Okay so I'm writing this past when I should have been in bed but I need everyone to hear me out right now.

A lot of franchises try to make at least one of their monsters "cute". The problem is, more often than not, they make the cute/obviously not the enemy one more akin to like...your standard dog or cat. It's a house pet, so it's supposed to be cute. Warframe just...doesn't do that. Sure, you could argue that the Predasites and Vulpaphyla are clearly modeled after "dog" and "fox" but like...yes but NUANCED. The Vulpaphyla I think resemble their original, non-infested species the most out of the two, but even then there's...definitely something wrong there. If anything, they read as their entirely own creature once you actually compare them to a real-world fox. Hell, even if you compare them to the in-game cat companion, the Kavat, there's...that thing is definitely not meant to be cute.

Then you find out that, not only can these creatures be tranq'd and delivered to "Son" for tags to exchange for plushies, but if you find one in a weakened state you can actually cure it's illness and have it as a companion. You can own your very own fucked up, horridly infested little fella! And it'll fight by your side! Sure, the game mechanaics are basically just Kubrow for the Predasite and Kavat for the Vulpaphyla, but you cannot in good faith look at that thing (affectionate) and tell me that it looks remotely like a dog or a cat. This goes even further if you've actually gotten one of the Antigen/Mutagen combos that actually adds features to your companion.

Compare this to something like Touchstarved, where it seems to be that the general consensus on the appearance of the friendly monster, Princess, is just...a dog. She's an eldritch dog. Nothing wrong with this trope, of course, and I am also in the boat of very much wanting a plushie of that horrid little beastie for my own bc...fucking imagine how adorable that would be. But it just...doesn't hit the same as when you realize that, not only is this fucked up creature adorable as hell...there's nothing that should be making you think it's adorable. Y'know, beyond the fact that you can pet the disease creature and it lives in your base of choice and will curl up on a pet bed if you put one down. Design wise, though?

I don't know about you but when I first started playing...I was a little put off by this creature. Something feels wrong about the entirety of Deimos, and that's because it is. Very wrong. The entire moon is absolutely crawling with the infestation. All because, if I'm remembering correctly, something went wrong and the Orokin decided to set off a biobomb full of disease and spores. Verdict's still out on whether or not that actually fixed the problem or made it worse, though. It definitely gave us some of my favorite little guys though. Absolutely ignoring the fact that "Son" is my favorite of the Entrati family, of course. Though that may have swayed my opinions just a touch.

Anyway, my point is that somehow, despite not exactly making the "cute" monsters look...well, intentionally cute, Digital Extremes has absolutely won me over with the fucked up little guys on Deimos and I want real life floofs of these creatures to have in my house.

I mean, just look at it. How could you not want one, too?