Go try it. Remember Vanquish? Warframe is now the Vanquish MMO.

SHUT UP

Congrats on your new job in Polygon! I'm slightly taken aback that you didn't tell us before, but proud anyway.

Oh no, I've been found out!

Warframe is now the Vanquish MMO

Ew, no. Vanquish's dated buttsliding does not hold a candle to Warframe's movement system.

In all seriousness, this is probably the most accurate description of the gameplay movement mechanics I've seen.

But yeah, it's probably the closest that we have to compare it to.

I'm still not sure whether this is a serious piece or not, given all the mentions of the very real grind, but it really doesn't lie. Thanks Xenos for the heads-up AND the joke.

I really don't want to jump into another one of my trademark Warframe rants, but since it's another person's Destiny-relevant perspective, there's quite a bit to add to the piece...

We ran this story about how Warframe had things to teach Destiny 2, and I was skeptical of the premise. But Warframe didn’t just figure out how to solve Destiny 2’s end game problems, it somehow became a game that everyone loves and is made entirely of end-game content. The game itself begins after you’ve played for around a bajillion hours. Things become cinematic. This is not a joke.

There's quite a bit to take away from this. Keeping it simple, though, I somewhat recently (about six or seven months ago) found a non-cancerous Youtuber by the name of Skill Up. His videos tend to be insightful, fair, and generally always worth a watch (Fallout is one of the only other Youtubers that I hold to a similar standard). Anyway, he's big on Destiny, and I really like the monster of a review (45+ minutes!) that he made of Destiny 1 as it was in Year 3. About three months ago (around the time of the Destiny 2 Beta), he started playing Warframe, and after playing about 70 hours or so, he released a review of the game, gushing about it. He did have some negative things to say, but a number of his criticisms were factually incorrect. He lamented that the game had no raids (there are 4-8 player raids, which adjust in difficulty/complexity depending on the number of players), that the newest Prime character was locked behind a Paywall (they've never been, he confused it with Vaulted content that can't be bought either way, but becomes available to all periodically), and that the open-world region(s) would be procedurally-generated (nope). Fortunately, he acknowledged his mistakes after the fact.

Anyway, we go back to the quote: "The game itself begins after you’ve played for around a bajillion hours. Things become cinematic. This is not a joke."

When he put out that review, he had not done a single one of the game's main quests. He had read the in-game lore, and done many of the lore-expanding quests, but even after 150 hours of playing the game, he hadn't done any of the main storyline-advancing quests in the game. So he did the first of the cinematic quests, "The Second Dream", which is hidden behind a list of prerequisite accomplishments. And what has his reaction to this one buried quest? He called it a "master stroke", comparing it directly to that one moment in The Last of Us:

The video is somewhat preachy, but those of us who have been blindsided by this quest (there were tears on my end, for sure) totally understand. This one quest contains a massive revelation four years in the making, with seeds that had been planted since the game was in closed Alpha, and it adds a whole new gameplay and story element to the game that becomes an integral part of the quests that follow.

"To begin to play Warframe is to become comfortable with being overwhelmed. The game has about 800 systems, and it is very careful about explaining exactly none of them to you. A good friend of mine tried to walk me through the modding system and I blacked out 50 minutes into the conversation. He admitted you just kind of had to play until you understood what was going on."

Early on, this was one of the game's biggest faults, and even as I grew to love the game, this was my single biggest gripe... But the fact that it's uncompromising, and that it has never dumbed its systems down is pretty admirable, in a weird way, because every aspect of the game can become your own. You can be truly unique, and even if you share an identical loadout as another player, every single aspect of your build could be completely different. And the best part is that you've done all of it on your own, and for yourself. Want a bright pink flamethrower that can freeze enemies and poison them at the same time? You can make it! Does it make sense? Nope! But the game's systems give you that freedom. Just don't expect the game to hold your hand as you do it.

Meanwhile, Destiny 2 has dumbed its systems down to a gambling system revolving around Tokens, and the game's Sandbox has become extremely limited. Characters are locked to specific attunements, and exotics are largely numbers tweaks. Is it a bad thing? Not necessarily. Many of us are fine with the straightforward nature of the game, and can put together a build that we're happy enough with through minimal gameplay, even if the differences between other players are minimal... But that lack of depth is a bit of a bummer for those who want to feel as accomplished and special as Destiny 1 made them feel.

With that in mind, I'm pretty happy that Warframe has decidedly not gone in that direction, although it has gotten way better at slowing down the rate at which new players are overwhelmed with information...

Anyway, yeah, tl;dr, the article's writer is more right than you know, and people who put time into the game see Destiny 2's disappointments more clearly...

Anyway, Skill Up also put up a pretty critical 53 minute(!) review of Destiny 2, which I don't really agree with overall (he didn't like the raid!), but he does make a ton of valid points ("Where Destiny 2 is great, it's been great for two years"), so it's worth a listen:

Congrats on your new job in Polygon! I'm slightly taken aback that you didn't tell us before, but proud anyway.

;p

Warframe is now the Vanquish MMO

In all seriousness, this is probably the most accurate description of the gameplay movement mechanics I've seen.

I'm still not sure whether this is a serious piece or not, given all the mentions of the very real grind, but it really doesn't lie. Thanks Xenos for the heads-up AND the joke.

EDIT: Sorry, just coming down from a fortnite high and had to blurt the below out.

I STILL have no interest in trying the game (beyond when I tried it 3 or so years ago) after reading the article.

If there's no way to discuss the Second Dream without spoiling it, then I simply don't care about it.

If the game is a bunch of finely tuned grinding, I don't care.

Give me a challenge or some bizarro emergent game play.

In Fortnite, (in case you don't know already) you and 99 people land on an island and it's last person standing while a damaging storm gradually constricts. It's a wonderful bit of design cribbed from PUBG that leads to one of the most satisfying gameplay loops I've experienced. An added goofy bit of fun is the fort building.

In this video you can see this person built quite the fort on top of a building.

I managed to make it into the bottom of the building when I noticed that the storm was closing in on it. The building was chock full of traps and makeshift stairs/cover this person had built. The game immediately felt like a bizarre stealth game as I quietly ascended and broke out onto the roof under their tower. While they were distracted, I built around a bit wondering if I could make it up INTO their base.

Instead I decided to come up from below.

In less than 30 minutes I had a few intense harrowing experiences combined with a held breath sniper shot and topped finally with a stealth ascent to take down the final boss of the game, the other last person standing. I'm not looking for something to dump hundreds of hours into to get a quest that depends on keeping a story twist secret to enjoy. I'm looking for the above.

Right now, I'm a Trials, Rocket League, Fortnite, H5 Arena kind of person.