Unhinged and Based Things Warframe has Done (and Pop Culture References)
* Put doomed old man yaoi in a mainline quest
* Has doomed yuri (less obvious than the yaoi, but definitely there)
* Made Neil Newborn the VA meme of “voices a super edgelord broody guy… and a fish”
* Evangelion. No I will not elaborate
* Cracked an untold number of eggs with the line “Dream. Not of what you are, but of what you want to be.” (This didn’t crack my egg, but it is what got me to crawl out of the shell)
* Took one of the most traumatized characters in fiction, cut them in half, gave one half even more trauma, then gave that half a place to heal. The other half still has untreated super trauma tho lol
* Heirloom skins… The devs are as horny as their players
* Has opera, labor songs, space shanties, and 90’s boy bands all in one game and it makes sense? How?
* Looked at nearly a decade of lore and continuity errors and said fuck it everything is canon now. And it works? This also spawned one of the funniest memes in gaming. Just a character gripping their head trying to comprehend the bullshit.
* Made me jump out of my skin when I realized that my dad calls me kiddo. He says the thing nearly every time I talk to him. This is never not funny to me.
* Got Nine Inch Nails to license the song “Into the Void” in the middle of a quest. The moment is pretty epic, and the song fits the game well
* Put a dating sim mode in their game about space ninjas
* Made an arcade machine that can play in universe versions of flappy bird, street fighter and more
* Made a fantastic villain. Everyone hates him. He might actually be the least redeemable villain of all time. I love him as a character, but absolutely despise him. About 50% of the story beats in the game boil down to “unfortunately, this one guy decided to be everyone else’s problem”
* Another 30% of the story can be boiled down to “unfortunately, this one scientist’s actions had consequences”. Usually it’s one specific guy you learn about in the mid game, however sometimes it’s one of like 5 others.
* The current creative director (Rebecca Ford) loves JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It was never confirmed (afaik), but back when she was community manager there was a dev account on switch called [DE]MudaMuda. We all kinda figured it was Rebb being silly and referencing her favorite show. One time the account was active in region chat during an update. I personally said in chat that “Rebb thinks she’s slick”. The account quickly fired back with “you think you’re slick”. To this day that is the most direct contact I have had with the devs. Rebb, if that was you, that was not a good comeback. If not, that was a brilliant comeback lol
* Made me sit sobbing at my computer at 3 in the a.m. because you can actually have a conversation about gender dysphoria with a nonbinary character. This is one of the few times in any major media I have ever seen this addressed. It was handled brilliantly, and you can even reply about being able to relate!
* Made the premium currency the primary trading currency. This means that nearly every item in the game is obtainable for free if you put in the effort.
* On PC there are more items that can only be obtained with real money than on console. This is because of Tennogen (Tenno, the player characters, generated content) cosmetics made by community artists that get a large cut of every sale. On console it’s available via premium currency, but I like that we can directly support artists in the community like that.
* Made a really emotionally impactful quest about one of the edgiest characters in the game
* Dropped a labor (preganante) quicktime event in a quest
* Made a grim dark world where you play as a hero. This hero’s greatest strength that causes their enemies the most fear is not their immortality, nor their ability to appear anywhere and kill everything only to vanish without a trace, nor is it any of the insane feats of strength they accomplish. This hero’s greatest enemies fear their empathy more than anything else. This is a world where you face against the personification of indifference and realize that the only way to defeat it is with love. It is so cheesy and beautiful. This is a grim dark world that was made by optimists
* Have a canonically trans fem character in one of the earliest areas you can access in the game. She runs the in universe Valentine’s Day event.
* Made the character that is essentially a really sheltered “young” scientist really like boy bands. She also loves the in universe version of Halloween
* Digital Extremes puts on a “quest to conquer cancer” charity event every year. All proceeds for the merch and related in game cosmetics go towards cancer research.
* Also motorcycles cause why not
* Ok seriously though, 99% of the romances in this game are doomed or end in tragedy. DE are you ok? Who hurt you?
* There is an order of monks that can see every possibility of every future all at once. They often will hint about things that haven’t happened yet. Yes this can be confusing.
* The main character is a warlock. I don’t care what abilities they manifest, the d&d class that describes them best is warlock. Fight me
* One of the game’s concept artists started out as a rule34 fan artist for the game. When a new character was revealed and his concept art showed some censored nudity people started calling him out on twitter, only for him to show the original art he submitted. He drew the character with pants, but Rebb demanded to see more… anatomy (all miracles require sacrifice)
* Gemussy. I’m… not gonna elaborate on that one. Again, the devs are as horny as their players.
* Eleanor’s tongue… again, the devs—
* There is a summer event called dog days. The plot is that one of the Tenno’s enemies who runs a ritual combat arena ends up caught in a “gas leak”. She gets high and demands ritualistic water fights with the Tenno. This is one of the funniest events in canon. It happens every year.
* When crossplay was introduced they had one of the characters in the game who is basically a god be the in universe explanation for it. Yes, this character is an antagonist. Yes, the players who pay attention to lore are terrified.
* There are a few conlangs in the game. Most of them are simple ciphers of English, however one of them is an eldritch tongue that we are only barely starting to understand. If you hear a vaguely latin chanting in the music, no you didn’t. You heard voidtongue.
* They are adding a classic anime school arc to the game. You know, classrooms, good teachers, bad teachers, school being put on pause so students can go help in an existential war on a normal school day. The classics.
* Made one of the most important characters in lore who protected everyone single-handedly for eons extremely autistic coded.
* That one punch man asteroid scene.
* There is a Warframe that is the sand guardian, guardian of the sand
* Generic space zombies (totally not the flood)
* An army of clone fascists
* A late-stage capitalism cult
