Kittlesen talks about MK11 story ideas that could've been ...

[Nickolaidas]

Mortal Kombat 11 - The Secrets Of Its Creation! Featuring MK11 Writer Shawn Kittlesen - YouTube

 

[pure.Wasted]

It's so odd that the "direct sequel to MKX" storyline involving a civil war between Raiden/Kotal vs. Sonya/Liu Kang was scrapped for being "too predictable." TDK, Return of the King, Spider Man 2, were these all bad sequels because they were all predictable? No. People don't care if a story is predictable or not, they care if it's good or not.

 

[EdenianWarrior]

It's so odd that the "direct sequel to MKX" storyline involving a civil war between Raiden/Kotal vs. Sonya/Liu Kang was scrapped for being "too predictable." TDK, Return of the King, Spider Man 2, were these all bad sequels because they were all predictable? No. People don't care if a story is predictable or not, they care if it's good or not.

Exactly. And then they want to not be “predictable” by shooting for the stars and doing stuff they can’t even handle.....

 

[Afumba]

It's so odd that the "direct sequel to MKX" storyline involving a civil war between Raiden/Kotal vs. Sonya/Liu Kang was scrapped for being "too predictable." TDK, Return of the King, Spider Man 2, were these all bad sequels because they were all predictable? No. People don't care if a story is predictable or not, they care if it's good or not.

This. Besides that, everything about the story we got was predictable as well. And the parts that werent were either terrible or didnt make sense (kotal jobber, hanzo killed in a nonsense way, elder god jobber etc)

The story we got was terrible, its silly that they chose this one over civil war. Only part i liked was the united outworld part, which lastest for like a day lol

Any other story even if every second would have been predictable would have been better, hard to imagine anything would have been worse. As you said all that matters is a good story, they should focus on that instead of trying to be unpredictable or add useless twists and turns.

 

[Blazeglory88]

It's so odd that the "direct sequel to MKX" storyline involving a civil war between Raiden/Kotal vs. Sonya/Liu Kang was scrapped for being "too predictable." TDK, Return of the King, Spider Man 2, were these all bad sequels because they were all predictable? No. People don't care if a story is predictable or not, they care if it's good or not.

Ah the good old 'Subverting of expectations' claims another otherwise great plotline. I don't know about anyone else but I felt that the civil war part of MKX's story was the best part of it so much so it should have very well been the plot of most if not the whole story.
But of course not, scrap the actual interesting developments for more generic soldier shit and marvel-esque avenger garbage, and I say that as someone who actually liked Kung Jin, Takeda and Cassie.
I swear the majority of these NRS writers are cookie cutter hacks who only know MK as a gore fest and nothing more.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Hanzo's death has to be one of the dumbest moments in NRS' writing history. Not even an hour earlier he was tanking a high powered flame thrower to the chest, clearly showing he isn't human, but then he dies to fucking poison?

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Not gonna lie, I absolutely loved the "Onaga Tournament" idea.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Not gonna lie, I absolutely loved the "Onaga Tournament" idea.

No you don't. Clearly you want more Johnny Cage and Sonya The Movie

 

[Afumba]

Hanzo's death has to be one of the dumbest moments in NRS' writing history. Not even an hour earlier he was tanking a high powered flame thrower to the chest, clearly showing he isn't human, but then he dies to fucking poison?

Yes, this. Especially since he is making fun of SZ one scene earlier about sneaking up on him. Then half dead Dvorah sneaks up on two Scorpions which had basically 360 LOS coverage and kills one... dumbest shit.

 

[SoapBar]

Not gonna lie, I absolutely loved the "Onaga Tournament" idea.

I want Onaga to return sooooo bad.

 

[ticklebandit!]

Hanzo's death has to be one of the dumbest moments in NRS' writing history. Not even an hour earlier he was tanking a high powered flame thrower to the chest, clearly showing he isn't human, but then he dies to fucking poison?

It will never not be funny to me that Scorpion died in Scorpion's arms. I hope Scorpion's revenge story arc goes full circle (and becomes a full circle) with Scorpion now having to revenge Scorpion.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

It will never not be funny to me that Scorpion died in Scorpion's arms. I hope Scorpion's revenge story arc goes full circle (and becomes a full circle) with Scorpion now having to revenge Scorpion.

Its really like they were so afraid to even fake out the death of Scorpion, that they had to kill him on screen with himself to stop any backlash before it starts.

Reading your post makes it seem like a joke. Scorpion dying in Scorpion's arms so now Scorpion has to avenge Scorpion is like a parody of Ed Boon writing the story mode, but that shit actually happened. Unbelievable lmao

 

[NickDaGreek1983]

Let's be serious here...
The MK characters' powers/abilities and level of toughness is all over the place.
Revenant Liu loses to Jax in Mk10 but he is shown all powerful in Aftermath when he sneaks up on fujin/shang/nightwolf.

Shao Kahn is always shown as too weak and even loses easily to kitana in the arena but then in Aftermath he is nowhere near to be stopped.
Characters have super abilities whenever the plot requires them to and are boxing bags whenever it the other character's chapter.

In my opinion, they should show that even when during the chapter's fight someone's gets beaten in a "gameplay way" during the following cutscene, the loser should win the fight in a "cinematic way" to finally make a more complete and mature story that represents characters' power level more accurately.

 

[Nickolaidas]

I think older Scorpion dying and immediately replaced by younger Scorpion was NRS wanting to make Scorpion a specter AGAIN without him being evil.

Now, what was the point since the timelines were erased two story mode hours later still eludes me, unless there's more story coming and the erasure is retconned. We'll see.

 

[Nickolaidas]

Let's be serious here...
The MK characters' powers/abilities and level of toughness is all over the place.

As TFS Vegeta very correctly said, "Power levels are bullshit". These things are always arbitrary and the writers will do anything with the characters in order to move the story.

Of course, this is bad writing, no arguments there. As a very smart person once said in the web:

"When the story serves the characters, that is good writing.
When the characters serve the story, that is bad writing."

 

[pure.Wasted]

These things are always arbitrary and the writers will do anything with the characters in order to move the story.

Slight but IMO meaningful caveat: these things are ALMOST always arbitrary and the writers will do ALMOST anything with the characters in order to move the story. Which is actually where the frustration comes from.

If it was truly arbitrary, then we would expect random bullshit and be happy when we got random bullshit. But there's just enough logic to continuously build the expectation that "ok now things are going to start making sense" and then that expectation is continuously subverted. Like, it wasn't... Kabal or Jade or whatever who beat Shao Kahn in MK9, and then beat Kronika and Shang Tsung in MK11, right? It was Liu Kang. That obviously means something. The problem is that you'd think it means a lot, but actually it only means a teeny tiny little bit.

I don't think anyone wants a strict point by point canon tierlist that has 100% predictive power. That's no fun and it's not realistic either. But the writers can at least stop going OUT of their way to write the craziest, most nonsensical shit ever.

Like they have Sonya get beat up and abducted, then they make a point of taking away all her gadgets, and then they have her magically beat Kabal who has his speed powers. Come on. You're just rubbing our faces in it at that point.

 

[EarlyReflections]

You guys made the scorpion /scorpion scene even funnier. Cant stop laughing.
For me the obvious would be Scorpion wounded by Noob, while dying on Kuai Liangs hands. I mean the story of these 3 would finally go to the next level.

 

[EarlyReflections]

Let's be serious here...
The MK characters' powers/abilities and level of toughness is all over the place.
Revenant Liu loses to Jax in Mk10 but he is shown all powerful in Aftermath when he sneaks up on fujin/shang/nightwolf.

Shao Kahn is always shown as too weak and even loses easily to kitana in the arena but then in Aftermath he is nowhere near to be stopped.
Characters have super abilities whenever the plot requires them to and are boxing bags whenever it the other character's chapter.

In my opinion, they should show that even when during the chapter's fight someone's gets beaten in a "gameplay way" during the following cutscene, the loser should win the fight in a "cinematic way" to finally make a more complete and mature story that represents characters' power level more accurately.

Like they do care for their characters.

 

[NoCharge]

Literally every other storyline in this video is better than what we got. I think the problem was those other stories would end in a cliffhanger, but they wanted to end MK, or reboot it again.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Like they have Sonya get beat up and abducted, then they make a point of taking away all her gadgets, and then they have her magically beat Kabal who has his speed powers. Come on. You're just rubbing our faces in it at that point.

It really isn't that unbelievable considering when Kabal ambused the most powerful characters in MK canon, this was his gameplan

Run around in circles until they fucking hit me. Incredible writing

 

[EarlyReflections]

It really isn't that unbelievable considering when Kabal ambused the most powerful characters in MK canon, this was his gameplan

Run around in circles until they fucking hit me. Incredible writing

 

[NickDaGreek1983]

Let's be serious here...
The MK characters' powers/abilities and level of toughness is all over the place.
Revenant Liu loses to Jax in Mk10 but he is shown all powerful in Aftermath when he sneaks up on fujin/shang/nightwolf.

Shao Kahn is always shown as too weak and even loses easily to kitana in the arena but then in Aftermath he is nowhere near to be stopped.
Characters have super abilities whenever the plot requires them to and are boxing bags whenever it the other character's chapter.

In my opinion, they should show that even when during the chapter's fight someone's gets beaten in a "gameplay way" during the following cutscene, the loser should win the fight in a "cinematic way" to finally make a more complete and mature story that represents characters' power level more accurately.

Like they do care for their characters.

E, nai... Apla leme twra!!

 

[Raider]

Hanzo's death has to be one of the dumbest moments in NRS' writing history. Not even an hour earlier he was tanking a high powered flame thrower to the chest, clearly showing he isn't human, but then he dies to fucking poison?

D'Vorah's poison.

 

[Barakall]

Not gonna lie, I absolutely loved the "Onaga Tournament" idea.

Oh my god yes, also how Kittelsen shouts out Onaga and Havik is two characters he really loves, man it's a shame they didn't go with it. It would've finally been something new with a bit of Deception stuff mixed in there, which is what we all expected with X's ending. Dark Raiden now felt like it was kept just to have that continuity rather than actually make sense.

What strikes me most and no disrespect to Kittelsen in particular, he takes time out of his schedule to inform us on all these things like the OnaGoro plot for another comic and obviously he's a solid enough writer, but man do a lot of those pitches seem uncreative and all in the vein of combining Mortal Kombat with something else. He kept talking about MK meets 80s, MK meets Cyberpunk, MK meets multiverse DC shit, MK meets Castlevania or whatever, MK meets horror - wtf was that plot, starting like Friday 13th in a camp with good characters as counselors?!

I get that they were trying to see how far they could go with it, but some of that stuff is just too much like a fan of MK and another franchise or genre trying to put them together. This is EXACTLY the main gripe I have with MK11, it was clearly with the multiverse, DC / Marvel superheroes and titans in mind. Dominic on several occasions admitted he watched those movies to inspire him. There's nothing wrong with inspiration, in the end you never create something out of nothing, it's always borrowed, but none of those pitches sounded like trying to stick to what makes Mortal Kombat unique.

Only the Onaga tournament sounds like it would've been true to MK, since it has some fantasy elements, which is part of MK's lore and essence. I personally think that would've been the most awesome IDEA for sure. And that's the second issue: with every story they need to look at the number of fights, screen time, chapter based story mode to keep it within the structure they chose and has gravely limited creativity of the story. They really need to change their approach will it ever be a good story, because let's face it: mk9 was a clusterfuck and mkx was far from great either. MK11 to me is still the best one since it least made some goons more prominent, had some surprises and particularly Aftermath was intriguing.

It's such a shame, because now Kittelsen has left and the one guy who really wanted Havik and Onaga. What are we going to end up with in the future now that he's gone...I fear for the worst.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

I think older Scorpion dying and immediately replaced by younger Scorpion was NRS wanting to make Scorpion a specter AGAIN without him being evil.

What does it even mean to be a specter at this point. Hanzo can still do all of the shit Scorpion did since he was "reborn". Story mode showed he still has hellfire powers and can teleport. MKX comic even showed he can still rip his face off to show his flaming skull.