides. But Natah never really was the antagonist. This was all Ballas’s doing.

But why?

I think, at the end of the day, DE wanted to make everything a surprise. They went to great lengths to keep the entire plot hidden from us. And that included releasing teasers that don’t completely relate to the quest. But at the same time though, why go to all this effort when it’s all a red herring?

Personally, I am of the opinion that a lot of content was cut or redone or whatever. They had to trim a lot of fat to make things work. After all, that launcher video was made to go alongside the New War, even if it never actually happened…

Still, it’s interesting to ponder about, right? Right.