Six months ago, I complained that thanks to Saya’s Vigil being required to unlock Venus, brand new players have now met a sentient long before Natah, which strips away some of the mystery. If someone asks “What’s an eidolon anyway?” or even just pays attention to the ingame lore, the question of “what the hell were the Orokin scared of?” evaporates and the dramatic tension of Natah is gone.

Now, Heart of Deimos is required to unlock Ceres. Which is long before you get access to Stolen Dreams. So now when Maroo says “Oh, the Orokin? They’re all dead and nobody knows shit about them”, the player has gotta respond “Actually, I met a whole family of Orokin last week. They’re on Deimos, the planet you yourself frequently visit to look for Ayatans.”

In other weird starchart progression changes, we now have the fact that you don’t have to fight Lech Kril at Mars. But you do have to fight him and Vor at Ceres. So when Lotus says “your two biggest enemies have teamed up”, “uhhhhh, what enemy? Who the hell is Lech Kril? This boss is so confusing, how do I damage him? I’m unfamiliar with the concept of his frost armour because I didn’t get his lore on Mars.”

The new player experience is getting weirder and weirder and I’m having to work overtime to smooth over the cracks for my friends. I have a friend who’s newly getting into Warframe, and since I can no longer rely on Stolen Dreams to introduce the Orokin prior to Heart of Deimos, I made sure to tell them about the mysterious ancient orokin to appropriately tease the lore. But I’m sure they’ll still have absolutely no context for what they’re experiencing when they do the quest. Warframe is getting more confusing.