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Idea: Replace 'Story Mode' with individual 'Story Towers'

Art Lean

Kombatant
Back in the day before there was ever a story mode, part of the fun of each MK sequel was finding out which endings came to fruition once the next game came out. Sometimes is was elements from some, others came to pass entirely, either way it was fun to see the character endings as they were the only source of story progression in the franchise, with some interesting revelations along the way.

With story mode it's one canon story, whilst a lot of people are also disliking the direction the stories have been going recently, especially in MK1. It's also a massively resource heavy mode (such as writing, production etc.) that I'm sure some competitive players don't even play, whilst also entirely devaluing the character endings. After their brief foray into cut scenes with MK4, endings have long since returned to the 16bit days of still images and text, whilst also typically have absolutely no impact on future stories whatsoever, as story mode is the only true canon plot now. They're practically an afterthought now and a bit of a chore to unlock, especially when they tend to have no value and no cinematic worth either.

So I was thinking, what are your thoughts on the idea to scrap story mode entirely (whereby there's one single story broken up into chapters where you play as other characters), and instead each character has a tower that features their own personal short story mode instead; call it 'Story Towers' if you like.

It would play and unfold exactly like story mode does built around cutscenes that transition into fights, but obviously each tower is much shorter than the entirety of story mode (ie. only the length of a tower, say around a dozen fights) for each individual character, with a short cinematic character journey against whatever villain is at play this time. The overall play-time across the whole roster when combined would be around the same as the full story mode, but doesn't force them to come up with one massive story that has to involve every character and try to appease every fan.

With 'Story Towers' each character would get their own time in the spotlight and you get to practice with them properly in their own personal interactive story movie. Individual character endings would return to having the possibility of coming true (or at least elements of them) in the next game and having some real value in unlocking again, leaving us to wonder which of our favorite endings would lay the groundwork for the next game. It gives the developers more time and the opportunity to cherry pick elements from the endings they want to apply to the next game's general plot. It also stops them having to come up with one big gargantuan story that encompasses the whole roster and upsetting the fans that the single canon story wasn't to their liking (this way, if you don't like Sektor's story, you might like Ermac's). It would also say goodbye to the cheap still-image endings, which personally I think should have been left in the 16bit days that are so rarely ever worth the playthrough for now, making it far more fun to complete the game with each character.

Your thoughts?
 

Subby Z

Mortal
I also agree that the cinematic story mode should finish. Innovative for its time, but that time has passed.

It has to have a HUGE budget, yet it’s always uploaded to youtube in a way something like konquest (which is actually PLAYING the gane) cannot. So basically a huge waste of money. The guys who would buy for lore have no incentive to actually buy the game. Just watch it on youtube.

It’s also a bad way to tell MK’s story imo because someone inevitably ends up a jobber and then that character gets shit talked. Idk it’s just bad.

I say keep cinenatic intros and outros. They can be skipped but they add to characterization which I think is nice. However the cinematic story needs scrapped. Will it be? Probably not. Should it be? Yes absolutely.
 

LEGEND

YES!
Konquest or SF6-like single player is decent but completely unnecessary.

Would rather they put the time into the rest of the game.
 

Jynks

some heroes are born, some made, some wondrous
Not sure I dig this idea myself... I actually really like the "mk movie" style story mode, as is.

Not that I can't think of some things I would like added to it. Namely branching paths. The story should branch based on the matches you have... like if you loose a match, you loose that match. If you fatality someone, they are dead and gone from the story.

There was a great game decades ago called Wing Commander that had branching paths depending on if you won or lost the mission and also people died.. it didn't effect the story, but it did effect who was available for conversations between missions and as wing men on missions. Such a branching system is not actually that hard to do, but it is a lot of work as you need to build all the variants. Basically winning or loosing set you to different paths and the deaths effected "side story" only. If they were alive you could experience it, if dead you couldn't.

Anyway, that is what I want to see in story mode.. dynamic stories based on player actions. You loose a match, that changes things. You kill someone that changes things. and all these changes lead to different endings and paths for multiple replays.

This is the kind of thing that studios are looking at AI for. It may not be ready right now but it will be coming. Either AI that writes and animates on the fly, or one that simply animates on the fly from a human written condition tree story document of some kind. We've been testing AI mainly for NPC "2nd life" and conversation but the technology is so awesome it is 100% going to end up in branching story modes. Games will be so advanced, and not even that far away, it is going to blow people's minds.
 

YagamiFire

Mortal
The chapter-based storymode is dogshit as a format. Can't stand it.

On the other hand, I loved the way SF6 did a more organic story built into its World Tour mode. I felt like it REALLY helped connect with the characters. Hell, it made me like Blanka.
 

SaltShaker

In Zoning We Trust
I think it could be done in a way where the stories link to each other somehow, but they can't be too individual in a modern game since it's a huge win for buyers. It would have to be in a way that incentives the player to keep playing the other ladders rather than only their favorite characters. The chapter format should probably have them beating up more generic jobbers and towards the end of the chapter maybe fight 1 or 2 real characters.
 

Marinjuana

Up rock incoming, ETA 5 minutes
They should bring back Conquest mode. They already got a base to work with with MK11 Krypt and also could probably have access to some work done on other games like Hogwarts Legacy and Batman. I certainly think NRS story mode is played out, it was great to see the characters fully realized but now I'm looking for some fun gameplay. We don't even get cool final bosses anymore, though titan battles can be fun.

uuurrg... World Tour was unplayable.
I remember your posts about it but TBH I think at its worst it was still better than 95% of fighting game's single player modes. I had a lot of fun with it. Story was very whatever but you got to see every character do something cool, had cool tutorials and fun gimmick fights. Minor RPG stat aspects, quests, exploration, more games should go this route. MK did it first!
 
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Art Lean

Kombatant
They should bring back Conquest mode. They already got a base to work with with MK11 Krypt and also could probably have access to some work done on other games like Hogwarts Legacy and Batman. I certainly think NRS story mode is played out, it was great to see the characters fully realized but now I'm looking for some fun gameplay. We don't even get cool final bosses anymore, though titan battles can be fun.
I certainly have no issue with that and that would be my absolute preference. Totally agree that MK11's Krypt should have been the foundations for a fantastic new Konquest mode, rather than it turning into the foundations for absolutely nothing.

My idea was solely from the perspective of "if they do have to keep doing cinematic story approaches, then I'd prefer two dozen short stories over one single story mode for everyone". Obviously if a full blown open-world adventure mode could ever be done again, that's my absolute preference. Let us make our own adventures again, rather than giving us just a movie to watch.