The Confusing Morals of the Drifter in Warframe
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- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
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Videos Used:
• Warframe: The New War ...
• Warframe: The New War ...
• Warframe 1999: The Hex...
• Warframe | The New War...
• Bad Endings Vs Good En...
• Warframe: 1999 (The He...
Music Used:
• Inside the Sandship - ...
6:53 This isn't really something that could be helped. DE would have had to create a bunch new mission types just to bypass this issue and that's just not worth it.
There's no character assassination going on here. Duviri Paradox was about the Drifter learning to be human again and acknowledging his feelings. The New War is about him taking his newfound humanity and doing something with it for the betterment of the galaxy. Angels of Zariman is about reconnecting with all the men and women and he was supposed to have died with and begin to build a kinship with them.
That last one is important because it foreshadows what The Hex is going to be about. Building true bonds and friendships with the Hex. The Difters whole story since his introduction has been about him rediscovering his humanity and this is the next step. He feels conflicted about taking a life now especially when it's someone who's possessed and not in control of their own actions, and he uses his Duviri powers to save everyone after realizing that everything has gone wrong. The rest of the quest is, as Andrati said, getting to know them as that's the only way to save the Hex.
No character assassination, just character growth.
Some amazing character growth as well. The drifter’s mood changes gradually from Duviri, New War to 1999.
The kim system also addresses the isolation aspect as well. It’s nice that our character is talking to human beings instead of distant space mom, ordis, and umbra.
@sliccthedestroyer1881 and I think that was intentional on DEs part since The Hex can only be done with The Drifter and not The Tenno and when you're talking to them through text it's clear that they're talking to the Drifter specifically.
It'll be nice when focus comes back on the Tenno but for now fleshing out the Drifter is fine with me.
I don't see how this isn't just a matter of basic warfare. If any Scaldra decided to work with the Hex, it would be treated as treason even if they believed Drifter. You can't really reason with them, and just associating with the Hex makes Drifter a target, even ignoring Wally's influence. Rusalka is, at the time, the highest ranking Scaldra we know, so if she could be saved and reasoned with, she could call off the Scaldra, or better yet work with the Hex.
Then there's the fact that Albrecht has been doing a reverse-psychology bit for 1999. The point is he wants us to be merciful, so he paints himself as doing the scorched-earth route to purge the Murmur so that Drifter and Operator naturally want to find a better option that doesn't just tear through anyone in the path to victory.
Agreed. That's why when The Drifter says "I can save them" Andrati doesn't respond with "no you can't" or "they're not worth it" or anything like that. He says "Not unless you know them".
He WANTS us to save them and even gave a hint as to how to do it.
Wow. Agreed!!!
But I think that should be better written in that scene
dunno about that, the drifter never struck me as a "ethical" person, i think he's more of a freedom lover in the most "comprehensive" sense: he won't kill Rusalka because she wasn't "possessed willingly", but he's fine fighting and killing scaldra soldiers because its their choice to do what they're doing and he's not going to question the soldier's beliefs or anything (for someone that got stuck in an alternate dimension for who-knows-how-long, makes sense to me that personal freedom would be held in higher regard than anything else)
"Just because the Scaldra isn't perfect in every way"
They kill civilians, that's evil, what are you on about?
Oy be careful, the civilians could be infected.
I really dislike your argument for scaldra. Sure they are fighting the techrot, but they also are enforcers of regime favoring loyalist while killing anyone else (in scaldra extermination mission they are doing "purges" on civs)
That's what I thought. He mischaracterises the drifter and his actions at every turn. The drifter saved who they could. We don't see the drifter gunning down unharmed people who are of no threat- that's consistent. Also, the drifter and the hex "exterminate" scalrdra to prevent civilian purges- in which numerous innocents would otherwise be executed by the scalrdra (a corrupted, over-zelaous weapon of the state). His entire argument is, "the righteous path is to side with fascism." Like, shut up.
Also, if you read the comic, they are mind controlled the whole time. The doctor entrati gave the government something to mind control them. I haven't read the comic but a cousin told me!
Morals and horde shooters always have a hard time coinciding. There are sertainly better ways they could have done it, but the medium does make it a more difficult task.
I agree, that’s why I’ve always liked the “for the greater good” vibe that Warframe usually goes with. It’s the best way to make gameplay fit with the main characters moral while being morally good overall
If we actually do a deep dive, morals and their application are confusing and difficult in the first place, no matter if in game or real life. I studied ethics and you simply can't be deliberately evil or good, you're always both, no matter what you choose to do. Good and evil can't exist without each other, it's a symbiotic relationship, even in "basic warfare". So the "fight for the overall good" is a great thing. I this point of the story we don't even know if we are really fighting for the greater good of course, but from our perception we are. And that's the thing, perception and perspective.
Another thing to note, despite the growth of the Drifter as a character, they are still haunted by the Zariman more-so than Duviri according to later KIM dialogue.
Duviri does come up with their relation to Thrax, but from the dialogue options available the Drifter is fundamentally broken to the core by the Zariman Incident despite their unwavering will.
Ranging from the night terrors of their parents faces, the fear that they need to kill their parents again as Void Angels, and complete failure to cope with what the indifference forced them to commit and escape to Duviri; more often, revealing a crippling guilt from the tragedy of killing / allowing their parents to die.
The Drifter sees the humanity in the Hex, sees their unjust fate at the Indifference and Entrati, and most likely sees their parents in the Hex…but, this time around the Drifter has the power to end the madness from repeating once more.
Everyone involved in 1999 would have died and made no difference in the Drifter’s morales; but, is looking straight down at the sequel to the Zariman Void Jump, with the Hex damned to Entrati’s degenerate experiments and schemes, and the Indifference mind-graping of Rusulka as we saw with Harrow’s operator.
The state of 1999 is still unraveling as well, at least until the Techrot Encore and possibly the continuation of Whispers in the Wall. As we still do not know the identity of 3 protoframes (one still possibly being Rusulka, they denied proto-Saryn in December but re-committed to more protoframes last week) or how the Hex will use the Vessels to follow the Drifter into the inevitable three way conflict between the Tenno, Entrati, and Indifference.
I think the part thats being forgotten is that, we are soldiers. Hear me out, when you are out there during warfare, the only people that should be in your immediate care? Is the battalion directly accompanying you. So at the end of the day, whatever mission youre doing, everyone else jumping at you, is a target, and you are a target to them. Its a matter of who gets out alive. Not who's morals are right.
On that same nore, we also are supporting a side on the warfare, under a LEADER, a leader who has the both the power and authority to push through a mission... Or stop it. And so does the other side, in the form of... RUSALKA. The only person that the Scaldra follow, and obey. Sure, Viktor takes the mantle after her dissapeaeance. But who the hell is convincing and stopping him or any other Scaldra now? They have a vendetta against Arthur, and with Rusalka gone their motivations are now rock solid.
Even with with all that said, theres also the fact that the Scaldra may be fighting for their city, but uhhhh they dont do that great a job at it sometimes. If you listen closely to the lines the other characters say, they are sloppy with their work. Lettie says something between the lines of "The Scaldra came here trying to solve something, and they were smart and dipped the moment they almost lost their life. Good thing you're not as smart as them. Get to work."
And lets not even talk about the Effervon Tank, which hello, mutates into a horrific Techrot creature that heals itself and can level an entire area just by existing? And they made that thing when they KNOW what the Techrot can do with machines?
No matter if its in the origin system, or in 1999, we chose a side and stuck to it, be it for the greater good or another reason.
The drifters choice didnt just come out of concern for her life, its not as if he wouldve somehow crumbled because he couldn't take the "guilt" of killing her due to morals or anything like that. We have enough blood in our hands. Its because at the end of the day, she is an importanr piece of the puzzle, one that got molded by the Indifference, and then dissapeared without a trace.
Even with that in mind, just because the Drifter can kill a thousand Scaldra soldiers and not bat an eye, why would he keep pushing and kill a thousand more if he can get the chance to stop it?
Like I said before, its war, and you picked a side. You cant worry about every single individual life in the moment of war, because the Techrot is everywhere, Scaldra is taking action, and when they cant solve something, fuck up, or threaten our side, back the Hex have to jump in.
I recently got to Rank 5 in the Hex Syndicate, all the civvies that Scaldra are purging from their home now hang around and live near the Hex, because we make them feel safe. Because we provided a place of peace and protection when the Scaldra and the Techrot took it away.
Im not gonna try and convince you otherwise, feel whatever way you may, but honestly? Warframe is not a story about a selected group of insividuals against titans and monsters, where life is precious and treasured in every corner.
Its a story of war, of people commanding others to do their bidding, in one way or another, even if the price is oceans of blood, and us having to jump in and do something, by whatever means necessary... But even by those means, and even with all the blood in our own hands, we can still choose hope. We can still try and do the right thing.
And if they couldve convinced her somehow, God knows how but SOMEHOW, reach the real Rusalka, get past the Indifference, showed to her what we showed to Arthur, tell her what we know... Maybe the Scaldra troops wouldve stopped being enemies and become allies instead.
really well written, and I do agree, 10/10 text wall
Yes, this, thank you so much.
Agreed, people often forget that soldiers while human are not moral paragons. Especially when soldier’s are purging civilians.
There's a kinematic message with Arthur where he asks if you ever sit and think about how many people you've killed. You have the option to say you see it like a high score, making light of it and dismissing the deaths. The Drifter clearly doesn’t mind killing or at least has the option to be indifferent, so I don’t see why they weren’t given the choice to kill or spare her, like with the elder Grineer Queen. It likely wouldn’t matter anyway, as I doubt it would affect the story much, considering she either dies or is lost to the Void.
I agree with you on this but I think the operator is just an overly traumatized child who does everything their parental figure (the lotus) says. To me the drifter gives off "I do what I think is right" meaning that their morals aren't the same as the average person, yea they kill thousands of scaldra but to be fair the scaldra kinda sorta still have free will, rusulka was being controlled by the indifference
I would agree with this, if I didn’t think the scaldra were mostly in the right with their free will. On top of that, all of the misdeeds of the scaldra could be attributed to their leader, the Major, who was being mind controlled by the indifference, meaning that there’s a very large chance they were all being mislead, and that’s probably one of the major reasons they hate the hex.
To be fair the drifter was not only an overly traumatized child and later on adult but was also taught by teshin(a dex) so their morals definetly scuffed
im havin this theory that the indifference goal is to train the void child(us) to eventually take his place as a new god, even bein lil bit antagonistic just so we became a better void god than he was out of spite
- talking specifically about 1999 quest, last time we know we saw albretch, not his clone like in the 1999 portion of kalimos sequence, he was all fucked up and bruised after bein friendly interrogated by scaldra high command, and we know albretch was so afraid of his indifference twin acting as him behind his back he refused to take the kuva and would rather stuck himself in a timeloop.
considering that, whos to say the albretch that said " you cant save them, not unless you know them ", them suspiciusly left his very urgly cat in the backrooms to replay the events of new years eve, but this time with the power and knowledge to save the hex, them after congratulates us on becoming powerful enough to change fate with the power of love friendship and rainbows is the real one, feels more like the indiferrence pulling a reverse psycology trick to make us do what he wants or need us to do
I think that the Drifter is acting the same. As of what we have seen so far I think it is less of a moral high ground they were taking in 1999 and more they were just doing the opposite of what an Orokin wanted them to do. I could also see why they would do that as well.
They were put on the Zariman by the Orokin where they lost their family and any friends they might have had. They then also ended up spending who knows how long in Duviri, so as when we first saw them go against Ballas they once again are refusing to let an Orokin have their way.
I think that the Drifter's willingness to save the Hex is not due to righteousness, he did it because he has become attached to them. A purley selfish reason, he was unwilling to let go of the only people (whom he just met) that are "like" him; a bunch of misfits.
However I too believe that the absence of an option to deal with Rusalka was a little odd. Then again, the options have never truly been "good, neutral, evil", but more like "emotional, calm and collected, purley logical". At least that's how I've interpreted them.
Even if members of Scaldra are civilians that join up to go against the tech-rot that doesn’t mean they’re good people especially they’re using the incident as an excuse to take over the territory and they knew what they signed up for, so it’s really hard to feel sorry for them.🐱
Drifter knows tihs is a 3d chess game, if he sticks to straight morals, he becomes predictable, also this is the first time operator/drifter is interacting with people he starts to care about, also you're holding the scaldra on the moral high ground when it's obvious they do not care, I mean they techrotted a tank and the scaldra leader was in awe rather than worry. Also you're just NOW concerned about mass murdering? billions of Corpus & Grineer unalived, and now because scaldra is more "human" it's morally bad. Its a war zone, they're trying to kill you but suddenly its bad because they're not as powerfull as you? ok sure, bad writing.
you're just complaining about the medium at this point. it's a little hard to have a fully moral character in a horde shooter.
Well I will say one thing in anti-defense of Scaldra. They are doing ONE thing that justifies the Drifter treating them all as another mindless enemy to slaughter: They're actively hunting and trying to kill the Hex, who the Drifter understands are innocent, and more importantly capable and helpful minded people.
Furthermore, the Hex are not ONLY capable of defending themselves against Scaldra, but simultaneously they're able to battle the Tech-Rot (to a far greater degree thanks to Leanore). To pin all the glory on Scaldra for containing the Tech-Rot threat is probably disingenuous as the Hex have probably contributed greatly to these efforts.
Especially of Scaldra's high command aren't against USING the Tech-Rot if they find themselves arrogant enough to think they are capable of controlling it (which they are and this is exactly what leads to the tank battle).
So to say Drifter is out here slaughtering some innocent soldiers just trying to do a job is a LITTLE misleading.
I do agree it's stupid that he won't kill Major Rusalka after all that, though. That part was incredibly stupid.
is this a joke? Is this some mind game to try to prove a point about the indifference?
Rusalka isn't actively trying to kill the drifter in that moment. I'm pretty sure if everyone lowered their arms and let the drifter walk by and do what they needed to do, they would be alright, but that's definitely more realistic than having an exception to your morals when it comes to self defense, right?
We have missions called “exterminations” where we go out of our way to actively kill a group of people who aren’t currently attacking us. If we didn’t go out of our way to literally exterminate people (it’s in the title) then I think you’d have a point, but I heavily disagree since we do. That’s also why I brought up the narmer veils, those people also didn’t have control over their minds, and were much much less dangerous than the Major was in that moment.
Also on top of what I already said, killing the major in that moment would have also been the best course of action for self defense, since the indifference literally took entrati and the drifter out of the equation in that same scene.
Is it self defense to invade Grineer or Corpus ships and kill everyone onboard?
Is it morally wrong to do so when both Grineer and Corpus have been repeatedly terrorizing local colonies with those ships? We already have both Railjack Skirmish and one of the tutorial missions confirm that those are warships meant for attacking or pressuring colonies
@Necroxion Rusalka and Scaldra did the same, yet Drifter refused to kill her. Drifter seems to pick their morals on a whim because of refusing to kill one person after killing thousands or even millions by the time they even go to 1999.
This is massively incorrect no disrespect first off another comment made a good point you are a mentally damaged person and you only want to save people after you know they're not evil it's not character assassination character growth I mean what would you do if you if a person was possessed didn't do anything wrong of course you wouldn't want to kill them because unlike the Drifters parents he didn't have to kill this person after they got possessed because they stopped being possessed how is this character assassination when they're just being a good character you have the option to do something bad like say let him do it
Saying let him do it isn’t doing something bad, it’s refusal to do it yourself, signaling you think it’s something bad, and that shouldn’t be done. Secondly, how does our character know hordes of scaldra and corpus are evil before they actively mow them down? Is the drifter completely unintelligent? Why does he kill people he knows are being controlled by narmer veils, but refuses to kill the much more dangerous major who is actively possessed by the biggest threat in the universe?
i guess he wont kill Rusalka because she's way too cool smoking cigarettes through that pipe into her mask
The Drifters only forgiving for the people who are actually you know forgivable
Why would the average corpus worker or scaldra soldier not be forgivable? In this video I go into why the scaldra soldiers could even be praised?
@@kookthekid8338 Scaldra soldiers slaughter civs on the daily and work for a dictator. As for the average corpus worker? No clue honestly
@@kookthekid8338because the tenents of the corpus dictates that sentimentality and contentment are to be shunned and Deception and envy are encouraged the average corpus worker might try to trick, lie, cheat, and steal in the hopes of gaining profit and standing within the corpus leaving you without a house perhaps or your loved ones and possessions of sentiment from previous family members leaving you with nothing and they will not stop as they are not supposed to feel content and will move on to others to be envious of.
The Scaldra wouldn't be much to look at either sure you may have been forced to join them but at what cost and when your presented with the choice of having to kill a family due to them not complying what does that make you? Sure you got the tech rot nice and bottled up in Höllvania but you could of done better by making sure civilians you catch aren't at risk of spreading tech rot and sending them on their way to safety outside the city limits without incurring harm and not only that they label the Hex as a terrorist group even though they aren't the ones going around killing unarmed civilians if the people of Höllvania actually felt safe around them then they wouldn't be taking shelter with the hex in the Mall then would they.
@@kookthekid8338maybe because they're a twisted cult that literally worships money???
Just a thought.
Ngl sometimes i feel bad for the average crewmen, in railjack we hear sometimes the corpus captain yell to the corpus something like "If you don't bring me that Railjack, there will be NOT profit for your families!" Or something like that, i don't remember well. So thats tells that some corpus work as ... Well corpus lol, cuz they have a family, or well, some of them.
Kinda sad if you tell me until a wildass Garuda spawns and makes a gore scene in all the map agaisnt Corpus
Counterpoints:
1. The scaldra are completely amoral. They favour loyalists and purge civilians not loyal to the scaldra so the scaldra loyal can move in. This is explicitly stated EVERY extermination mission.
2. The tenno do things for the greater good of the solar system. The drifter does things for the good of the people.
3. My interpretation of the drifter refusing to kill major ruskula was because they wanted to know why they needed to kill them. Trying to work out Albrecht's plans. This whole time they have been chasing Albrecht completely in the dark as to what the fuck he is doing. This was their chance to talk face to face. And to delay and have more time to talk they didn't do what he wanted.
I'll say it out a bit messy I'm afraid...
The Drifter escapes from endless cycles where he had interacted with no human (no, the Emotions are no human) and gets to the world with a lot of people with names and nameless thugs. Is it really really strange that killing a named human is somewhat hard for him?
Or - as a Void being himself, he could feel it: something aint right!
In-game wouldn't all those Scaldra soldiers reset along with you at the beginning of the year? Furthermore, while the game does have hard-coded RPG elements the drifter is ultimately you, IMO whether she is a cold-blooded killer that only cares about the people she knows, or a do-gooder out to save the world is entirely your choice.
I do agree that killing the major should have been a choice though.
Scaldra propaganda
Scaldra is as morally good as grineer empire is, same monarchy, same displacement and capturing of civilians, which is, in majority of cases leads to their demise. I don't think that it makes sense to have a moral strand on a battlefield, and Hölvania is just that - one giant battlefield. People that are actively fighting to protect what they deem to be of value, be it lives of civilians or their freedom will not see the oposing force as equal.
Drifter there have not involved themselves to do what Albrecht stated as a plan - it was a mission to protect Lotus from desire of indifference, but trusting Albrecht never was on a table, what kind of damage actually you think shooting a vessel of inference would wield? We know how Warframes work and we know that our ability to control them confess from the void, we know how indifference controls an individual and we know for sure that once weakened state can result in one of two things: they either are shown compassion by us, or by someone else - compare Umbra and Vala Glarios - both of them resurrected through void by human beings that became void entities in their injured state. Compassion is a weapon and as a weapon it is sheethed untill the moment to strike comes - but laying it down in such moment is equal to coming to a duel unarmed - that is why Drifter refused shooting her as well as refused to fight with a Grey Strain Colossus, this is also why Duviri is given to Dominus Thrax, and why conceptual embodiments of the Zariman10-0 are kept alive - the fight is won not by a stroke to the heart but by a thousand cuts around it, and in the case of the Drifter it is the choice of who wears them.
And of course you're not going to redeem the bad guys you're killing because those guys are willing to do bad
What bad guys are we killing? How does our character we know their bad? The scaldra? The people fighting back against a plague destroying their city?
The choices these quests present you with are not kind/neutral/aggressive. They are Ego/balance/shadow. It's an easy mistake to make at first, until you pay attention to the fact that the ego choice can be as aggressive if not more so than the shadow option.
I always thought of them as emotion (light) pure logic(dark) and the balance being a mix of both
@Enderl4ne That's a fair way to look at it, except that I always felt the balance seemed more logical than the other two.
1:40 anyone else get shepards betrayal vibes from this scene? i never was a cod guy i just know that scene from the meme i actually took the time to look th name of it up
Damn I didn’t even know that scene was from cod, but I knew what it was as well lmao. And yeah it does give off the same vibes
10:39 thats not what happened they killed the orokin because lotus aka natah was sent there to get control of the tenno it was hunhows plan to wipe out the orokin natah basically pulled a order 66 on the orokin but didnt go through with hunhows full plan as she was supposed to get rid of the tenno as well
At the point that natah had the Tenno eliminate the orokin, she had already fully decided to betray her father. And to be clear, the Tenno were never robots, and weren’t just controlled by natah, which makes it a lot different from the order 66 that Star Wars currently goes with, which is that the clone troopers had chips that literally forced them to do it. They followed what natah said, largely because they probably believe she was right to want the orokin gone, and I mean to a certain extent she was. But to take away all self agency from the Tenno would be incorrect. I’m not going to hand out a just following orders excuse if that makes sense.
@ the order 66 comparason was just bc it kind of fits plus its memable you are completly right in the fact that the tenno had free will and still went with the orokin slaughter i just think it fits and is a good comparason
@@kookthekid8338you...downright see the Tenno being robots being controlled by Natah in the New War flashback where they blast Erra in synchronicity
4:40 Killing ≠ Execution
What a mess is this?
Read the other comments
ya its just lazyness with the implementation of the moral choice system without having multiple endings to go with it.
It was never a moral choice system, it was a personality system between "emotional", "balance", and "logical"
I'll ignore the "ingest, throw away, or give the Kuva" one because Kuva hasn't been established as anything other than the "drink this to respawn" juice
The choice to kill Elder Queen: let her die of clone rot, kill her yourself, or let Teshin kill her - easily here we see the logical choice of letting Teshin kill her to both prove his loyalty and eliminate a major threat, letting her die of clone rot is easily the emotional choice as she gets to _suffer_ a slow death due to lacking a suitable Continuity vessel, and killing her yourself balances both the emotional rage of wanting her dead and the logical action of making sure she really dies
Glast Gambit: cure Neewa, let Neewa choose, or keep Neewa's powers - Curing Neewa is easily the emotional choice after seeing the poor girl suffer at being thrust into such an important leadership position in childhood, keeping Neewa's powers on the other hand is cold logic as it preserves the status quo and therefore the lives of the many-albeit-unmet, while letting Neewa decide clearly balances out the emotional value of finally granting Neewa some form of choice in her life along with the logic of allowing the leader of the colony - which they trusted - arrange the plans for the colony's future
The failed Zariman void jump: slam the cold hard truth into your fellow Tenno, comfort them, or try to balance truth with comfort - it's a no-brainer with this one
Hell, even picking Space-mom's current identity makes her give a grandiose speech about how the system needs the strength and dominance of a good leader (Natah), the gentle guidance and compassion of a healer (Margulis), or a balance of the two (Lotus)
However: I actually lied to you - emotion and logic actually swap quite often between the Sun and Moon options, so the actual reading would be Brash and Truthful action for Sun vs the Comforting and maybe Manipulative action for Moon
hope DE watch your videos because u aggre even tho the update is great but the story become mess now.