Eternalism And Everyone Being The Main Character

Most MMOs have the same problem. There’s technically only one protagonist, despite hundreds or thousands of players all being that one single protagonist. This is normally hand-waved away, because MMOs need a protagonist to do their main quests and storylines. It’s the singular hero (or team of heroes) who struggles though the plot of a game, while everyone else might as well be an NPC. It’s always bothered me a little bit, because it basically makes no sense. Either we all do these story quests or no one does.

Warframe is no stranger to this problem. After all, it’s only one Tenno, one Warframe, one Drifter who plays out all these events. Only one person can repair Umbra’s broken mind, put Rell to rest or help kill Ballas after all. But Warframe has a way to somewhat get around this:

Eternalism.

Basically, Eternalism makes it so everyone is the chosen one in their own storyline. It’s basically a myriad of different pasts and futures merged into one. For every specific action you do, there’s a potential other timeline where you don’t do that specific action. So for example, in the end of The War Within, you are given three choices: give the Kuva to Teshin, shuck the Kuva away or drink the Kuva. If you decide to drink the Kuva, then there’s a parallel universe where you didn’t drink the Kuva.

In fact, this is exactly why the Drifter exists. In the New War, there is a part on the Zariman sections where you meet the Man in the Wall, disguised as yourself, pretending to cry to lure you over. At this point, two main paths exist: the path where you accept the Man in the Wall’s help and become an operator, used by the Orokin to control Warframes; and the path where you don’t accept that help and end up never being saved from the Zariman, becoming the Drifter.

This becomes even more important during the New War, where Ballas uses the Paracesis to stab the Operator. At this point, we see multiple timelines end with the Operator dying, apart from only two scenarios where the Tenno somehow survives and is taken to the Zariman and the Drifter gets dragged into the main timeline. From there on, new timelines are created, but they all stem from the moment where Ballas pretty much kills you.

Eternalism also makes it easier for there to be multiple Tenno. Each timeline can exist with a different Tenno or Drifter. The Tenno live in a place where everyone is the main character, everyone experiences the general events of Warframe’s timeline, but they’ve also all taken part in that timeline in their own way. Basically, if there’s a timeline where you die, you just carry on in a timeline where you don’t die, and are none the wiser.

This does end up being quite messy though. You end up with a huuuuuge number of timelines that are all as true as each other. It’s not just you who chose to throw or drink the Kuva at at the end of the War Within, every other Tenno also made a decision. There are so many timelines being created and mushed together, because everyone is creating their own slice of history.

It’s all a bit of a mess, but I guess it’s better than just hand-waving the problem away. Still, this is all very confusing. Because, if every timeline happens, there’s a timeline where we fail to stop Ballas and the sun gets destroyed. But hopefully, that timeline never actually happens…