What do you think was the truth about the warframes?

I have finished most of the quests ((up to AoZ, only side quests like waverider remaining)) and I've been rewatching cut scenes and trying to catch all the details I couldn't catch when playing.

From my understanding, Ballas took the strongest people and turned them into frames ((and I noticed he said "volunteers or not" in the vitruvian)). He also said they used drugs and brutalized their minds to try to control the frames, which led me to the conclusion that the frames were conscious, and could act and move alone according to the orokin commands ((like how Ballas stopped umbra from attacking him)), before the operators came along.

He said the frame's minds were not free from the infestation madness, and they were failures because these weapons turned against them. ((So again, my understanding is that the frames could move on their own))

And then, the operators were found, and using transference, they could control the frames. Idk how the frames turned out brain dead now whenever the operator transferred out, but I guess after so many years, their consciousness just disappears.

And so, my overall understanding was that, before the operators, there was a period of time when the frames were their own individual, could move on their own, and were doing tasks according to orokin control, but slowly they grew mad because of the infestation. Then after the zariman incident, they were all controlled by operators, up to the point of the old war and the rebel against the orokin.

But I've seen a lot of arguments that the frames were never conscious, and it has always been the operator controlling them.

In the sacrifice, ordis also refers to the frame as "not having memories and only a vessle for the star child"

So this really confuses me. That period of time, between the creation of the frames and before the zariman happened, how did the frames operate? What do you think?