One of the most stereotypical phrases in any kind of ongoing fiction is that everything you thought you knew is wrong. To be clear, that’s not to say that it’s always inaccurate; sometimes long-running fiction is built around letting you assume things only to pull the rug out from under you with precise timing. But sometimes you can actually pull it off effectively… and I would argue that with The Old Peace, Warframe is aiming to do exactly that.

See, what struck me right away with The Old Peace preview this past weekend isn’t that it was screaming at you, “Hey, just so you know, everything that we understand is wrong.” But it does raise that specter right from the start. Because this raises questions not just about Tau but about the Sentients and the nature of the Tenno and the Warframes, and everything that we have taken as an object of faith about the conflict is potentially wrong. And I couldn’t be more hype about that.

Now, to be clear, none of this is an actual retcon. The way Warframe tells its stories intentionally leaves a great deal of ambiguity on the table. But the story that seemed to have been told was that the Sentients were created to reach Tau, got there, and then rebelled and returned to the Origin System to fight the Orokin. Except that story is clearly leaving parts out because we see that in the Old Peace, the Sentients and the Orokin are both living in peace and clearly merged.

In no particular order: Ballas is there, there are Orokin forces, there are Warframes there, and up until now we had been led to believe that the Warframes were themselves a product of fighting the Sentients. Not only are they very clearly here and known in the Old Peace, but we don’t even see any trace of the Infestation anywhere.

So what gives? What was actually going on there? Is this a product of Eternalism, wherein there were split timelines that had both the Tenno alive and well in Tau and learning to work with the Sentients as well as one where they never got there? How does any of this square with what we already know? I don’t know yet, but I am here for finding out all of the details. And I can, at least, speculate.

One of the things that I feel the Isleweaver update did remind us of once again is that spaces like Duviri are not actually separate from the real world in the sense of one being “real” and one being not. Oh, sure, Duviri is arguably less real than the main world, but clearly Thrax is perfectly real in every meaningful metric. This means that it’s entirely possible that the Tau of the Old Peace is not… the Tau we were heading for, so to speak.

Equally important and worth considering is that our efforts in 1999 involved following Entrati through time for reasons that have not yet been wholly revealed. I feel very confident that the Devil’s Triad is going to follow in similar footsteps in that regard because we still don’t know where he was going or what he was hoping to accomplish by leading us back to 1999. It didn’t stop the Indifference, it didn’t stop the Infestation, and about all it did was prove that even the time loop itself can be severed… something that it does seem he wanted to prove.

So what if The Old Peace is, in its own way, another Duviri-like layer instead of just a glance into memories? I don’t think that’s by any means a certainty, but I think it’s a possibility, especially since we know that we’re going to be running missions there so it can’t all just be flashbacks. To be clear, I know we haven’t been told we’re running missions there, but the gameplay demo we saw hinted at it and the odds that this isn’t going to be a new hub a la Hollvania seems about nil.

Beyond that… well, Caliban Prime makes sense, although it’s not one of the Primes I’m most looking forward to. (Thematically it does track, though.) There are lots of mysteries that this can answer, though, ranging from teaching us more about Pazuul and Narmer’s continued operations to giving us a clear picture of what to expect when we finally do get to Tau.

And we are going to Tau, to boot. But what does that mean for the ongoing Protoframes? Why is Entrati even creating them? There are so many questions that eventually it’s hard to even start guessing and you just let things wash over you, but fortunately the experience of getting hit by all of this stuff in close sequence is pretty great.

Purely from a “there’s going to be so much neat stuff” standpoint, this was great. We’ve got a look at the old Grineer, for one thing, and that alone is a lot of fun. I’m really hoping this means at some point we’re going to get a Grineer-themed Warframe. We haven’t really had one of those yet; Corpus themes show up a lot (Protea, Valkyr, and Yareli all tie in there) and several other factions have representation, but the Grineer haven’t gotten one. The closest is Styanax, and that’s not really the same thing.

The hints of void power we see in the gameplay demo are also interesting, especially since they’re not being wielded by the Operator/Drifter but by the Warframe itself, implying that the expansion of powers is not just going to expand our offerings but is going to provide more options in all modes of combat. I feel that the design of the various Void powers has been done with intent and it hasn’t become irrelevant, but as with other parts of the game, it suffers a little because the game’s design has just moved on a bit.

Zenurik and Madurai kinda rule the roost most of the time just because the game has not slowed down its pace. This ties into another discussion about how Warframe is still, in part, built to be a stealth game when it isn’t actually geared toward being a stealth game any longer… but that’s a different chat. We’ll have to see how the change in powers actually plays out once we get closer to the update.

Overall, though, I’m really interested in seeing where we’re going as the story rolls onward. There’s very little to do but speculate about the Devil’s Triad and the new Uriel that comes with it, but I am glad to see that the arc of the game remains tilted toward being unique and special and weird in the best of ways. I don’t know where we’re going next, I don’t know what is coming more than anyone else who watched the TennoCon panel, but I definitely feel like even though I am a late arrival to the game I am getting in when it is octupling down on everything that made me interested in it from the start.

Also, can I just say that the special con relay in-game was a delightful touch? I was sorry to not be at the event itself with MJ, but hanging out there was really cool.

Pick a ‘Frame, any ‘Frame! The Warframe galaxy is in danger, Tenno, and Space Mom needs help to combat it. Are you in the right Warframe of Mind to join in? The MOP writers have enlisted, suiting up in their favorite ‘Frames to fight the good fight, blasting the Grineer and Infected into smithereens.