Postcards from Space

(this is a picture heavy post – as with all of my posts, click on the picture and it will open a new window with the full, high res version. To really appreciate them!)

Warframe has a beautiful looking backdrop. Shame because there is an awful lot of rush, rush, rush in co-operative PVE in Warframe. The game has been out in years. People want to finish objectives. I get it. It’s fun. I keep getting stuck being curious about things that I see and want to explore further. That makes me a cat in a world of dogs and well, you know how that is supposed to end. Still, I can’t help but wondering things that I encounter and learn more about the deep, rich science fiction world that I am currently killing tons of stuff in. Reminds me of a great Hank Moody quote: “You can’t do a line of coke off a woman’s ass and not wonder about her hopes and dreams.. it’s not gentlemanly”. If only players in a rush to unlock the next widget were so polite.

This photo was in a Grineer ship in the “basement”. The randomized tilesets in the levels created by Warframe is brilliant – they make sense. Here in the basement is some sort of storage, but to the left you do see water. It’s not deep, or a pool, but feels like run off from a condensor or equipment that pumps oxygen throughout the ship. These ships and areas are completely huge and often I thought things such as “this is what it would feel like to explore the Death Star or a Star Destroyer” – you know, if it was Star Wars and not Warframe. These pictures do not capture how gigantic and varied the internal landscapes are. It’s something you really have to experience first hand to appreciate.

Here is an equipment room, which happened to be connected to a dorm area – the suits of armor hanging on the wall and disassembled pieces on the right hand side just beg to be investigated. The lighting from the floor and ceiling adds a particularly beautiful ambiance. When I first started reading about Warframe I wasn’t sure if I loved the art style and form – but it has definitely grown on me in a very positive way. Appreciate they put a changing bench there too so the soon to be dead Grineer soldier has a place to sit before dying.

This area is a moving assembly line – I think those are clone pods as they go through that process, but I wasn’t able to open one up. The arm at the top of the picture was busy plucking the pods and placing them on the conveyor belt. Much of this is intractable – You can ride the pods, follow the conveyor line, and explore further and deeper…

…but not too deep. There are areas off limits that still create the illusion of size and scope. Jumping into the abyss is a quick death (but thankfully, automatic recovery). Still, out of the corner of your eye it adds perspective. The game does a great job of using environmental effects to create space – far better than Destiny 1 or 2 ever did. I rarely feel cramped in Warframe.

I liked this picture for the lighting from space and just the industrious nature of this part of the ship – down to the rivets and non-slip surfaces. Have to have worker safety, after all. Shooting out the window was tempting and ultimately futile. Although there are parts of ships you can do exactly that, and then have to hack a terminal to close down the shutters to re-pressurize the room. Those windows I usually break by accident as it forces a lock down procedure.

Not everything is deep in the bowels of space stations or space ships. Here, awaiting extraction I can overlook the gaseous (and dangerous)  vista complete with crashed starships  and remnants of civilization. Dangerous because exposure to the sun here (or gas? Haven’t quite figured out which part. maybe the cold?) slowly drains your shields and eventually your health – leading to death. This planet is the Warframe equivalent of Hoth (sorry for all the cross referencing to Star Wars, usually an easy way to compare things) and these giant ships are embedded into and beneath the surface which make up most of the level dynamics. Here is the only place you see the bright sun – and I was also very curious what the column was to the left, rising out of the landscape. Handy dandy sniper rifle scope might help?

Not entirely. Looks mostly like a pillar of snow. Still, was worth checking in on. Love the fact that the scope let’s me know that pillar is 5 km away – makes me want to go visit even more. Which, of course, I can’t. Still – it is creating that dream and desire that is improving the mood and feel. That curiosity.

A closer-up of one of the partially buried space ships, complete with it’s own language and writing on the hull. Similar to English for familiarity but still different enough to be futuristic and all space-y like. I still haven’t figured out what caused all of this crashing and commotion and why the Corpus still decided to setup research facilities here – there must be a grander and deeper story to it all and not just the whim of a background or environment artist – right?

I also start wondering about function. That is clearly a gigantic fan. The size of a big building. Why or what does it do? Is it that hot that it is to cool off the planet? Blow away poisonous gas? Blow and disseminate fertilizer? talk into it to make the coolest voice ever? Why is that there? And stop staring at my robotic butt. That wasn’t the point of this picture.

Finishing off the screenshots with my newest Warframe, Limbo. He has inter-dimensional skills (can hop between two planes with the press of a button) but I really like the nice touch of the top hat – which he removes after certain actions in game, with a tip of it to friends and enemies alike

There is so much to appreciate with the environments in Warframe that I often find myself exploring and trying to understand how and why things are put together the way they are. Sadly I usually end up with more questions than answers but that doesn’t stop me from looking. This adds many layers of interest and complexity for me in an otherwise run and gun universe.