So, let's talk about the shooter-grinder that maybe started it all.

This story goes back all the way to 2014, around a year after Warframe had originally released. I was dating a locksmith at the time. Not very integral to the story, because her being a locksmith has nothing to do with Warframe ... It was just, you know, the biggest thing I remember about her (aside from, a year later, telling me she didn't think I was dating material). But, she was staying at my place, and I remember distinctly waking up in the morning to her, on my PC, playing this weird ... ninja space game. It had almost no features, no story, and really all you did was click a mission, then shoot things, and then pick up some loot. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There were no flying ship animations, no rotating solar maps, nothing.

I got into it for about a week or so before I realized I couldn't really take playing a game that was technically in open beta, or even alpha? I don't remember. So, I dropped it. I would revisit it again and again, shooting things, leveling up, and then losing motivation. Until suddenly, one day, the star map was moving, and you could see the ship you were on flying to those missions.

Amazing.

But I kept going in and out of it like tossing out pairs of socks. At least until around 2016 when an online friend convinced me to join her, because there was some ridiculous mission we had to do called "the Second Dream."

Let's just say, it blew me away. Finally. A character creator? And, a **story? **Albeit, you're some kind of Stranger Things-esque powerful teenager who pilots these metal space ninjas, but it was something. Evangelion, maybe.

I spent a week figuring out what all was new, ran around with my new human legs, found an open world thing on Earth ...

Yeah, I left the game again ... until 2018, and the Fortuna update. Needless to say, I was blown away, again. And, after getting frustrated that I couldn't just have the cool new guns and my own hoverboard in a reasonable amount of time ... I left.

This basically is the theme behind my relationship with Digital Extremes and Warframe. I'm the rubber-band player. Getting real excited about all the honestly really cool stuff, and revolutionary storytelling, and then having my motivation riddled with bullets and swords when faced with the prospect of having to spend time collecting things and grinding reputation.

The cycle begins again.

It's 2024, and I'm back in Warframe, enticed by some wild new expansion announcement that apparently takes you back to ... 1999??? HUH?

So, I'm swallowing the grind pill, and I'm doing it. Knocking every mission out, one by one, and I'm almost to the New War.

But, here are my feelings about Warframe, all these years later.

A space ninja MMO is freaking awesome. I have like, 20 different warframes, and some of them I've never even tried. I'm account level 8, almost 9, and I'm working on upgrading my own massive capital ship (called a Railjack). The story is gripping, wild, and probably some of the best writing I've ever seen in a game, and I cannot wait to get through to more recent content.

But, despite swallowing that pill, and despite working through toward what I want, that's the one problem that remains with Warframe. The game absolutely disrespects your time as a human being.

The Second War: Hey buddy, you need a Railjack and a Necramech before you can continue the story. Frikken' scrub.

Okay, so I have the Railjack, in which you use to engage in space combat that isn't all that much unlike combat in No Man's Sky. But ... the Necramech? Oh ... Oh, you gotta grind a bunch of materials on the dead moon Deimos before you can build it?

Queue the internal screaming. This is why I've left the game 40 times since 2014. I'm not a fan of grinding. I have a full-time job, I have extracurricular things I like to do with my time. Spending hours upon hours collecting materials, so I can build a mech, so I can engage in yet another form of combat, so I can continue the masterfully crafted storyline ... it seems to me like needless barriers to get to what you actually want.

The GAME.

But, sure, I mean, yeah. They need hooks to keep you playing, because if you blast through the storyline, and you don't have to do anything else, you lose your player base. I just wish grinding didn't feel like I suddenly had a second job. But ... I'M GONNA DO IT. I'm not quitting this time.

For real.

If you wanna help me out, my account name is CMDR_N0va.

My overall feelings on Warframe are that it's probably one of the best games ever made, that kind of annoys the absolute hell out of me ... at times.

Hold up, haven't I seen this before?

Back in the olden days of gaming o' yore, there was a time when Shephards saved the galaxy, and the Inquisition had only just begun, guards of the veil be damned.

Before developer studios killed their community forums and moved communication to Twitter, and while we were all playing Mafia Wars and The Sims Social on Facebook, awkwardly flirting with sims created by our close friends. An age where the latest Sims game didn't have swimming pools, and most of us were still venturing out Into the Future.

That time was 2014. A time before gaming was corrupted by an onslaught of nonstop subscription models and battle passes. When 30 hours to beat a game was perfectly acceptable. When loading into something brand new, felt ... exciting.
But war, war has changed.

Warframe was released in 2013, and then later, for the Playstation 4, in 2014. This was mostly only an alpha, and all you could really do was jump down to a handful of extermination missions from a static solar system map.

Around the same timeframe, the first Destiny was released on consoles, and, at the time, didn't even remotely touch a PC.

Both games shared (and still share) similarities. As Warframe evolved, it became a mission-hub, shooter-looter game where you built your character, played with friends, and spent the rest of your time sifting through playing-card-eque warframe modifications. Destiny, and then its sequel, years later, are really not all that different.

It's a theme I don't feel has really caught on all that much outside of ... well, Warframe and Destiny. Sure, we have Helldivers 2, but, that's kinda sorta similar, but also not really.

Warframe and Destiny 2 exist as "live service" games. Games that exist without a subscription, but do have expansions and microtransactions, and are persistent, never-ending. I think back in the golden age of gaming, we would call this a hybrid MMO.

They don't really exist in a niche, but this genre has largely been overshadowed by MOBAs, and then survival games, and then battle royales. I think the battle royale genre still reigns supreme as one of the most popular format of games to play. Although, personally, it's starting to feel pretty stale for me. Even if Apex Legends is really cool.

But, now we're in 2024. Warframe has been out for about 11 years, and Destiny has been chugging along for around the same amount of time. And I guess Nexon decided to throw their own hat into the ring. For ... reasons?

Enter: The First Descendant. Like if Mass Effect Andromeda had a child with Destiny, and then got cybernetically modified with implants from Warframe. It's a game occupying a concept that already exists, so much so, they purposely or accidentally copied UI design directly from Destiny 2. And, as damning as this may look, I decided to give the game a shot, regardless.

Hello, I am now a bunny.

The game starts out kind of unremarkable, dropping you into a sci-fi universe where an evil big guy wants an artifact for his own evil doing and bidding, and you've got to stop him.

The First Descendant is a third-person looter shooter powered by Unreal Engine 5. Become a Descendant. Fight for the survival of humanity. Descendants have unique abilities to tackle both solo and co-op missions. Up to 4 players use varied mechanics to defeat giant bosses. BE THE FIRST DESCENDANT!

It ... kind of reminds me of the beginning of Destiny 2, paraphrased and rewritten.
You're a descendant, and you can do really cool stuff with your hands, like shoot out ice, or electricity, and also fire guns at monsters.

My first impression, is that the gun play kind of sucks. It feels like holding a stick and going "pew pew pew" with imaginary bullets. Sure, they're actually coming out of the gun, but there's next to no feedback when you're firing a gun, and when your shots are hitting your target. It just doesn't feel like I'm shooting a weapon that kills things.

Now, the graphics are pretty slick, and, well, I don't know if this is an issue with Linux, or what, but I'm running pretty good hardware, okay? And having the settings on high, I get great FPS ... until I venture into an area where there's a lot going on, or onto a battlefield where missions are happening. Everything slows down to a 15 FPS slug-fest. And, apparently, this is something that's happening to a lot of people, and it may not actually be a hardware issue.

It's been quite a while since I've felt the struggle of a poorly optimized game.
Within the first ten levels, I wasn't really feeling like I was having all that much fun. I was feeling like I was just shooting a gun at some aliens until loot popped out, and repeating the process over and over until I was really powerful, and also had access to the Bunny descendant.

This is about where things start to get better. I like the bunny lady.

With my descendant now fully maxed out with all the gear you can wear, and equipped with modifications (that has an interface eerily similar to Warframe), I'm starting to feel like progress is happening.

I notice something though ... this game takes place, entirely, on just one planet? Did I miss something? What happens when you've completed all the missions across the map? Is it endgame time? Do I get to go to space and see other planets?
I mean, this is what I'm expecting, since this is a direct copy and paste of Destiny and Warframe. But I've done almost no reading on the extended story of this game, and am speaking about it now from only first-hand experience.

But what about the voice acting?

The voice-overs in TFD sound like a typical dub in an anime. Some of them are alright, some of them sound like the person speaking has no emotional capacity whatsoever. It's a very, Nexon-ish, Eastern grinder game. Which is fine! Grinding mobs for loot is something I've done since 2001, when I joined Anarchy Online.

More issues, and stuff, and things.

From the jump, to level 14, I'm only really now starting to feel like I could enjoy TFD, and that's if they continue to fix it, and put out new content, and aren't sued by two different developer studios.

One of the issues I encountered while randomly playing the game, thus far, is that pretty much all the content is designed with having other people around you, in mind. Except, even though there are a lot of people playing this game, sometimes there is nobody doing the mission you need help with. So, you kind of just fail, and then fail again, and then either stand there and wait for someone to waltz in, or go do another mission and return later.

I've said it before years and years ago, and over and over again since then: A persistent online game where there is only group content, is a game I'm not that interested in.

Eve Online is great, until you find out you can't do anything actually fun or remarkable unless you become a social butterfly and join massive corporations, and constantly collaborate with other people. I'm a recluse! I don't want to do that all the time!

Albion Online is awesome ... until you hit a wall and find out you're gonna die, son. You're gonna die and enjoy it, unless you join a guild with active players, and collab--You already know what the heck's going on.

Black Desert Online is exactly the same, but it has more solo content than the previously mentioned games.

What I'm trying to get at here is, even if your game is online only, built around co-op and being massively multiplayer, you still need to have content people can do by themselves, or you're going to annoy me. You're going to bring a screeching halt to your entire game if for some reason a ton of people just stop playing.

I will give TFD a little merit, though. One of the reasons I don't really play Warframe, is that their story and quests are ridiculously convoluted, and not very friendly to people who have day jobs. You're telling me I have to grind for a week if I want a cool gun? Are you fuggin' serious, dude?

The same kind of goes for Destiny. I like the theme, but I don't like how a lot of the game kind of feels like a slog, until you get to the content you want to be in.
TFD, so far, you pretty much just blast through everything like a stream of water through toilet paper.

This could be good, or bad, depending on what exactly the endgame is.

At the end of it all.

With my initial impressions down, and my extensive history of having seen this all before, and knowing exactly who Nexon is, as a company, and what they're probably going to do (Hello, exorbitant cash shop prices), would I continue playing?

Probably. I kind of do want to see what the endgame is like, and just how deep customization and stat-building goes.

Would I recommend it to other people?

Uh ... maybe? If you feel the same way I do about Warframe and Destiny? Give it a shot, maybe we'll talk, and I'll help you shoot some mindless aliens.