Did the Tenno Die in the New War? | Warframe Lore Explained

the new war was straightforward in some ways but in other ways it opened new ideas in the lore that has left a lot of us scratching our heads one of the most puzzling story elements to me was what happened to the tenno at the end of act one and how the drifter then took his place what happens here isn't spoon fed to the player and we must assume more answers are going to be coming as we explore our paradox and our relationship with the man in the wall in later quests however if we carefully analyze the events of the new world quest we can begin to piece together some clues as to what might have happened namely did we die at the hands of ballas and if not what happened to us i have seen split opinions on this across forums and reddit etc on whether the operator actually dies or not yet in my opinion it's pretty clear that we did not die here at all let's first start by reviewing what happens at the conclusion of act one when we confront ballast and era tesion is used to draw us out but we are ultimately too late to save him before era seemingly breaks his neck it is obvious that ballas and era have laid a trap for us here as they desperately want teshen in his confused state to call the tenno to this spot however he breaks through the control but is killed before he can call us here but nonetheless the tenno has been lured here anyway as era and ballas have planned ballast then reveals nata drained and crumbling no doubt because of what happened to her in the maker prologue where she was forced into device and drained like a living battery after ballast drains the last of her power through a kiss it is revealed what natas pero was used for to open a portal into the void natal was not only used to draw us here but also to power up the instrument of our banishment as we watch natara tumble into the void we sit there in shock and are defeated then ballast takes the opportunity to stab us in the back with the parathesis resulting in us falling dead like into the void so before ballast stabs us he says you cannot kill the devil tenno you cannot kill the devil tenno but you can send it back to hell [Music] the devil obviously been a metaphorical reference to ourselves as it is well established at this point that is how error and ballast refer to us this statement confirms that the tenno are unable to be killed in the traditional sense and in fact aren't quite normal humans anymore since the zaraman incident in fact this lack of normal mortality is reinforced later by hunthouse statement in act 2 where he states something along the lines of i don't know how many lives a tenno has but you seem keen to lose another it's almost as if they are trying to ram home the point that the tenno are effectively immortal we don't die like normal beings this is shown in everyday gameplay when we are in operator form and we die we freeze and become all staticky before phasing back into our frame likewise here when ballast stabs us we freeze and become staticky just like in normal gameplay so again we aren't dying in the traditional sense we are just temporarily being disabled as a result ballast has prepared a void portal as he's aware he cannot permanently kill us and so must instead remove us from this point in time to another point in time so he can pursue his plans unhindered by the tenno ballast does in fact tell us where he is sending us as he continues his metaphor you cannot kill the devil tenno but you can send it back to hell you cannot kill the devil tenno but you can send them back to hell following the same metaphor as before we can tell that the metaphor is referring to us as the devil then hell must be where we came from i.e the zaman incident so we are not dead but we are incapacitated and we are pulled into the void portal removing us from this place and time as eternalism in the classroom explains warframe time isn't linear but is more like a solid object where all of time and alternate timelines exist in the same reality in a non-linear manner just at different locations within that reality's makeup illustrated by different points on a cube in the zariman classroom so ballast uses this void portal to move us from one point of the cube to another we are no longer in our current timeline but now exist in this areman incident another time that exists simultaneously in the same cube as the normal present having been moved by ballast through use of a void portal it means we are no longer in the present to stop ballas while he executes his normal plan instead arteno is returned back to the xi'min incident with both times happening concurrently together in the same object of reality rather than in a straight line of one sequence after the other i hope that makes sense because we are moving on what i will mention next is complete speculation but speculation i think makes logical sense following these previous points messing with eternalism in this way must be difficult and is not as straightforward as moving someone back around their own timeline moving them back in time as it will and most likely ballast opening the void portal to the zarman incident had some unexpected consequence which in this case meant we didn't just get sent back we were in fact swapped places with a version of us who was never rescued from the zariman incident the drifter the drifter then appears in our current timeline due to ballas's meddling most likely picking up the lotus from his place in the eternalism cube before swapping into our current timeline this is how he is in the present time with the lotus and we are in the zerman once again but how do we come back well that's a little trickier and again this is speculation but it's almost as if the operator and the drifter having swapped places now both simultaneously exist in the same timeline at the same time so when the drifter moved into our future our past became his past which is how he then gains the void powers when it can currently catches up to the point when the operator accepts the powers aboard the zaraman this is why he says i didn't lose my powers i just haven't gained them yet this then links our two timelines and we now both inhabit the same present which is why the operator is able to move back but the drifter is also in this same spot at the same time the paradox so to conclude and answer the question in this video first set no we do not die we are shifted from one time to another through the void portal provided by ballas only to reclaim our place in the same instance as the drifter thanks to the link that was created when ballas sent us back and swapped us in the void portal we now exist in the same place and this creates a link between us both so thanks guys that's my take on what happens we aren't killed we are just sent to a different point in time and are then linked with a drifter by as being having swapped places through our eternalism cube but what do you think happened let me know in the comments below if you think i am right or if you think i'm wrong and let me know because of course this is speculation so i'd love to hear your opinions on it if you like this video please consider giving it a subscribe as i do do warframe content generally tackling questions of lore check out my grineer lore history video which is quite a long and cinematic take on the grineer history but until next time guys i will see you on the battlefields of the new war take care and have a nice night you

Channel: SmoughTown

Views: 32,596

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Id: xN1V-OsPt9M

Length: 7min 15sec (435 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 06 2022