I could write an essay on Warframe's use of forcing the player to walk slowly or limp as a way of creating a feeling of powerlessness and how masterfully it's used. And I could write an essay just on the segment where Stalker limps to his landing craft.
Stalker is extremely, almost comically powerful when he's in his element. The spy mission is laughably easy. He auto hacks every terminal. He can insta-kill every enemy. He can stay invisible basically the entire level and when he's invisible he doesn't trigger any alarms or tripwires. There's no challenge whatsoever. He's been doing this for centuries, to the point its become effortless.
This is juxtaposed with his complete and total powerlessness to help Jade. He doesn't know what to do or how to do it. He doesn't have any abilities or tools that help him with this. He can only watch her waste away.
He can break the endless repetition and make a change. He can go to those he hates more than anything for help.
And, despite a thousand years of rage and pain, he does. Because, somewhere, deep down, in a part of himself he's long forgotten, the desire to protect is still what defines him, moreso than even the hate.
The second mission is slightly harder, as AOE damage circumvents his invisibility to a small extent, but is still pretty effortless. It's a change in why he's doing it, but not much change in what he's doing. He's still in his element and extremely powerful.
Then Sirius(or Orion) is born and Stalker's role, his goals, his whole existence, changes instantly. He's no longer the hunter, but rather the hunted. No longer a just a killer, but rather a Protector.
All of his abilities are disabled. All of his weapons besides the scythe are disabled.
The scythe that, in a written prelude, Hunhow praises for, unlike his other weapons, being a tool meant both for destroying and for growing. For creation and destruction.
A tool he uses as a shield. But, crucially, one that FAILS.
He CAN'T protect Sirius. He's defeated. He has to be spared. Someone else also has to choose to protect. To choose to go against the trait that has defined their life (greed/ambition in the case of Xeto) in order to protect something precious.
Xeto gives up her chance to impress the Sisterhood and likely paints a huge target on her back, in order to help someone she doesn't know. She lets Stalker get to his feet and she and her men stand aside for him to escape.
And, in that moment, bloodied and beaten and dragging his broken form to his landing craft, we are given back control as the player over Stalker only to sell the effect of the powerlessness, physically, he has been reduced to.
And how, in that moment, as a person, he has more power than he has in a thousand years. Because he has chosen to break the endless spiral of grief he's been trapped in for a millennium and go against what he was crafted into to, once again, choose to love and protect instead.
Ballas tried to shape him into a tool of nothing but bloodshed because he hated how Sorren had defined himself with love in a way Ballas never could and, in that way, attained the love Ballas always saw himself as unfairly denied. He tried to destroy every bit of that love and every scrap of that man. But he couldn't. He could not destroy the child that Jade and Sorren created and he couldn't ever fully stamp out the love between them. And, even in the deepest depths of hatred and despair that Stalker fell into, the caring and loving man he was remained, never able to be destroyed.
Slowing those steps down and forcing the player to hold the command to keep going forward the entire time gets that feeling across in a way that is so poignant and part of what makes interactive media like video games such a powerful and unique medium.
He is reclaiming both his past and his future. Reclaiming the parts of himself defined by love. He is rejecting that easy path of wallowing in misery that he's chosen for so long and instead dragging himself forward, one limping, painful step at a time, towards something that actually matters to him.
And trusting the universe to stand aside to let him.
