The Obsessions of Ballas | Warframe Lore Explained

DE did a good job with him, we don't see very many characters bosses or otherwise so well done.

Most games bosses are nothing more than carbon copies of bland one note boring bosses that have come before them.

Honestly
Rebecca and the VA for Ballas deserve SOMETHING for their work. The New War is by far the best Warframe has to offer next to The Sacrifice, especially the final hour and a half of the quest. Can't wait for Veilbreaker to see Archon Erra 👀

For a while after the New War, as much as I loved Ballas meeting his end because of his own invention, it felt a bit cheap to me how it was all over as soon as the veil went on his face. But then I thought a bit more about it.

The veils work (partially, there's clearly some more direct brainwashing going on as well) by digging through your mind and manipulating past trauma to present an idealized reality where you are relieved of that suffering. The reason we can withstand one for so long is because we've already dealt with our trauma, which helps us resist because we can recognize the veil's manipulative lies for what they are. Ballas, on the other hand, is a complete mess. He's profoundly narcissistic and has nurtured the same guilt, obsessions and delusions for literal centuries. He's never resolved anything, he's never moved on. It's no wonder that he succumbed to the veil as quickly and completely as he did, because he was exactly the kind of person who would be the most vulnerable to it.

Is the Ropalyst dialogue canon? I'd assumed it was one of those Narmerisms, rooted in a truth and insecurity and regret (it is kinda fucked up she turned around and facilitated the genocide of her own kind) but twisting and omitting enough to drive her in the direction of his plans (it wasn't deliberate manipulation that she started feeling things, that's just the consequence of the empathy her mimicry required, and it was her choice that she found something more important to her than familial tie). Is there a source that isn't her own mouth confirming that? Much as I love Warframe lore it can be a nightmare to keep up with (which is why I thank the efforts of those such as yourself consolidating and analysing it in such lovely fashion, this video's ace)

Ballas has all the hallmarks of a narcissist; listening to him was like living with my father again, and killing Ballas felt like when I finally became free from my father, after a lifetime of narcissistic abuse. Narcissists of this caliber are master manipulators, and there are few (if any) depths they won't sink to in pursuit of narcissistic supply. I could write a novel on how neatly Ballas displays the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder, so I'll leave it at this: I have never so viscerally hated a fictional character before, nor have I ever been more satisfied to see him die.

Can we get a video for pazuul

I love the fact that under the surface of space ninja shenanigans, is basically a bunch of relatable stories about family.

What no bitches does to a mf

The final confrontation with Ballas was really horrifying to me, a little like the final fight at the end of Castlevania S2 where it becomes clear that all we are watching is a father beat up a son in the cold dark halls of their family home. The mission starts so grand and imposing, facing off against the great armies of Narmer and racing to stop Praghasa from swallowing the sun, and then the scale collapses to just 3 people - a child and their parents.

Love this video, really good interesting perspective on the charachter. Most people devolve him as generic evil but that rarely exists int he real world and ballus is is fair too interesting to deprive the complex layer of reality

the trailer for the new movie 'Crimes Of The Future' made me think of the beginning of the Orokin.

Ok, so all this time am just wondering, why did Erra help Ballas torture his sister?

The Warning message make me remember how soft people are

Bro if this game wasn’t free they would’ve been made a sequel

wow thats nuts never knew most of this

i guess the 3 choices you get to make her be at the end of new war would be: Margulis- margulis spirit which resides in natah but she was not the original soul of the body and the reprogramming of natah was not natural. Lotus: A combination of natah and margulis which is a fait choice but still not who Natah truly was. Then Natah who went through all these challenges and hardships to become a new natah with greater understanding which i think is the best choice. The imitation of margulis is not who Natah is. Natah is daughter of Hunhow and sentient, body of a sentient but with the lessons of Margulis and Lotus

I don't think I've ever seen a soulslike lore person cover Warframe, very cool!

I always just thought he was a simp

Thank u for this, this clarifies everything and reassures me that my choice at the very end of the newest quest was correct (at least for me), I chose Margulis

I wanted to kill Ballas myself. I am a void god, and yet I had to use his own tool against him to win. Ridiculous. I liked the storyline overall, but that boss fight really sucked.

Ballas is such an amazing villain. Who could have imagined that the final boss of the main arch of warframe would be an abussive ex boyfriend

Remember kids: simping is never the right idea.
When the Baruuk skin comes out, I'm coloring him like Ballas.

The New War's storyline is largely about how people keep trying to make Lotus revert back to Natah or Margulis, when she is ultimately an independent person who has transcended them both.

I like Ballas as a villain because DE wasn't afraid to go all-in with him. It would have been far too easy to make Ballas an 'I want to rule the world just because' villain, but no, as indicated by the pre-quest warning, there were aspects of true psychological delusions and emotionally abusive aspirations behind his actions.

Executor. Leader. Liar. Lover. Abuser.
Yeah and no one knows how he managed to rule at the End in "The New War" instead of Erra who used Ballas as a "Pet" before

Ballas is weak but he's still right

Why am I just realizing the tenno are named after the ship. 10-0 Ten-Oh Tenno

Ballus is literally me

Margulis was mostly a good person... she took in the tenno children, but cast Rell out for being autistic...

I fucking RELISHED killing Ballas.
Sure, he was a good villain, but he was a fuckin' bitch at times.

Oh dang, didn't know you played & liked Warframe!

What I want to know is what is up with this bloke’s arm? Imagine you’re in a room, you’re in the center of the room, and he enters from a doorway, instant eye contact. Everything is fine.


Until he goes all go go gadget extendo armo and suddenly you feel this mf’s gangly-ass fingers running up and down your back.

i have loved this video. in fact after your explanation the motivations of many of the characters make much more sense in light of this.
it explains why he betrayed ezzra so easily. he didnt really care about sentients and control at all or at least very little what he wanted was a margulis he could control as well as the tenno under his control.
so that the tenno just end themselves.

looking at eidelon lotus you can really see her 3 personalities on her body. her face resembling marglius, her hands and parts of her body the lotus, and the energy holding her together the black thing on her head natah.

The Warframe storyline has had too much time to breathe between story quests being released. The motivations of the Orokin and the Sentients were seemingly so beyond human understanding before, that I really built up this mystery around them in my mind. It really came down crashing, when both Balas and the sentients ended up having such human motivations, that I feel it lost some magic for me. That's not to say that they're bad characters now - it's all very satisfying and has a great emotional payoff, I just wish that Hunhow and Erra didn't bicker like... well, me and my dad, and had some grander aspirations that did not seem so emotionally driven.

Still want to run his guts through...

Warframe lore i jusf a messy divorce

Ballas was fighting over the Hood against the Groove Street

In a way, I feel for the man. He was deeply in love with Margulis, and had to suffer her growing apart from him after the tenno's arrival. Not only that, but he had to see the woman he dearly loved suffer, and get hurt at the hands of the tenno.

In spite of all of his boasting, and his curses towards Margulis, Natah, and the Lotus, all he wanted was to go back to the time in which Margulis was his world and he was hers.

As for Natah's line, "she chose death over you," I don't think Margulis did this. She chose not to forsake lives that could be saved, even knowing it would cost her her very life. Ballas wasn't really in the equation when she took this decision. I do think Ballas actually believes what Natah says, and feels betrayed by his lover. But ultimately, like the veil showed, if Margulis suddenly popped into existence once more, he would let everything go just for one more second with her.

Overall, I think it's a pretty tragic love story. And if I'm honest, I wish we could see scenes of Margulis and Natah's pasts before everything that went down.

Basically the guy is repressing his guilt over being the one who ultimately killed Margulis. He tried to manipulate Margulis into giving up the Tenno while maintaining his own high position. In the end, he chose to keep his authority over risking any of it to save Margulis. He regretted it thoroughly, but knows he wouldn’t do it any different which makes it worse. So, he blames everyone and everything else while refusing to accept any consequence.

I had never before searched for who is lotus bc i know that player will say she is a mother a lover for tenno who betrayed her own kind for us blah blah blah
So i said that she betrayed her own kind betrayed us betrayed ballas betrayed us again and killed ordis and back to kill ballas so how can i make shure that she will not try to kill us when she can
But now im sure that Ballas is greatest man ever
Bc he apologized for margulis 2 times about his fault
''Margulis, please forgive me''
''forgive me, but of course you are imprisent just as she was '' lines
And he tryed to fix everything but he was always the evil and what make him angry again that after he saved Erra life after the old war and being killed by Umbra wich he saw it a perfect death ,Natah revived him and Erra make him his pet
I see it will be more better if someone revived Ballas again but this time natah will try to kill him but we tell her to do not
So this time he will find his margulis and will see us as the one who fixed the wound inside him so he will love us and we will finaly see The maker who created the warframes Ballas take us to Tau system

Ballas def had the power to step in and lessen her punishment, but for a man named ballas he had no ballas with a silent a

Crap if the guy wanted to could he just made another one.

Ballas watched too much andrew tate but remained a beta speaking words

my souls game lore guy makes warframe vids too !! no way !! please make now after 1999 and entrati saga

They built him up and built him up and then they gave us a fairly incompetent simp to beat up.
What bothered me was how easy it was, just put a veil on him and he gets manipulated right away.
We put a veil on during the story and basically complete almost half a mission while wearing it before WE JUST TAKE IT OFF?

Then later you want me to believe Ballas couldn't do the same after which he gets kissed to death??
NGL I enjoyed the story but his ending left a sour feeling.