The Nerd looks at the camera.

"DE must have had their asses chewed out by the community for releasing trailers so far ahead of time, as they haven't marketed anything that far away from completion since. What else is there to talk about? Oh yeah, there are two whole factions I haven't even discussed yet. The first one, and easily the most important one in the whole game, is the Orokin. I can't believe I went so long without even talking about the Orokin, as without them, literally none of the other factions would even exist. They're responsible for everything. The Orokin, who is this long-dead race of massive, blue-skinned people that were so far beyond everyone in terms of knowledge and medicine and technological breakthroughs, these people were gods at one point, living lavish lives in massive ivory and golden towers bathed in wealth and riches beyond their wildest desires. But the Orokin got greedy and arrogant, and that led to their demise.

"To segue, they created the next important faction I haven't talked about hardly at all, the Sentients. I did mention the Orokin and Sentients previously, using various examples. The Entrati family on Deimos were originally Orokin, as were the Grineer Queens, although they had to transfer out of their original blue bodies into the horrid facades we see now. The Sentients are these drones created by the Orokin for the purpose of terraforming and colonizing planets, which is why places like Venus and Mercury are somehow habitable planets now. To be honest, it's hard to look at the Sentients and not see something else entirely. How do I say this in a graceful and classy manner? they all look like fucking VAGINAS! I also mentioned the Sentients in the form of not only the Eidolons on the Plains and the previously mentioned Amalgams of the Corpus but also with our very own Lotus.

"But wait, the Lotus is a human woman. What are you talking about, Nerd? Well, it's time to talk about the third major cinematic quest, the one that ties everything together. Over the course of the last couple of years, Digital Extremes have been gradually releasing smaller bite-sized mini-quests leading up to the New War, first with the Apostasy Prologue, then the Chimera Prologue, Erra, and the Maker, with the latter two being mere cutscenes. The Lotus is led away by this Orokin man, Ball-Ass... sorry, it's Ballas, but how could I NOT call him Ball-Ass with a name like that?

"Ball-Ass first shows up in a cinematic quest called the Sacrifice where you have to run around chasing this living Warframe called Excalibur Umbra. It turns out that Umbra was originally a Dax soldier like Teshin that was given a virus instead of a cure for his wounds and it turned him into a freaky monster! Now Umbra wants revenge. You team up with Umbra and actually obtain the frame at the end, and you kick Ballas' blue ass. Having talked about that, let's get back to the New War.

"With the Lotus gone, our transmissions are now provided to us via Ordis, our ship's Cephalon. Wait a minute, let's hit the breaks, how could I have gone so long without mentioning Ordis? Ordis is a Cephalon, which, according to lore, is a person that was subjected to punishment and then doomed to a life of servitude, basically, punishment by being turned into artificial intelligence. Man, imagine if C3PO used to be a serial killer, but then his conscience was put into a robot without any contact with his mortal soul. That would be pretty fucked up, wouldn't it? Imagine if R2D2 was originally a RAPIST! Okay, now I'm being a shithead."

"Ordis is kind of annoying. He shows up in the corner of the screen, making stupid puns and non-sequitur jokes all the time, His personality also seems glitched, as he'll go off on RANDOM FUCKING ANGRY TANGENTS all the time!"

Looks at the camera

"...What?"

Back to the game.

"I get the feeling he's supposed to be dorky and endearing, but he just never shuts up. Speaking of never shutting up, the Lotus never shuts the hell up either. I've gotten so fast at the game that Lotus' scripted dialogue will often become backed up, causing her messages to appear right after each other leading to a minute-long stream of uninterrupted dialogue. I've done capture missions where I've completed the mission while she's still talking!

"Oh yeah, that's right, I was talking about the Lotus before getting distracted by Ordis. So we find out that the Lotus is actually a Sentient named Natah. You know what, let's talk about the Lotus for a second. Who is she? Well, in order to talk about the Lotus we need to go way back. So the Zariman incident occurred when the Zariman Ten Zero, an Orokin ship filled with humans, went into the Void, causing the adults to go insane and causing the children to gain mysterious powers.

"The Sentients, the terraforming drones created by the Orokin, that were sent into the Void to colonize it, rebelled against the Orokin, and the Orokin got thrashed because they made the Sentients' adaptability powers, far too great and they eventually adapted to all the resistances against them. Then, the Orokin realized that the only thing that could actually stop them was the Void itself, and they utilized the Tenno, trained by the teacher Margulis, the original Lotus, to fight against the Sentients. Unknowingly to both the Tenno and the Orokin, an imposter, sent in by the Sentients, named Natah, infiltrated the Tenno and assumed the role of Lotus, tricking the Tenno, and using them to destroy the Orokin instead.

"What the Sentients never expected, however, was that Natah would become emotionally attached to the Tenno, and she sought to protect them from the Orokin, by putting them into cryosleep and hiding them on Lua for centuries, until that fateful day when they were called back into action. Margulis would be blamed for the treachery and sentenced to the Jade Light, a horrible, painful death from which there is no recovery. Natah had repressed her memories of ever being a Sentient, until Ball-Ass, the creator of the Warframes, the lover of Margulis, and a backstabbing traitor lured her to the Sentients.

"Over the course of the story, Ball-Ass, sorry... I'll just call him Ballas from now on, it is revealed that he actually tricked Natah as she was going through this identity crisis into believing she was the Lotus, luring her to the Sentients where she is brought back to her original Sentient form. Ballas, for some reason, appears to have twisted his own form to that closer to a Sentient and presents you with the Paracesis, a cool-ass sword, and you're to use it to slay Sentients. Turns out, he was working with this guy Erra, Natah's brother, into bringing Natah back so she could finish the war. But then, Ballas turns out to be a double agent, working with Erra only to deceive him and come into control of his own power. The Tenno confronts Ballas, who thrusts them, along with the betrayed Natah, into the future where they have lost. So it kinda turns into, like, Samurai Jack for a second.

"You're thrust into this future where Ballas rules all, has taken over the Corpus and the Grineer, and the neighboring factions, and turned everyone into slaves. You show up, the only rebel, as a mysterious individual later referred to as the Drifter. the story gets really complicated, as the Drifter turns out to be the Tenno all grown up, tending to a dying Natah that barely remembers him. As he tries to recover parts of her to restore her, he has to deal with these freaking bastardized Warframes called the Archons.

"With nothing but a bow that you receive from Hunhow, Lotus' father and controller of the Stalker, as well as this personalized pistol Amp called the Sirocco, you're tasked with taking them down and restoring Natah. As you do so, she becomes more and more aggressive until she attacks you before momentarily coming to her senses and redirecting her anger at Ballas. You go to confront Ballas and the battle is insane. You can't hurt him and you have to destroy these mirrors just to do any sort of damage to him, but all you can do is trick him into doing it himself before you can hurt him.

"Ballas is jealous of the Tenno because they get all the Lotus' love, and he doesn't, so he wants to kill both of you. After what seems like forever, you take him down, and the Lotus gives him the kiss of death. Good, motherfucker. Then the Man in the Wall shows up, this crazy Void entity that's been manipulating everything, first showing up in the Chains of Harrow questline, pulling your strings and eventually haunting your ship, shows up and it's the weirdest shit ever. Anyway, the quest is done, and it allows you to decide the identity of the Lotus. Will she stay Lotus? Or Natah? Or Margulis? I chose the Lotus, as that seems the most honest. The Lotus is a role, fulfilled by both Margulis and Natah. Those other two are mere identities, but both of these women played the part of the Lotus as a teacher and a mother figure."

"With that, we're basically all caught up on the major story beats. We went from a mere Warframe, getting rescued, to finding the kid that controls us, learning that our teacher was one of the enemies the whole time, that she changed because she felt a bond with us, we grew up, kicked Ballas' ass, and now the adventure continues on. The New War really feels like a season finale of a show, with this new content feeling like the beginning of a new season. I wonder what's in store for us."

the Nerd takes a swig of Rolling Rock followed by a drink of water.

"But we're STILL... not done. There's still plenty of stuff to talk about. There are other syndicates, 3 paired up against the other 3, 6 in total, and you can align with any of them at any moment in time, for a one-time fee of course. As you rank up, you gain access to their exclusive goods including armor, decorations, and even weapons. First is the Steel Meridian, a group of Grineer rebelling against their Queen, offering protection for the Kavor, the Arbiters of Hexis, a mysterious Illuminati-type group with questionable morals, and Cephalon Suda, a group run by a Cephalon with a thirst for knowledge and a taste for music, the Red Veil, a cult-like group of assassins, chaotic and most likely evil, the Perrin Sequence, a faction of Corpus swaying away from Nef Anyo and more concerned with honest capitalism than corruption, deception and greed, and the New Loka, a group of individuals concerned with the preservation of organic life, so basically, space hippies.

"In addition to that, there's Cephalon Simaris, the head of a game mode called Sanctuary Onslaught. Sanctuary Onslaught is a game where you're tasked with killing as many enemies as fast as possible, as Simaris cranks up the difficulty. The guy is a psychopath. Teshin, who has his own place in the relays as well, is the head of TWO game modes, the Steel Path, which is basically the game's hard mode, where you fight enemies 100 levels higher than usual, but you get the chance at Steel Essense, a resource that allows you to buy stuff from him, that you obtain by killing Acolytes, which are kind of like the Stalker, but with different Warframes. The second Syndicate is Conclave... UUGGHH CONCLAVE!

"I've been pretty tame thus far, but Conclave is where the diarrhea dial gets turned up to eleven! Conclave is absolute fucking crap! You know how I said you can get really fast and start flipping and flopping all over the place? Well, this is the PVP section of the game. Yeah, this game has PVP, not just fighting the enemy! Killing other people is damn near impossible! It's easier to shoot a fruit fly off the tip-top of the Empire State Building from the ground with a slingshot while standing upside down and using the slingshot with your feet, blindfolded! What the fuck were they thinking?! And there are all sorts of stuff you can get from Teshin, ranks, decorations, weapon skins, and a syandana, but the syandana only looks cool when you play Conclave! It's not even like you can use the old mods that you understand to play it, you gotta get all new mods, and make THEM work! So there are two things you can do: you can cheese the game with explosives and Valkyr or Nyx, and use the cheapest shit strategies ever to win, or you can pathetically organize a game with friends, and trade-off kills. That's the only way you're getting anywhere because otherwise, this group of people that play the shit constantly is gonna kick your FUCKING teeth in!

"I'd rather chug the contents of a commode than play that fucking game mode! I'd rather open-mouth kiss a naked Nox as the Corpus rob me blind and the Infested shove a massive tumor up my asshole than play one second of that putrid, cockamamie cock-sucking fish-flopping fuck-fest torture that is Conclave! I'd rather suffer the Jade Light myself, be turned into a Cephalon, be glassed, and be subjected to every Warframe power at once, than waste a single extra second of my already greatly-diminished lifespan playing Conclave! Fuck that shit, and fuck Teshin! I'm glad he's dead now!"