The selling point is whatever the fans want it to be. Is Jax's selling point that he's black? Cause nobody would be upset with Jax returning even though we already have other soldiers, other guys with strength powers, other guys with guns, even other guys with robot arms. Does he invalidate Darrius ever existing again? No. A shit character is a shit character and they stay that way until you make them good. "Selling point" is irrelevant. NRS redesigning and shoving Quan Chi down our throats for 15 years hasn't somehow made him the most popular villain, sorceror, or even guy from the Netherrealm. Because he's still just a stupid grey guy with a stupid bald head and nothing that Shang Tsung didn't already do better.
Scorpion doesn't even REMOTELY resemble the guy he was even two games ago, much less in the beginning. But he's a cool fucking character. Do you remember when Smoke was just Scorpion in grey? LITERALLY, just Scorpion in grey. Was he a cool character? Yes, because he was fucking Scorpion in grey. Then he was Scorpion AND Sektor in blue and he was lame. Then he was. . . well, whatever he was in Deception and he was even lamer. Now he's a long haired demon avatar Naruto reject from Sweden and he's awesome again.
Sheeva is one of two non-humanoid females in the entire series, one of maybe 3 total characters with strength based powers, and the only one (until now) who has ever been playable. She's got more selling points than almost the entire remaining rainbow of UMK3 ninjas put together and if she wasn't shit tier and generally unpleasant to use in MK9, she'd be way more popular and relevant.
This is coming from the same website that demonizes and makes fun of characters like Hsu Hao, Dairou, Kobra, Darrius, etc. Don't you think those characters have potential too? Kappa. And don't act like Jax being black isn't a selling point. If race, creed, gender, etc. weren't truly a selling point, then noone would say they identify with Black Panther or Static, Cyborg wouldn't be on the J League, and the new Ms. Marvel wouldn't be as popular if she weren't a Muslim. So yes, Jax being black DOES matter to people, and is a selling point to the character.
And what are you talking about? Scorpion is practically THE EXACT same guy he was : a vengeful dude full of hate spouting get over here tossing spears and slicing heads. Literally nothing has changed bar his appearance, which is still iconic and still yellow and still has a mask.
I severely hope Sheeva isn't in the game. And yes, Sheeva's whole schtick was a female Goro, whose already in the game.
Even if two characters share 90% of things in common theres so much room for diversion in play styles and moves that it's downright silly.
Like the young martial artist master Shaolin monks that are both descendants of the greatest mortal kombat champion and were trained by the same people at the same time.
AND that's where the variation system comes in. This is a case of just because you can doesn't mean you should. Imagine if this game had Cassie Cage, Sonya, Stryker, all in this game. Sure, they could all be different like Stryker could use an M9 beretta and cassie could use a M1911 or something, but why would you do that when you can expand to other characters in the game. Now I think Stryker is a complete fucking badass in a kind of campy sort of way : he doesn't fit into the situation AT ALL and seems ill equipped to take on sorcerers and demons and shit armed with a pistol, taser and some grenades, yet still handles business, but I can completely empathize why people wouldn't want him in this game. I hope Sheeva isn't in this game. Her main selling point is a female Goro, and we already have Goro playable, so she becomes moot to me imo.
i can dream
