quasarshift

1. The Pacing

The pacing of Warframe has, unfortunately, been an ongoing issue for the last few quests. Particularly in the case of these smaller updates, the limitation of the quest length and updates are really doing a disservice to the stories being told here. Quests like Jade Shadows, Constellations and the Old Peace are attempting to tackle very interesting and very complex subject matter. This is admirable, and I think diving into these story themes are actually super interesting places to take Warframe's story beyond the end of The New War. There has always been space within Warframe's story for explorations of interpersonal conflicts - Umbra and The Sacrifice, as well as the whole deal with Lotus' identity and her relationship to the Tenno. However, I've noticed there being an increased focused on... More personal storytelling, I suppose? I point to things such as the relationship between Loid and Albrecht, as well as the continued use of protoframes as a vector to explore more interpersonal themes amidst the framing of a wider conflict. Whilst this has been contentious amongst some players, this is not the aim of the post or this section - I generally like this idea of utilising a wider conflict to tell personalised stories. This applies to Jade Shadows, as well as Constellations. The setup of navigating grief, parenthood, love and sacrifice are all themes I think are worthy of exploration.

Unfortunately, however, these themes are not given room to breathe within the story.

The pacing of Jade Shadows: Constellations, does a heavy disservice to what DE is seemingly trying to do here. I can see the intentions clearly throughout the quest, but the limitation of this being a 30-40 minute quest unfortunately hamper a lot of the impact this could have had. The quest moves at what feels like a million miles per hour, and this breakneck pace means story moments do not have much time to sit with the player, or allow us to really think about what we're experiencing. The whole quest feels heavily railroaded as a result, and it feels rather unsatisfying to play through. To highlight a few points:

The Jade Spectre. We get little time to really process the Void Manifestation of Jade, or see Stalker's reaction to it. The void has taken the form of someone he loved and grieves for, and is attempting to lure him in, yet... We're given no real time to let the weight of that sink in. She appears, and we're immediately launched into a bossfight with what is essentially just a Jade Spectre whilst voicelines play over the fight. We kill the Spectre, grab the item we came for, and are rushed to leave by Hunhow. This is a moment that could have had a lot of impact, and would have been a good place to really highlight Stalker's lingering grief over the loss of his lover, but we simply don't get it.

The mentors. In terms of the quest itself... I do not get the inclusion of the protoframes as mentors. We get very little information in the quest as to why the protoframes are involved, their motives, etc, and they actively rob the two brothers of agency as characters. They act as vectors speaking on behalf of the brothers, but ultimately give very little in terms of fleshing out the personality of the two and their distinctive motivations. I think the story would have been served better if their inclusion had been relegated to purely post-quest content, in the way the Devil's Triad are mostly divorced from the content of The Old Peace, and the brothers being allowed to speak for themselves. Establish their personalities and motives, the way their upbringings have shaped them, etc.

The stand-off between Umbra and the Brothers. Leading off from the above, Hunhow's urgency about Stalker retrieving the Void item leads directly into this moment. We are told directly that directing the Stalker to abandon the hideout and seek the item, leaving Umbra to babysit (I will discuss Umbra's inclusion later because I have a lot to say about it), was a grave decision, and now Umbra and the child are in danger. I think an actual story mission here would have served the overall quest better than what we got. A quick perspective shift, such as a defense mission (as a quick, off the top of my head suggestion), would help further establish the stakes of Sirius and Orion actively hunting them down, and justify Hunhow's urgency in the preceding mission.

2. The continued underutilisation of Umbra

And... onto Umbra. I think the fact Umbra is here is actually really cool. Pretty much from the instant Ordis mentioned him back in the original quest, I, and a lot of other players, have been interested to see more of Umbra. His inclusion here, unfortunately, does not do enough to really explore his character. The fact he is in this quest is a genuinely interesting setup, and I'm not going to claim he was merely included as fanservice. His position as a father, and a fully autonomous unit of his own right, makes him a really good fit for this quest. However, as it currently stands, he continues to be woefully underutilised by the story. I was incredibly excited to see him being the individual Stalker was seeking help from, but was left thoroughly disappointed to see his role in the quest was to remain mostly off-screen, taking care of the baby whilst Stalker goes on the hunt. We get to control him for less than a minute of actual gameplay, after which he remains mostly as a prop in the background. The implications of Stalker seeking him out specifically go unaddressed, despite the potential that carries - Umbra was a father in his previous life, and was himself a victim of Ballas' particular cruelty. There are parallels between his fate, and that of Jade and the Stalker, and I think it was a missed opportunity (and another victim of the quest's heavily truncated length) that these implications were not explored. 

3. The implications of Jade's story

This part is where I admit my own biases: I love Jade. She is by far my favourite Warframe, and has been since she was introduced. She was actually what brought me back to the game after a years-long hiatus, and I find her character and theming incredibly interesting. That being said, however... I have also been rather uncomfortable with her implementation in the story from the word go, and Constellations has done little to assuage my discomfort with how she was handled. Whilst I'm not intending to repeat everything I've previously said about her implementation, I think it's important to discuss the ongoing issues with her implementation, and the implications of how she was utilised.

Put simply, Constellations has not resolved the lingering issue of Jade being mostly devoid of agency, existing as a vector through which the characters around her develop. Her role in the story is reduced simply to a woman who gave birth and died, imparting trauma and leaving Stalker with a child to raise on his lonesome. Jade is continually denied her own personhood and character outside of the tiny snippets she is given in Constellations and Jade's Promise, and exists as (now quite literally) a spectre to haunt the narrative, which I cannot see as anything other than a rather upsetting squandering of her character at best, and playing right into some rather upsetting storytelling tropes at worst. The story continues to treat Jade as almost an afterthought, with the final nail in the coffin being the ending of this quest. This entire quest is predicated on Eternalism, the idea that any and all opportunities are equally true - Hunhow's sacrifice is framed as a way to protect the brothers, to save both the child we chose from death, and the one we didn't from being born into a broken future. It is the entire framework of the quest: We must keep the peace and save the brothers from suffering. Yet, this leaves me with one question: Why is Jade excluded from this? Why can't we protect her? Why must her fate always be to die? 

Her story, however unintentionally, falls into the very same trope that DE attempted to use Parvos to critique: A woman's purpose is to provide a child, and once that is done, there is no use for her. She is put aside and pulled out as shock factor (the Spectre fight) or as a memory to drive the development of the male main character. It's a, frankly, baffling decision to double down on this idea, whilst simultaneously granting Stalker and the brothers a happ(ier) ending, emphasising the need for unity and love. This leads me into...

4. The themes of Sacrifice

It's clear that a key theme in this story is sacrifice. I don't necessarily disagree with having sacrifice as a core theme of this plot, but the way in which the story goes about exploring this theme is something I feel massively contributes to the problems outlined above. This section will mostly focus on the ways Jade, Hunhow and the Stalker embody the themes of sacrifice. This is more of my own personal opinion regarding the themes and how they were handled, so take this with a grain of salt.

Jade

I've gone into it above already, so I'll spare an exhaustive repeat of everything. Jade's character can essentially be boiled down to a mother dying for the sake of ensuring her child will live. She was, for all intents and purposes, fridged for the sake of developing other characters. Her sacrifice plays into outdated storytelling tropes, and she isn't given enough screentime or character development of her own right to make her sacrifice carry significant amount of weight. She gave the child the gift of herself, but all we have to know Jade by are a few memory feathers and lines of dialogue. This undermines the impact of her sacrifice, and makes it all seem rather hollow. She really just needed a little bit more time to be herself, not just a memory of Stalker's perfect wife. 

Hunhow

Hunhow's sacrifice is... bittersweet to me. I'm not sure how I feel about it. In theory, I think it works... But the memory loss is a double-edged sword. It represents his growth beyond self-serving needs, the very thing that led him to make the mistakes he did with Natah and Erra, yet... It effectively wipes the slate clean, and this essentially removes the memory of his wrongdoing and resets him to a past save point. Time will tell here, I think, to see just how much he remembers of his children, the war, everything to do. I think it's a conceptually neat idea of having him finally break the cycle and prioritise unity after what he did to his own kin, but I can't lie and say the nature of his sacrifice here doesn't worry me somewhat.

Stalker

Out of everyone I think should have embodied the theme of sacrifice, it should have been Stalker. Stalker's character and situation would serve as a great vector to highlight a form of sacrifice that doesn't come with the same drastic consequences of Jade and Hunhow's. Here, I'm referring to his hatred of the Tenno, and how it interacts with his newly-found fatherhood. To an extent, he has already been forced into a situation where he's had to choose to put aside his hatred in the original quest... Yet it isn't followed through. He still hunts the Tenno, despite now having a child to take care of. He still hates the Tenno and vehemently rejects the idea of reaching out for their help in Constellations. The only concession we get with his hatred is that he spares any Tenno using Jade as their chosen Warframe. I think focusing the story harder on his internal struggle to let go of his grudges and focus on his family would suit the theme of sacrifice better, and potentially dodge the more troubling implications imparted on the characters around him. His sacrifice is one of his convictions - Does he continue to hunt the Tenno and seek revenge for what happened before? Or does he choose to let go of that, even though he hasn't satisfied his grudge, in order to focus on taking care of the family he didn't know he had? As it currently stands, the quests do not do an adequate job in addressing this part of Stalker's story, despite his focal point as the main character of these quests. This is also in part due to the truncated length of the quest, but I do also think the writing itself is opting to shift the idea of sacrifice onto the surrounding characters, rather than using it as a personal vector to inspire Stalker's growth. 

Concluding Thoughts

I realise here that my points about these characters and their roles in embodying themes are, in a sense, jumping the gun. It's obvious from how the story left off, that this is not a concluded plotline. We will likely be revisiting the plot points of this quest at a later date. Hunhow's new dialogue referencing Tau seems to be setting up for our eventual return to it. As it stands, though, Constellations is unfortunately a rather substantial miss for me. It had the potential to reiterate on some of the flaws of the original quest, but has missed the mark in some places, and doubled-down on said flaws in others. Some of these flaws, namely that of the pacing, pervade other story quests in Warframe, but it is the sheer scope that Constellations tries to aim for that really draws attention to them in this particular scenario.