Spoilers for tennocon, a little appreciation post/analysis of what I noticed in the tennolive gameplay demo
This post is very unorganized but I'm gonna start with what I find most interesting which is the black rain.
Seems to me it could be related to the substance called the manifold. That strange black liquid you can see sentients emerge from on Murex ships. It definitely has something to do with birth for sentients (Erra talks of Natah's birth as "the day father lifted you from the manifold"). We don't know that much about the sentients' biology, it doesn't help that they are a hive mind different from the infested, there's individuals like Hunhow, who can excersise control over their fragments, but then their children like Natah and Erra have much more freedom, what the difference? Maybe the children are born from the manifold (maybe they need pieces of "material" from sentients hence how Praghasa and Hunhow are both mother and father to Natah? Idk this topic could be a hour long YouTube video) and the fragments are pieces of the original separated.
But going back to what we've seen, the sentients on Tau are fully addicted to the blooms, they're not just there to help them maintain individuality (which the sentients in the origin system seemingly did by hiding their names, different tangent!), but they bring them refuge from the rain present on the planet Fornax. So, what does the rain do to the sentients? Turns them into rabid, agressive zombies of course! Fitting that Brysko's va is Leon lol.
"But when the black rain falls, everything you buried will come clutching back up".
"The sky bleeds the stone waits".
"The black rain seeps into everything. Nothing keeps it out. And when it get into your head the screaming starts."
"When the black rain is boiling your brains in your head the bloom makes it all go away."
"All dreaming or dead untill the rains come."
"Here the rain brings nightmares, and even the dead wake up howling."
"You're gonna get hive drowned!"
My theory is pretty obvious: the rain causes the sentients to violently revert into "hivemind mode" while also turning them feral.
Why is the rain there? Maybe the planet was a "foundry" for making new sentients and became polluted like Ceres, causing evaporated manifold fluid to evaporate and rain down, maybe gaining new properties? It also could be a completely separate alien weather event, like the weird radiation they found on Perita.
Here's the rest of my jumbled thoughts as I scribbled them down while rewatching the demo:
The car is kinda interesting, sentients originally took shape and identity in service of a goal, they were highly advanced tools. Is the sentient a car? Is it a "soulless" extension that the sentient plugs into like the Hunhullus? What's the sentient hierarchy, do some of them roam free as "people" why others live a life of a slave?
"If the Hunra is still in power when they arrive, there will be war". Hunra is the guy we see in the casino at the end and I doubt that he's some sort of emperor of the whole Tau system, maybe there's multiple sentients with that title or he's a blackmailing crimelord with a lot of sway over the actual sentient power structure. I don't have any answers just a shit ton of questions about the shape of sentient society. I was low-key a sentient supremacist and hoped that after they were separated from the origin system that they built a utopia for themselves and thrived, but that's clearly not the case. I'm very excited to see what got them so fucked up.
Idk if it was obvious that Natah hid the moon in the void during the old war, for some reason I thought that happened after the Tenno killed the Orokin and she put them in the long sleep. Amazing scene tho, I love how we get to see Wally fuck with everyone and we finally have confirmation of what the deal was, to let Natah live in the void with the Tenno. Also baby Natah is so cute, baby robot scarab <3.
The Indifference took Hunhow's memories so that he could do some conceptual embodiment in the latest quest, and since we see the moment of the deal it's easy to conclude Wally took Natah's memories of Tau. But then, she does remember some things, like during archon hunts she will tell us about the sentients beasts before they became what they are now. I don't think the two are exactly contradictory, Hunhow still remembers quite a lot of tidbits too.
When Albrecht talks to Brysko he says "your relatives are coming". He means just our Warframes orrrr will be be bringing the protoframes with us for a quest? : D
The Vessel could be Albrecht's way of showing us his path to Tau so we can follow him? Idk, but also I was hoping it would be some grand thing with the Zariman, and it might still be but now it looks like we just use the railjack lol.
The final scene of Albrecht putting that finger on a vessel like hand was chilling. Maybe I won't have to tear his guts out with Voruna Prime and together we will heal Wally and achieve peace and forgiveness : D.
It also looks like Albrecht has sort of turned himself into an amalgam. Que the Natah dialogue, the dark refractory "you begun the process" etc. can't wait to see more of that.
There were tiny bits of ambient sentient dialogue with no subtitles, I hope someone with good hearing transcribes them on the wiki or in a post somewhere I can see.
The new sentients and the twins are really cool, I'm still kinda meh on the blade runner of it all, I just thought the sentients would be less human, it all seems pretty basic. I'm still stoked af tho!
The sentinet power structure is definitely not very centralized, I kinda thought our steps into Tau would be full of stealth as the Tau system would be one interconnected surveillance state, but the presence of a FUCKING WARFRAME just raises eyebrows and Brysko is able to mostly roam free (at least in the slums), so his presence is definitely weird af (see: the ending of the demo) but not cause for a complete "The Tenno are back!" freakout.
I also kinda hoped Narmer would get some love, since I thought the Hunra was Erra's voice, but I was wrong. Sad how they got dropped right after veil breaker and have like no presence in the game.
The sentient woman in the casino, she's cunty but I don't like her. Looks waaaay too human. I get it, neo noir tropes blah blah blah, but it's just so... vanilla.
The Adis flashback was amazing: in the writers section of tennocon they confirmed that the events of the old peace did happen, but what we see are specifically memories not objective reality. That really throws me for a spin but for now I'd rather think that it's just Wally fucking with us. Also people thought the new frame would be Adis revived. Socra Tetris said "nah we will probably get a new character as a foil" and I agree with that, can't wait to see more of him because rn I'm not seeing much connection.
It's also strange how the cards have the Orokin emblem(?) on it since yk, the sentients hate them lol.
Can't wait to see what the next region they will launch with will be and what the Fornax structure will be since it's supposed to be so different!