Drawing From Life

So spoiler heavy for people who haven't played this quest yet, obviously lol.

So I finally got around to playing the New War, after much faffing around with building weapons and warframes and doing other bits and pieces - and also, just to be clear, I have actually finished the whole quest, it's just the bloody thing is so huge and mind boggling I've decided to split it into two posts. So, post sacrifice, I did spend a little time beefing up my frames and trying to figure out how to use amps. I grabbed Gara and Gyre, and left Equinox sitting on the bench alongside Limbo and Excalibur, as I'm getting pretty close to getting the free warframe slot from the Nightwave thingy, and I made the plunge and grabbed Oberon's prime set which is also currently sitting in the "in progress" pile. I also managed to pick up Mesa from the Tennocon 2026 twitch stream, but I suspect I won't be using her much - I wasn't that keen on her playstyle.

Playing through the prelude chapters was interesting - finding out that the Lotus was actually a brainwashed sentient who had been manipulated into fighting against her own kind was really interesting, plus it tracks with how the Orokin have been portrayed as manipulators who will use anything and anyone to achieve their own ends. It was also a bit of a surprise to see how Ballas had been... rescued, though I can't say I felt that sorry for him.

With all that said, my initial response to "The New War" was to have FF14 flashbacks because of the warning before starting the quest lol. Anyway, to the surprise of no-one my jaw was absolutely on the floor when the cutscenes started off showing the massive Sentient attack ships laying siege to the various outposts on earth and venus. It dropped even further when, after the cutscene ended, it turned out we were going to be playing through the initial part of the invasion as a grineer! I have to admit, playing as the grineer was really interesting, getting a tiny insight into their mindset from their own point of view - especially the fanatical obeisance to the grineer queens. It was also (sadly) a good display of just how bad my aiming is lol. I'm so used to using either Titania's pixie abilities, or just blasting everything with Wisp's solar rays, that when I actually had to just use the guns everything got so much harder! It was also a bit of an eyeopener as to just how much of a one-man-army the Tenno are; Had it been Evey fighting in the trenches, they would have torn through the Sentients and taken down the portal on thirty seconds flat, but as a grineer mook, even with all their savage training, it took much longer.

The Corpus mook POV on their gunship was also an interesting little view into their lives, but I struggled a bit with the gameplay in that section which took away from it a little. I haven't really utilised pets in the same way that you have to deploy the Moas, and so it was a bit of a pain to figure them out and I ended up having to restart that section over quite a few times. I also feel like the charcterisation wasn't quite as strong as in the grineer section; I do find it kind of hard to believe that the corpus mook shook off his brainwashing and did something as selfless as a valiant last stand against the sentients, but I do still think it was a really cool moment.

and then the cavalry arrives, and once again I'm put through a gameplay element that I've basically never done when Evey shows up in their Railjack! I'm given to understand that the railjack missions aren't the most popular, and from the few times I've done them I can see why; They do seem to be absolutely geared towards group play, with everyone taking on specific roles which require you to, in a sense, let go of a lot of control. At any rate, I can only assume that the Devs made this section pretty easy by comparison, as I managed not to get myself blown up even once! In saying that, there was a bit of an awkward moment when you have to blast the Murex ship with a particular kind of gun and I didn't know how to do it. I ended up just randomly button mashing until I realised I had to jump out of the pilot's seat and fire a completely different gun.

I won't talk too much about the section with Teshin - this bit felt a lot more like playing in a warframe, and I admit I got a bit frustrated at this point. I found a few times I got swarmed by the sentients, and where a warframe would have been able to get out of there no problem, Teshin got stunlocked and overwhelmed. I also found the element switching thing to be a little tedious, given how slow most of the attacks were - I stuck to lightning stance wherever possible!

Anyway, after guiding Teshin into the central chamber of the Murex battleship and seeing what had become of Lotus / Natah / Margulis(?), as she watches Teshin repeatedly struggle and ultimately perish against Erra was kind of a shock. I had assumed (at the time) that the Sentients were in total control, but no, that ass Ballas has been playing puppeteer behind the scenes. Evey arrives too late to save Teshin, and makes a frankly astonishing attempt to save LoNaMar; that shot of the Operator stepping out of the warframe to grab her hand was so freaking cool. And then this happened.

"they had learned a way to see inside an ugly, broken thing — and take away its pain"

Holy Moly. SPOILERS AHEAD, I guess? So, as I said in my last warframe post I have become increasingly obsessed with this game - there's something about the whole "collect a bunch of characters" thing that really tickles me, plus now that I do actually get an actual customisable character for the game just adds to it! I will say, it would be nice to give the opperator an actual name, rather than just going by the username, but hey ho. I know their name is Evey, and that's all that matters.

I've also noticed that I've been getting better at the game - in no small part because of the advice that some of the other players have given me. I've also finally settled on my two main frames; Titania and Wisp. Well, I say finally - they were always going to be my main frames, and I'm really glad that their playstyle is one that I like. Titania in particular - I wasn't prepared for just how much fun it is to flit around the battlefield as a tiny pixie! I actually stumbled across another player who mainly uses Titania, who was kind enough to give me some specific pointers as to what mods to look for, as well as giving me a couple to get started. I ended up giving them a (very quick) sketch of their Titania as a thank you for all the help! And then there's Wisp, who has that slinky, floaty animation style, it's so cool, and she's so mysterious looking. I've only got her prime skin and her normal skin, but I'd love to nab some of her others when I've saved up enough.

I've also managed to get my hands on a few more frames since last time - I've now got Nekros, Ember, Nova and Yarelli, with Equinox and Gyre Prime on the way, in addition to Titania, Wisp, Rhino, Dante and Mag (and a certain... umbral warframe). I also really want to get my hands on Oberon, especially with the Monarch butterfly skin, he would absolutely make a perfect addition to the lineup! I also have Excalibur and Limbo sitting ready in the collection queue, but I'm inclined to leave them there for the moment, rather than pay for slots for them. I know I was planning on drawing my own take on each warframe that I got, but I've now got so many, and with work piling up it's not really feasible.

Speaking of drawing, I had intended to draw a short comic, covering Evey's life after being woken by the lotus - I'm about a third of the way through it, and I had intended to finish it before playing through the Sacrifice mission, but hey ho. Incidentally, The Sacrifice. That was a cool mission. Once again, my jaw was on the floor. It certainly sheds a new light on some of the lore and background stuff around the warframes and the tenno - especially Titania's backstory, my god. No wonder Silvana felt sick making the warframes - not only were they weapons of mass destruction, but (BIG SPOILERS) they were made from infected people!? It's also wild that the Orokin were so surprised that their 'weapons' eventually turned on them, they were utilizing traumatised psychic children and forcibly mutating and infecting their own people to make the warframes! Yikes! Cripes! Golly!