Warframe pregnancy: A PC Gamer special report

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(Image credit: Digital Extremes)

The latest warframe, Jade, wearing optional Choir cosmetics.

Before I begin, quick disclaimer: This article will featuremajor Warframe spoilersfor story quests including The Second Dream, The Sacrifice, and the recently released Jade Shadows. If you’re interested in maintaining the impact of those reveals for yourself,stop reading now.

In my eleven years playing Warframe, I’ve been forced to ask questions. Some I’ve wondered out of terminal lore-brained curiosity: “What drove the Tenno, the player characters, to overthrow the Orokin space empire before entering a centuries-long slumber?” or “Why do their warframe exoskeletons seem to have individuality or historical identities?”

Other questions, like “Why do a lot of these magic robot ninja suits have pronounced secondary sex characteristics,” I’ve wondered just long enough to decide that it’s a mystery for hornier people than me to ponder. When Digital Extremes CEO Steve Sinclair jokingly reads a question from chatduring a dev livestreamasking whether warframes can get pregnant, as he did seven months ago, I was content when the answer from creative director Rebb Ford was “So far they haven’t. We don’t know.” I’d seen DE devs trolling before.A hypothetical warframe’s pregnancy is none of my business, I thought to myself, and resubmerged into a vat of lore-relevant proper nouns.

But then DE made it my business. Last week saw the release of Warframe’s latest story quest, Jade Shadows, and without knowing why, I was seeingposts about pregnant warframesbubbling up onto my feeds. Suddenly, Warframe pregnancy wasn’t just niche kink content. Warframe pregnancy was a matter of public record—a public record that demanded clarification. I spoke with Rebb Ford about pregnancy in Warframe, and to ask for a definitive answer to that same question from the November 2023 devstream: Can a warframe get pregnant?

But first, you might be thinking, “Hold on, isn’t this a game about robotic space ninjas wearing robot suits that let them shoot lightning or whatever? How would an exoskeleton even get pregnant?”

Well. It’s complicated. To talk about warframe pregnancy, we first have to talk about warframes.

Before I go any further, once again, there will beheavy Warframe spoilersahead.

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Okay, so: Warframes. What’s the deal?

This is the deal with Warframes

I’ll try to be brief.

(Image credit: Digital Extremes)

A warframe, Nezha Prime, sprints past a line of Corpus enemies, leaving them ablaze in its wake.

Luckily the Orokin hit the jackpot, if the jackpot was a shipful of young teens who were suffused with unfathomable cosmic energies during an interdimensional colony ship accident. These Tenno warlock children were able to mindmeld with the frenzied warframes through the power of shared trauma, astral projecting into them and piloting them in combat to turn the tide in the Orokin war. Unluckily, the Orokin then hit the opposite of a jackpot, because the warframe-equipped Tenno decided they weren’t super on-board with the whole “despotic empire” situation, and murdered the Orokin ruling caste in a frenzy of void magic and mutagenic biosteel. The Tenno then went into centuries-long suspended animation, awakening as amnesiac player characters who’d rediscover through years of quests that the warframes they’re building are 3D-printed, armor-plated meat golems that they’re piloting remotely over brain Wi-Fi.

This is the deal with The Stalker

Now that we’ve completed the introductory section of our Warframe pregnancy primer, let’s talk Jade Shadows. Warframe’s newest story quest delves into the history of The Stalker, a fan-favorite Warframe fixture. He’s basically the player’s very own Shadow the Hedgehog: an edgy, red-and-black enigma who’ll occasionally pop uninvited into your missions to try and murder your squad, declaring an undying hatred for the Tenno. He’s been thrust into major story quests over the years: sometimes as an assailant, sometimes a grudging ally. And with Jade Shadows, we finally learn about his history.

(Image credit: Digital Extremes)

The Stalker, the edgy dark mirror to the Warframe player.

Centuries later, between his vengeful jaunts out to hunt Tenno, The Stalker has been protecting an ailing Jade. She’s been suffering a mysterious illness that’s gradually grown more severe. At the end of the quest, it’s revealed that, despite her transformation into a warframe, Jade is still pregnant. Jade dies during childbirth, leaving The Stalker with their warframe infant.

This is the deal with Warframe pregnancy

So, we’ve seen a pregnant warframe. It’s possible. Seems decisive. But for the sake of historic and scientific record, I wanted definitive answers about warframe pregnancy from Digital Extremes itself.

So I asked. People answer all kinds of emails.

In an interview with Rebb Ford, I asked just how far along production was on Jade Shadows when she was confronted with the fanbase’s gift of prophecy. “The frame was fully completed,” Ford said. “We knew.”

(Image credit: Digital Extremes)

The Stalker cuddles his newborn Warframe hybrid infant.

Steve Sinclair, former Warframe creative director, current DE CEO, and devstream chaos agent repeat offender intentionally read the question, Ford said, to both troll his fellow devs and seed inevitable psychic damage. “It was a calculated question,” Ford said. “Everyone on the couch at that point had read the script, seen the art, seen the frame, seen the blockouts. Everyone knew.”

According to Ford, it’s hit and miss what the viewers of Warframe devstreams will latch onto. “It could have gone either way,” she said. “People could have forgotten about it completely, or it was so off-putting and off guard that they remembered it seven months later, and the latter happened. And now here we are.”

Off-putting, Ford says, wasn’t the goal with Jade’s design. “It’s such a constellation of truths when we’re dealing with this subject matter. Big picture, very clearly when dealing with a pregnant warframe as a concept, it’s like, what the hell, this free-to-play grindy MMO added a pregnant hero. That’s the burning star in this constellation, but that’s not why we did it.”

And of course, for the sake of historic and scientific record, I was obligated to ask, once again, that crucial question: Can a warframe get pregnant? “All we know so far is that if Ballas were to use the Helminth on a pregnant woman, be it as punishment or otherwise, they would remain pregnant,” Ford said. “So the question does technically remain.”

Damn. Well, hopefully we’re content with a public record showing that, while we may never know if a warframe cangetpregnant, they can at least, officially,bepregnant. I’m going back to my nouns.

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The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

This is the deal with Warframes#

This is the deal with The Stalker#

This is the deal with Warframe pregnancy#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

This is the deal with Warframes

This is the deal with The Stalker

This is the deal with Warframe pregnancy