So many people mad about it being the Drifter and not the Operator who's doing all the story stuff atm, and it's like, (spoilers if you're not at least up to the Drifter, obviously)
A: Chill, y'all. They're not going to leave the Operator in the dust. Who tf do you think is gonna pilot the Vessel when the time comes? It has to be the young traumatised atrophied child, or the Evangelion reference DE have been building to for more than a decade won't land!
B: The Operator is literally an atrophied, void-riddled, traumatised child. They have not, as far as we can see/tell, ever physically recovered from their extensive time in the Lua pod. Remember, we can never be 100% sure they are ever physically present when they use Transference, given what happens when they get shot up/'die'. As far as we know, they've possibly never physically left the pod, so are we really expecting them to go pick up the Lotus? They can barely pick themselves up - I don't think they have the leverage to make Wally second-guess itself like the Drifter does, either.
The Drifter was, both diagetically and non-diagetically, the way that DE chose to 'age up' the Operator without removing the Operator from the game, and (both literally and metaphorically) 'handing off' the adult work from the Operator to the Drifter - from the literal child to the adult, so DE don't have to constantly wonder if it's alright to be portraying a child doing all of this buck-wild stuff (like physical romance, I remind you) and maintain their ESRB M rating.
It was necessary, and I think it was necessary in the story as well; the Operator isn't ever going to drastically change or grow (to, say, the extent of the difference between the Operator and the Drifter), partly for actual narrative reasons (yet another Evangelion reference - stuck as children forever), and also specifically because of ludonarrative issues - it's a game that has to have so many things remain applicable and valid across the life of the game - old content, cosmetics, player entitlement, etc.
Whether you chose the Drifter or not, that part of the story is canon across all Tenno, and one of many surprisingly hard-locked points of the otherwise supposedly all-possibilities-filled 'Eternalism'.
There's also something to be said for leaving childhood behind, no matter how traumatising it was. You can bring it with you, but you'll never be, or stay, the same.
Your torch was passed on from your own Operator to you, the Drifter you are now, probably before you were ready to truly stand on your own two legs in this world.
But our Warframe Operator and Drifter have something that we didn't; The team at DE. And if it's one thing I've learned about DE after more than a decade, it's that I do trust them to make it worth while.
Have faith, Tenno. They are both You, and You Did Not Leave Yourself Behind. Trust Yourself.
But do it quickly, because
I'm coming for you, Albrecht. If you can't fix your mistakes, I will. And I'll take more than a fucking finger.
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
kaledo-art
turnnoffyourmind
