On Not Playing As A Warframe

I’m gonna be honest. I’m not as interested as everyone else is when it comes to the Duviri Paradox. Why? It’s pretty simple. Despite being a huge new island of potential, you start off not playing as a Warframe. For a game called and about Warframes, much of our newer content over the years isn’t really about the Warframes. Sure we have things like Citrine’s Last Wish, which is about a Warframe, but major content drops have been all about nothing but the Warframes. Or even really the Operators. The New War was all about the Drifter, and it seems that the Duviri paradox is mainly about the Drifter as well.

Duviri Paradox’s main focus is playing as the Drifter, unlocking various abilities the same way you do when leveling up a Railjack. There’s no mods to install, instead you use random Decrees to give yourself various builds, getting more and more powerful as you run around and do things on Duviri. Instead of using our Warframe’s arsenal of weapons, we use the Drifter’s limited gear. Instead of K-Drives and Archwings, we get a metal horse-like being. And instead of bullet jumping and all our super cool mobility, we get… uh… I don’t know.

Heck, everything Warframe-related is getting a Drifter version in the Duviri Paradox. Instead of fishing with poles, we take control of a Golden Maw and catch fish in a pond by swimming around underwater and eating them. I do agree that this sort of fishing is pretty cool, but it’s still a Drifter version of a Warframe thing.

While the Duviri paradox does have Warframe elements, I don’t know how long they last for. In the recent Devstream, we were shown areas where you got to play as your Warframes, but they were somewhat temporary side quests. And you can’t really just pick you Warframe, you choose one out of a pre-selected bunch of Warframes laid out for you. Yes, I know I should play more than just Volt and Khora but I want to make my own choice when it comes to widening my pool of Warframes. I’ve been playing Styanax lately and he’s cool, and Citrine is neat as well. But I don’t really want randomized gear. What makes matters worse is the fact that, when it comes to randomly picking Warframes, one of the options that appeared on the Devstream was potentially a playable Stalker. I don’t want that to be randomized. I’d love to play as Stalker (even if we’re locked into using Stalker’s weapons) and that’s something I’d like to choose at will.

Thing is, all of this is being done so that you can jump straight into the Duviri Paradox, without having even selected a Warframe. It’s going to be a new tutorial for Warframe, running in parallel with Vor’s Prize. That’s why Warframes are being kept in their own little underground areas, so that new people don’t miss out on anything.

I love playing as a Warframe though. The mobility is awesome, as is using melee and shooting guns at things. Mass murder is fun, but I don’t think we’ll have any mass murder on a Warframe level. In fact, we’ll probably need to spend a good amount of time leveling up as Drifter before we can even get close to being able to use Warframes in the Duviri Paradox. And if it’s anything like leveling up Railjacks or Operators or Necramechs, leveling up Drifter is going to be pretty tedious.

Here’s hoping that the ability to use Warframes in the Duviri Paradox isn’t as rare as it seemed on the Devstreams…