Not a Fan of the Drifter

Please note that this article is very spoiler-heavy. If you haven’t played the New War, I recommend going and doing that before reading this article, so you can avoid the biggest spoiler of the quest. It’s also probably worth playing the Angels of the Zariman quest too, since I’ll be mentioning that.

Anyway, here we are, talking about the newest feature of Warframe. Every major quest update gets a new weapon and a new gimmick. This time though, we are given a second character to play with. The Drifter is basically your Operator except from an alternate timeline. One in which your player character doesn’t get ‘blessed’ with void powers. In the New War, your Operator is kinda… killed, I guess, or out of commission, and Drifter takes your place as the main protagonist for most of the quest.

Basically the same as the Operator.

After the New War though? The Drifter is… almost cosmetic. We gain the ability to switch between Operator and Drifter, which can be done in the main UI for the Operator, in the vast chair in the rear of your ship. But doing this doesn’t really mean or do anything. You are still playing as the Operator, except slightly older. Drifter is larger than the Operator, but not by a lot, and they only really seem older since they wear big, heavy clothing. Vastly different from Operators in their rubber suits. If anything, the Drifter feels stretched.

The main difference between them though is void powers VS no void powers. Except Drifter somehow magically got void powers. How? No idea. So both characters play exactly the same. It’s just the dialogue that changes.

They look ugly too.

Originally, Operators were pretty ugly, but as time passed, we got more and more cosmetics for them. Drifter has started off in the same way, with some really baggy gear. However, all those nice cosmetics we have for Operators now can’t be used on the Drifter. We’ve been told that they’d be “coming soon” but we’ll be waiting a while. To make matters worse, what Drifter DOES have in terms of clothing isn’t particularly good.

The best bit about Drifter is gone.

In the New War, Drifter played differently to how he/she does now. Drifter had a full set of abilities of their own, as well as his/her own weapon. Playing as Drifter was a vast contrast to speedy Warframes and Void-slinging Operators, requiring some tactics and stealth, to avoid being killed. However, after the New War, Drifter’s unique abilities disappear, and they play exactly the same as the Operator. But those abilities were the best part about Drifter, forcing us to be careful and not waste our resources.

Missed Potential

The whole concept of the Drifter is a great idea, and it worked well in the New War. A stressful story and harder, slower and riskier gameplay made the Drifter genuinely interesting and fun to play. But after the New War ends, the Drifter kinda becomes an afterthought. You just switch between Drifter and Operator when you please. It feels like more was planned for Drifter, but we’re yet to see it.

I assume the Drifter will have a bigger voice in whatever the fuck is coming from the Void. Hopefully they’ll get a chance to be themselves again, or in a more familiar place. But Drifter right now just alludes to other things, and, aside from being a bit taller and a bit more grubby, you do feel like something else is happening. Yet again though, we probably won’t be seeing any of this for a long, long time…