Warframe is actually a coop loot shooter where you slay inferior enemies with a team of overpowered space ninjas. But what happens when the tables are turned and you face a gruesome, seemingly invincible enemy alone?
“Rap, Tap, Tap!” … If there are words I NEVER want to hear again in my life, it’s these! Because whenever you hear these phrases in the quest “Chains of Harrow” in Warframe, you know that something terrible, something gruesome, something unimaginably deadly is behind you, and you stand no chance!
But let’s start from the beginning.
Warning, heavy spoilers follow!
Alone in the Dark
Chains of Harrow starts out scary. I receive a mysterious message that is totally distorted and barely understandable. Then suddenly the whole picture turns red, and I hear the horrifying words “Rap, Tap, Tap” for the first time. Even now it sends a chill down my spine.
But the spooky feeling is short-lived as I get a new mission. I am supposed to check on a ship of the Grineer deserters from “Steel Meridian” where the power has gone out, and I wander through the ship’s corridors, only with a flashlight on my helmet. Dead bodies are strewn everywhere, and there are strange messages written in blood on the walls.
Attack of the Killer Commandos
However, I learn a bit more and save a follower of the assassin group “Red Veil” from her seemingly insane comrades. Now I finally learn more about the background of my mission.
Apparently, the Red Veil serves a mysterious entity named “Rell”, a kind of dark messiah of the space assassins. However, Rell seems to have lost his mind, and parts of the faction follow him in his madness. My Tenno is supposed to fix the situation, gather more information, and resolve the Rell dilemma.
Warframe Like Never Before – As Survival Horror!
This begins a true hell trip as I have to gather Rell’s memories and emotions, which wander as bizarre ghosts with creepy comic faces in remote areas. While I fight deadly Red Veil assassins, Rell is simultaneously pursuing me like a kind of phantom.
Rell is a shadowy figure whose arrival is announced by the words “Rap, Tap, Tap” and the clinking of chains. And once Rell is there, all resistance is futile!
Because Rell is invincible and unstoppable. No matter what I throw at him, he just keeps getting closer! And when he catches me, even my Warframe’s strong shields and health points vanish in seconds!
But even cursing doesn’t help, because Rell follows me like a bloodhound across the entire map! I have to keep moving! If I wait too long, I hear the clinking sound, and a brutal hit from nowhere costs me valuable health points!
While Rell hunts me like a defenseless animal, I have to find and catch his memories in various maps. The memories run around merrily, and I have to set up special traps like Ghostbusters to hold them in place briefly.
Only then can I deal full damage and finally capture them. But to hit well, I have to stand still, and then it’s “Rap, Tap, Tap” again…
A Quest Full of Adrenaline
A typical mission during the Chains-of-Harrow quest is therefore pure adrenaline for minutes! Unlike the usual Warframe missions, I can’t call for help from overpowered clan mates or a Lotus guide. Throughout the quest, I am forced to go it alone!
After just a few minutes, I am on the verge of panic. I’m actually not a fan of horror, and the feeling of being hunted by an invincible horror monster is absolutely suffocating and raises my pulse.
„The Horror, the Horror …“
The greatest horror in Chains of Harrow, however, lies in the fact that you are absolutely helpless against Rell. This is a completely foreign feeling in Warframe, as usually, I am the one who comes down upon the relatively defenseless enemies like an unstoppable avenging angel and slaughters them by the dozen.
But here it is different. Here I am the victim, even though I am controlling my fully equipped Warframe. That makes the helplessness even more suffocating than in the quest “War Within”, where I found myself unexpectedly as a defenseless child in ancient catacombs. Because in War Within, I gradually developed superpowers and became more powerful.
In Chains of Harrow, however, I must realize that despite Warframe and weapons, I am no longer the apex predator in the solar system. Something is out there. Something that is more powerful than I am!
Just as I feel like a victim against Rell, so must all the Grineer and Corpus soldiers I have casually slaughtered by the thousands have felt. And at least they could injure me somehow! But against Rell, everything is ineffective!
Rell’s Fate – A New, Chilling Chapter in the Warframe Story
Multiple times I must capture the emotional images of Rell in increasingly nasty maps, but finally, the time has come. I can enter Rell’s “Temple” and there in the showdown finally kill the dark prophet and thus free him from his madness and pain. But the victory also has a suffocating quality.
Because Rell was one of “Us”, another Tenno, who even “Space Mom” Lotus did not know about. Rell was autistic and was shunned by the other tenno. The Red Veil took him in and saw him as a kind of prophet of the “Void”, the mysterious dark source of all Tenno powers.
However, as he had no cryo-sleep chamber, he permanently bonded his mind to his Harrow Warframe, which was chained, and over the centuries, he eventually went insane due to constant contact with the “Void” and ultimately had to be “redeemed”.
This leaves the “victory” with a bland feeling, and after completing the mission, I feel bad and saddened. And who was actually the “man in the wall” that Rell repeatedly mentioned and secretly feared during the quest? It remains creepy in the Warframe universe…
But one thing is certain: Once again, the team at Digital Extremes has shown that they understand their craft and enhance Warframe’s complex story with ever new, coherent aspects. I’m definitely looking forward to the next story chapter. “Sacrifice”, the title of the upcoming story section, already sends shivers down my spine…
Here’s a report on the experience of the crazy revelation in the quest “Second Dream”. After that, Warframe is a different game!
