Warframe's "Jade Shadows" Quest: Comments and Criticisms
This article is an edited version of a Tumblr post I made on November 25th, 2024. This revised version was published on June 22nd, 2025.
←← Take me back to the writings directory!This article contains spoilers for Warframe's Jade Shadows quest, and possibly other quests leading up to it.
If you need a summary...
This article will mainly touch upon the story and lore brought up in Jade Shadows. If you need a summary of the lore, I recommend looking at Jade's "Lore and History" section on the official Warframe wiki. I tried doing it myself here, but I feel like it wouldn't be short enough to include in this article, but also not long enough to convey all of the important story beats (or at least, the parts what were important to me...)
If you want to know what I thought of the gameplay: It's a 30-40 minute quest that is kiiiiinda mid. Saying that feels weird because it feels like a disservice to the story, but what I remember of the gameplay wasn't super exciting aside from the parts where you get to play as the Stalker. Even then though, I wasn't super into it because I didn't have to use many of his abilities.
Also, unlike other Warframe quests, Jade Shadows is a mainline quest. As of right now, I don't think that it deserves this title, even if it includes more lore about the Stalker.
What I liked
I liked what this quest did for some of the characters we already know, like the Stalker but especially Hunhow. It was kinda surprising that Hunhow was the most mature person in this quest, given the subject it made sense. He knows what it's like to lose both of his children in some form or another, so I think he was the most qualified person to try and tell the Stalker to move on from his hate of the Tenno (ignoring the fact that Hunhow is the only other living associate the Stalker has).
The baby Warframe is also fun to think about from a theory or biological perspective. Like how does it work? Will he grow like a regular child or will there be some interesting Warframe biology shenanigans? And also, it's fun to think about from a character perspective, like how will Sirius/Orion develop as a character, if we see him again. I think about this a lot so maybe expect another article about the Babyframe in the future.
What could use improving
Jade. Jade is pretty much the deuteragonist of this quest and yet I feel like the quest doesn't give her enough attention. More specifically, Jade's depiction reminds me of the "dead wife" or "fridging" trope, where a character (Jade) who is close to another character (Sorren) is hurt or killed for the sake of Character Development. As such, we don't know much about Jade's personality or motivations, which made it hard for me to really latch onto this quest's story. All we know is that she was Sorren's lover, she was pregnant, and she's dead.
Now, while Jade Shadows doesn't divulge more information about Jade, there is another ingame avenue to learn about Jade. In any relay, if you go into Teshin's room and look to the side, there is an array of 7 feathers which describe Jade's experience leading up to Jade Shadows. From this side story, we learn that Jade was a stubborn woman, and she wanted to have her child as an act of defiance against Ballas, the very man who turned her and Sorren into Warframes. We also learn that Warframes can be aware of the operator controlling them, and at the same time we learn of Jade's empathetic nature towards them. Instead of feeling hatred, Jade recognizes the Tenno for what they are: traumatized children. While all of these new traits still revolve around Jade's motherhood, it improves Jade's characterization by giving her some initiative in it all, instead of her just being the wife who Dies.
Now what really pisses me off is the way in which that side story is delivered. After you finish Jade Shadows, there is zero indication that this lore even exists. No hint, no inbox message, nothing. As someone who doesn't do Conclave or check on Teshin in general, it's possible I wouldn't have found this extra lore ever if it weren't for the internet. I also heard that this extra lore was added in an update, so it wasn't even included in the original Jade Shadows update. It feels so half-hearted.
How I would fix it
This would probably draw out the playtime a lot, however I think a lot of my issues with Jade could be fixed by having the events of the side story be playable. Show us what happened instead of telling us that it did. I think playing as Jade would also do numbers in terms of getting the player attached to Jade. Like when she passed, I was sad of course, but only because I knew at a base level that a loved one dying as they give birth is sad. It wasn't because I also loved Jade from a player perspective, which if I did would only make the scene 10 times sadder (which would be good!)