Has NRS silenced the Mortal Kombat 1 critics?

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Also I always felt like evil Sindel had way more personality than good Sindel.

Just look at MK11 Sindel. She was Down. To. Fuck.

I'm here for that.

To be honest, so was MK1 Sindel. I actually find it really cool how sindel has gone from "brainwashed evil minion" to "actually evil minion with personality and manipulative traits" to then "GOOD ruler with personality, firm beliefs and strict enforcement of their ideals".

Mk1 is the best Sindel we had ever, IMO. She is not a nice, goody two shoes caricature. She is a multimillenar empress with complex layers. It takes a very firm pulse to hold an empire like Outworld. And yet, she is still a moral person - she rules for the benefit of others.

She loves her daughters, which often manifests as her being strict with them, knowing they'd be expected to be just as firm when the time comes to wear the crown.

She is also grieving her late husband, and is ever resentful for Li Mei allowing his assassination to happen on her watch - not by banishing her or doing an exaggerated "me angry with u!!" display, but by being cold and sarcastic when addressing her.

She also heeds Liu Kang's advice, but is hesitant when new info starts dropping from Quan Chi that he is going to bring ruin to Outworld, instead of just being "yeah you're right baldie, fuck that monk" or "no u lie gtfo".

In short, her character this time shows lots of nuance which ultimately makes this incarnation (IMO) an even better one that her previous "Cersey Lannister" kind.

And she whooped Shao's ass.

There were some misses with characterizations in MK1, but Sindel is defo not one of them.

 

[TomShane]

MK story mode is horrendous, I stopped caring about story line after MKX.

woke gender swap on the cyborgs lazy and wack but the base game is actually good and fun to play.
I hope they keep supporting the game not only with dlc chars but balance patches.

MK story is incredible, one of the best in all of gaming.

Also, "woke" is supposed to be a term used only for awareness of racism against black people, that's the true meaning of the term. Gender swapping Sektor and Cyrax to females isn't "woke", and it's not lazy at all either. They only add to the story of MK1.

To be honest, so was MK1 Sindel. I actually find it really cool how sindel has gone from "brainwashed evil minion" to "actually evil minion with personality and manipulative traits" to then "GOOD ruler with personality, firm beliefs and strict enforcement of their ideals".

Mk1 is the best Sindel we had ever, IMO. She is not a nice, goody two shoes caricature. She is a multimillenar empress with complex layers. It takes a very firm pulse to hold an empire like Outworld. And yet, she is still a moral person - she rules for the benefit of others.

She loves her daughters, which often manifests as her being strict with them, knowing they'd be expected to be just as firm when the time comes to wear the crown.

She is also grieving her late husband, and is ever resentful for Li Mei allowing his assassination to happen on her watch - not by banishing her or doing an exaggerated "me angry with u!!" display, but by being cold and sarcastic when addressing her.

She also heeds Liu Kang's advice, but is hesitant when new info starts dropping from Quan Chi that he is going to bring ruin to Outworld, instead of just being "yeah you're right baldie, fuck that monk" or "no u lie gtfo".

In short, her character this time shows lots of nuance which ultimately makes this incarnation (IMO) an even better one that her previous "Cersey Lannister" kind.

And she whooped Shao's ass.

There were some misses with characterizations in MK1, but Sindel is defo not one of them.

MK1 Sindel is indeed excellent, however, it's not like former incarnations of her were bad, it's just that this one is awesome. And there are no misses the characterizations in MK1, for any character.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

MK1 Sindel is indeed excellent, however, it's not like former incarnations of her were bad, it's just that this one is awesome. And there are no misses the characterizations in MK1, for any character.

While I think most characters were done well, and in surprising ways, I'd say Quan Chi, Nitara, Shao, Rain and Kitana were a little underwhelming, compared to what they were on other games. Though this should be a topic for another thread I guess

Edit: oh, and Reiko as well.

 

[Rizz091]

Apparently 5 million people did like it.

Bought it* not necessarily liked it.

 

[TomShane]

Bought it* not necessarily liked it.

But that number kept growing more and more, so a the vast majority of people who bought do like it as the number keeps getting up. And as we see in this very thread, a lot of the vocal people who that bash MK1 clearly didn't buy the game.

While I think most characters were done well, and in surprising ways, I'd say Quan Chi, Nitara, Shao, Rain and Kitana were a little underwhelming, compared to what they were on other games. Though this should be a topic for another thread I guess

Edit: oh, and Reiko as well.

While maybe they are not the best versions of them (Reptile, Mileena and Baraka indeed got their best versions of them in MK1 for sure), but "underwhelming" isn't true at all. They are all very well done.

 

[trufenix]

lol, I can't think of a single critic who is any quieter now than ever before.

 

[just_2swift]

MK story mode is horrendous, I stopped caring about story line after MKX.

woke gender swap on the cyborgs lazy and wack but the base game is actually good and fun to play.
I hope they keep supporting the game not only with dlc chars but balance patches.

Then the MK11 cyborg skins were added which clears any skin in MK1 shows that MK11 had the best character models.

They didn't have to gender swap the cyborgs. All they had to do is aged them down to teenagers and make sektor a genius Tony Stark and cyrax a street fighter Sean protege background.

Would've been 10x better than the bullshit we got.

 

[TomShane]

Then the MK11 cyborg skins were added which clears any skin in MK1 shows that MK11 had the best character models.

They didn't have to gender swap the cyborgs. All they had to do is aged them down to teenagers and make sektor a genius Tony Stark and cyrax a street fighter Sean protege background.

Would've been 10x better than the bullshit we got.

MK1 models are the best ones, and both Sektor and Cyrax are perfectly fine as they are. Your "idea" would be wouldve 10X worse than what MK1 does offer.

And yes getting the MK11 skins is awesome, but that doesn't validate your claim.

 

[Vulgar]

That thread was made because people constantly compared MK1 to other assist fighters. I mean I clearly laid this out in the thread. Are you sure you actually read it or is your reading comprehension decaying that rapidly? I know you can’t stand, for whatever reason, when people are critical of MK1, but being purposely dishonest is not a good look, even for you ¯\(ツ)/¯

No, I read it.

I honestly wish I hadn't.

 

[Vulgar]

Bought it* not necessarily liked it.

It's still in the Top 15 games played after a year on PS5. Clearly, it did something right.

 

[Vulgar]

That thread was made because people constantly compared MK1 to other assist fighters. I mean I clearly laid this out in the thread. Are you sure you actually read it or is your reading comprehension decaying that rapidly? I know you can’t stand, for whatever reason, when people are critical of MK1, but being purposely dishonest is not a good look, even for you ¯\(ツ)/¯

I criticized MK1 pretty much everytime something happens that's worth criticizing.

You know what I don't do, though?

Make shit up to be mad about OR take the opinions of people who have never even played it, yet insist it's bad very seriously.

I swear, nuance is dead with you lot. In this very thread, I said that everything but the gameplay sucked on release.

Talk about reading comprehension.

 

[Vulgar]

While I think most characters were done well, and in surprising ways, I'd say Quan Chi, Nitara, Shao, Rain and Kitana were a little underwhelming, compared to what they were on other games. Though this should be a topic for another thread I guess

Edit: oh, and Reiko as well.

Honestly, considering Reiko had no personality before, MK1 Reiko clears.

People forget that his character really didn't develop beyond "is he Shao Kahn" in MK4. Sure, he had an Armageddon ending like everyone else, but pretty much nothing else.

I wish we had the old Quan Chi voice actor, but this Quan Chi is awesome. He's still dark and needlessly edgy, but now he kind of has a point. Liu fucked him over and in doing so, ensured he'd become a threat again if he ever had access to power.

Eh...Rain was all right. I like his wizard look. That's tight.

I think they did everything you can really do with Shao Kahn in the past games, from a character perspective. There's really only a handful of stories you can tell there and they told them all between the Midway timeline and MK11.

I never cared about Nitara. I think if the voice acting were better, no one else would either.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

Honestly, considering Reiko had no personality before, MK1 Reiko clears.

People forget that his character really didn't develop beyond "is he Shao Kahn" in MK4. Sure, he had an Armageddon ending like everyone else, but pretty much nothing else.

I wish we had the old Quan Chi voice actor, but this Quan Chi is awesome. He's still dark and needlessly edgy, but now he kind of has a point. Liu fucked him over and in doing so, ensured he'd become a threat again if he ever had access to power.

Eh...Rain was all right. I like his wizard look. That's tight.

I think they did everything you can really do with Shao Kahn in the past games, from a character perspective. There's really only a handful of stories you can tell there and they told them all between the Midway timeline and MK11.

I never cared about Nitara. I think if the voice acting were better, no one else would either.

Those are all fair points.

The thing about Reiko for me is not that the MK1 is "bad" - it is certainly better than MKA Reiko (who barely got screen time to just get his ass whooped), and I'm not even counting MK4 Reiko because he doesn't even have voice lines lmao. The thing is that I was hoping for something as good as, say, Ashrah - who was mostly just "ok" in MKD but was quite interesting and fleshed out in MK1. I was kinda hoping we would get a mix of "Brotherhood of Shadow" Reiko with "Outworld general" Reiko, but we got only the latter. Not bad, just that maybe we could be even better.

As for Quan, my gripe is that he is no longer an Oni from hell that disguises himself as a human, with mastermind sadistic plans (almost) always one step ahead of everyone. He is a regular dude who got dick treatment from Liu and sought revenge, and seems not very hesitant to work with the heroes once the multiverse thing starts rolling. I was thinking MK4 Quan would probably feign allegiance to Liu when the crisis starts, only to betray everyone to Titan Shang/Quan, only to then betray THEM as well - that's the cunning asshole I was expecting. Maybe in the next game.

Rain is also ok - he went from "asshole proud prince with water magic" to "asshole magician with water magic (that kinda regrets being an asshole for events mentioned only on prefight dialogues and endings)". Not much difference but still felt like he could do something more.

Nitara is 100% a filler jobber. In MKDA she at least was portrayed as scheming and manipulative, tricking Reptile and Cyrax to further her own goals, and had a kinda mysterious vibe. In MK1, she just gets her ass beaten. Meh.

And Shao, I didn't really like or dislike the "General", but felt like he was just a diminished version of the same entity than before. Evil emperor wants to rule realms because he is evil and powerhungry - is now "asshole military man wants a coup because he is proud and hot-headed". It felt like it "downgraded" his villany/threat scale a little.


Of course, this is all just "vibes" and my personal biases and shouldn't be taken as an objetive truth in any way. Those characters ultimately didn't remove the enjoyment I had with the story mode as a whole

 

[Juxtapose]

MIleena was also mostly still characterized the same in those games just with a different back story.

As a big Mileena fan, this is not correct. She's a vastly different personality in the original timeline to the alternate timeline to the New Era with completely different motives in each.

Also, Mileena in MK9 and MKX are nothing alike. She's not acting like a giddy kid and giggling all over the place in X like she was in 9. In X, she actually has goals. In 9 she was a minion. That's it.

There's about a 22 year gap between games, so during this time, Mileena grew up.

you can see them during during some intros and endings

Keep in mind, in the NetherRealm developed titles, intros and Klassic Tower endings are not canon (though they may reference canonical elements). Because of this, we have characters in multiplayer who are completely different versions of themselves than they're canonical Story Mode representations. Cassie Cage is an excellent example of this.

 

[SaltShaker]

But the fanbase doesn’t like it haha.

Like even on reddit that shit is divided. Youtube comments divided. Even fucking youtube creators hated this shit.

From a business perspective it makes zero sense to stay with this timeline especially if reports ate correct that Khaos reigns did horribly.

If you're a story person I do understand not liking what has happened. Most games are full of plot holes anyway, but the MK verse is like the next level. Like watching the TV show Lost.

MK9: kinda OG stuff, tournament, Kahn invasion, mostly traditional versions of characters, ends with Raiden killing Liu accidentally and Kahn defeated, and wondering how this changes the OG timeline. Big shock seeing the ending back then, but feels like it worked.

MKX: unexpected 20 years later jump, it's after the world was saved and many OG heroes dead, the OGs kids are now heroes, new era type of story. Ends with a very clear anointment of a new Earth Protector, Cassie Cage, who is the strongest and has Warrior God Bloodline or something. Liu Kang and Kitana and company are also zombies while Raiden is corrupted at the end setting up MK11. Figure this is the new era direction going forward.

MK11: Scraps literally all of last game and it's relevance. "Dark Raiden" is gone by the first Act by dissolving, Cassie went from the new Earth Protector to "eh she's in the game", timeline MCU galore everywhere, Kronika is manipulating all events through thousands of timelines is learned. Kotal Kahn is now a chump, many changes in story again. Evil Liu Kang kills good Liu Kang, but then later we get God Liu Kang, who is now the new Raiden, and will build his own timeline.

MK1: Liu Kang has his great timeline, where Shao Kahn is a chump, Raiden is Champion, Hanzo apparently doesn't exist, a bunch of villains are anti-heros fighting for their people, the robots are women, Kombat Kids retconned except Takeda who isn't Kenshi's kid. We learn the timelines are back again, and there's still a bazillion of them and Shang was getting all the bad timeline guys together so God Liu gets a bunch of good timeline guys and they have a Marvel Endgame war clash. Khaos More timeline stuff. Future more timeline stuff coming.

These stories are so far off the page each game that it's difficult to enjoy this over time. By the time you get to MK1 It's easy to have given up on caring about the story. It's one thing for the gameplay to completely revamp each game, variation, kameo, whatever, but when you do such dramatic changes and revisions each game with the story I can see why someone like Subby would lose interests in it. I feel like each game's story has regressed.

 

[SaltShaker]

lol, I can't think of a single critic who is any quieter now than ever before.

Bro I was one of the loudest critics on earth the 1st few months of the game, nowadays I'm 90% happy with what they have done and think it's a great game with probably the most depth of any MK game. Even @M2Dave when from certified bonafide hater to liking the game. I don't think your statement is correct.

 

[Vulgar]

If you're a story person I do understand not liking what has happened. Most games are full of plot holes anyway, but the MK verse is like the next level. Like watching the TV show Lost.

MK9: kinda OG stuff, tournament, Kahn invasion, mostly traditional versions of characters, ends with Raiden killing Liu accidentally and Kahn defeated, and wondering how this changes the OG timeline. Big shock seeing the ending back then, but feels like it worked.

MKX: unexpected 20 years later jump, it's after the world was saved and many OG heroes dead, the OGs kids are now heroes, new era type of story. Ends with a very clear anointment of a new Earth Protector, Cassie Cage, who is the strongest and has Warrior God Bloodline or something. Liu Kang and Kitana and company are also zombies while Raiden is corrupted at the end setting up MK11. Figure this is the new era direction going forward.

MK11: Scraps literally all of last game and it's relevance. "Dark Raiden" is gone by the first Act by dissolving, Cassie went from the new Earth Protector to "eh she's in the game", timeline MCU galore everywhere, Kronika is manipulating all events through thousands of timelines is learned. Kotal Kahn is now a chump, many changes in story again. Evil Liu Kang kills good Liu Kang, but then later we get God Liu Kang, who is now the new Raiden, and will build his own timeline.

MK1: Liu Kang has his great timeline, where Shao Kahn is a chump, Raiden is Champion, Hanzo apparently doesn't exist, a bunch of villains are anti-heros fighting for their people, the robots are women, Kombat Kids retconned except Takeda who isn't Kenshi's kid. We learn the timelines are back again, and there's still a bazillion of them and Shang was getting all the bad timeline guys together so God Liu gets a bunch of good timeline guys and they have a Marvel Endgame war clash. Khaos More timeline stuff. Future more timeline stuff coming.

These stories are so far off the page each game that it's difficult to enjoy this over time. By the time you get to MK1 It's easy to have given up on caring about the story. It's one thing for the gameplay to completely revamp each game, variation, kameo, whatever, but when you do such dramatic changes and revisions each game with the story I can see why someone like Subby would lose interests in it. I feel like each game's story has regressed.

Bro they've taken massive swings with the story even in the old days.

Deadly Alliance starts with Liu Kang being killed.

It ends with nearly every Earthrealm Warrior being killed save for Raiden. Like they've always done big stuff. MK9 did it again by killing like half the cast.

I feel like most people that dislike MK11's story didn't actually pay attention to it. It's pretty straight forward, but it was different than what came before.

We've seen Earthrealm be defended from, "invading realm x" like a bajillion times. MK1, 3, and 4 did it. MK9 and X did it. Deception let you explore the realms. What's left to do? Ad lib and swap "Outworld" with "Orderrealm" and do another tournament? Why? We know how it ends.

In fact, in the original timeline there hadn't been a tournament arc since MK2. MK3 wasn't a tournament, neither was 4. Deadly Alliance had one for Li Mei specifically and Armageddon was a free for all.

We've had tournament arcs. We've had invasion stories. Unless you want the franchise to do the same thing over and over, it's gonna have to go in different directions.

I don't even think Street Fighter's story works this way.

And Tekken? Well...I think we can all agree that went down hill the moment we lost the boxing Kangaroo and Dinosaur.

I em...I forgot where I was going with this.

 

[Juxtapose]

Unless you want the franchise to do the same thing over and over, it's gonna have to go in different directions.

That's one of the problems: people want the story to go in new and interesting directions while also being the exact same thing they experienced before. Not the most reconcilable of desires.

Having said that, while I have enjoyed all the NetherRealm game's stories, they could indeed have greater consistency and also focus less on chasing pop culture trends.

 

[Felipe_Gewehr]

If you're a story person I do understand not liking what has happened. Most games are full of plot holes anyway, but the MK verse is like the next level. Like watching the TV show Lost.

MK9: kinda OG stuff, tournament, Kahn invasion, mostly traditional versions of characters, ends with Raiden killing Liu accidentally and Kahn defeated, and wondering how this changes the OG timeline. Big shock seeing the ending back then, but feels like it worked.

MKX: unexpected 20 years later jump, it's after the world was saved and many OG heroes dead, the OGs kids are now heroes, new era type of story. Ends with a very clear anointment of a new Earth Protector, Cassie Cage, who is the strongest and has Warrior God Bloodline or something. Liu Kang and Kitana and company are also zombies while Raiden is corrupted at the end setting up MK11. Figure this is the new era direction going forward.

MK11: Scraps literally all of last game and it's relevance. "Dark Raiden" is gone by the first Act by dissolving, Cassie went from the new Earth Protector to "eh she's in the game", timeline MCU galore everywhere, Kronika is manipulating all events through thousands of timelines is learned. Kotal Kahn is now a chump, many changes in story again. Evil Liu Kang kills good Liu Kang, but then later we get God Liu Kang, who is now the new Raiden, and will build his own timeline.

MK1: Liu Kang has his great timeline, where Shao Kahn is a chump, Raiden is Champion, Hanzo apparently doesn't exist, a bunch of villains are anti-heros fighting for their people, the robots are women, Kombat Kids retconned except Takeda who isn't Kenshi's kid. We learn the timelines are back again, and there's still a bazillion of them and Shang was getting all the bad timeline guys together so God Liu gets a bunch of good timeline guys and they have a Marvel Endgame war clash. Khaos More timeline stuff. Future more timeline stuff coming.

These stories are so far off the page each game that it's difficult to enjoy this over time. By the time you get to MK1 It's easy to have given up on caring about the story. It's one thing for the gameplay to completely revamp each game, variation, kameo, whatever, but when you do such dramatic changes and revisions each game with the story I can see why someone like Subby would lose interests in it. I feel like each game's story has regressed.

One interesting thing is that there was a thread in here showing an interview of someone who was involved with the story modes from MKX and what they would do with MK11. Basically the interview was about "what ideas we had for a storymode before we settled with MK11's".

One of them mentioned a game where MK characters would face against their "clones" or something - which is basically what we had in MK1 with the multiverse. Another one, which ended up being the MK11's story, was about "past, present and future versions of characters get thrown together". We can see they ultimately cut off the "future" versions of characters from story mode, but we can still see costumes clearly meant for future versions - Cassie has an astronaut like suit, Jacquie has a "Beyoncé" grown woman costume, etc.

If I had to guess, I'd say MK2's story will probably be centered around one of the ideas mentioned in that interview.

One of them was about "MK characters get trapped in a nightmare dimension/hell and have to face challenges for the amusement of the ruler of that realm". Another one (my favorite) was something like "Rumors spread about a tournament hosted by Onaga were the victor would be granted immortality and villains were flocking there while the heroes try to stop them".

 

[Vulgar]

That's one of the problems: people want the story to go in new and interesting directions while also being the exact same thing they experienced before. Not the most reconcilable of desires.

Having said that, while I have enjoyed all the NetherRealm game's stories, they could indeed have greater consistency and also focus less on chasing pop culture trends.

Yeah that's true.

 

[just_2swift]

Your "idea" would be wouldve 10X worse than what MK1 does offer.

*Khaos Reigns has to offer for cyrax and sektor. Fixed.

 

[Vulgar]

Bring back Alex and Roger for T9, you cowards

 

[SaltShaker]

Bro they've taken massive swings with the story even in the old days.

Deadly Alliance starts with Liu Kang being killed.

It ends with nearly every Earthrealm Warrior being killed save for Raiden. Like they've always done big stuff. MK9 did it again by killing like half the cast.

I feel like most people that dislike MK11's story didn't actually pay attention to it. It's pretty straight forward, but it was different than what came before.

We've seen Earthrealm be defended from, "invading realm x" like a bajillion times. MK1, 3, and 4 did it. MK9 and X did it. Deception let you explore the realms. What's left to do? Ad lib and swap "Outworld" with "Orderrealm" and do another tournament? Why? We know how it ends.

In fact, in the original timeline there hadn't been a tournament arc since MK2. MK3 wasn't a tournament, neither was 4. Deadly Alliance had one for Li Mei specifically and Armageddon was a free for all.

We've had tournament arcs. We've had invasion stories. Unless you want the franchise to do the same thing over and over, it's gonna have to go in different directions.

I don't even think Street Fighter's story works this way.

And Tekken? Well...I think we can all agree that went down hill the moment we lost the boxing Kangaroo and Dinosaur.

I em...I forgot where I was going with this.

There's nothing wrong with "massive swings", they don't have to sit there like Bloodsport every game, it's about the "swings" they took. It's like having 5 options but picking the worst one every time. MK9 to MKX is the only one that worked decently enough because there was a major time skip, the others are like reboots that retconned in the worst way. They pretty much went from

--tournament but things go wrong
--literally 20 years in the future, New Era is here
--New Era is meaningless, Cassie is now regular, Kronika manipulates 1000s of timelines, must be stopped
--All the known characters are completely different after God Liu's timeline. God Liu vs God Shang for the battle of the universe MCU Endgame style

This is just too dramatic of changes game to game. It's hard to even recognize what story they are trying to sell me from one game to another. At least in the old timeline it was wonky but you can follow the basic concepts. Liu is the champion and wins some tourneys, Kahn is salty and invades earth but loses again, Shinnok schemes up after this, Quan and Shang team up to kill the threats of Shao and Liu, etc etc and really only tanked hard after the Onaga stuff started up. What they have been doing with the current era games story is criminal when MK easily has the best potential by farrr for good stories. I've read some fan made stories that were great and we got the worst case scenario of stories and continuity.

And comparing to Tekken's lowest bar in history story isn't a flex lol. Tekken went from "tournament", to "dead guy in basement for years is actually alive and threatens the world TWICE", to "Devil and Angel fighting on an asteroid in outer space". Nothing is as bad as that story lol.

That's one of the problems: people want the story to go in new and interesting directions while also being the exact same thing they experienced before. Not the most reconcilable of desires.

Having said that, while I have enjoyed all the NetherRealm game's stories, they could indeed have greater consistency and also focus less on chasing pop culture trends.

This part I disagree. I don't think a lot of people want "new stuff". I think most people want faithful adaptation to what they already enjoy, and expansion on what they like a lot, not a bunch of new things or revamps or soft reboots. Companies and creative writers, directors, whoever, are the ones who always want to do new things because often they hate the source material or have no knowledge of it. Think of movies shows or films based on comics or animes based on mangas. Very often the complaints are about how the character(s) aren't how they are "supposed to be". In anime everyone hates fillers or changes because many times it's "not like the manga". This is no different in video games. People, especially casuals who like the lore like Subby, want Hanzo as Scorpion and Shao Kahn as a strong bad guy in Outworld. They don't want "Scorpion and Sub are now brothers, and Shao Kahn is a useless chump".

One interesting thing is that there was a thread in here showing an interview of someone who was involved with the story modes from MKX and what they would do with MK11. Basically the interview was about "what ideas we had for a storymode before we settled with MK11's".

One of them mentioned a game where MK characters would face against their "clones" or something - which is basically what we had in MK1 with the multiverse. Another one, which ended up being the MK11's story, was about "past, present and future versions of characters get thrown together". We can see they ultimately cut off the "future" versions of characters from story mode, but we can still see costumes clearly meant for future versions - Cassie has an astronaut like suit, Jacquie has a "Beyoncé" grown woman costume, etc.

If I had to guess, I'd say MK2's story will probably be centered around one of the ideas mentioned in that interview.

One of them was about "MK characters get trapped in a nightmare dimension/hell and have to face challenges for the amusement of the ruler of that realm". Another one (my favorite) was something like "Rumors spread about a tournament hosted by Onaga were the victor would be granted immortality and villains were flocking there while the heroes try to stop them".

In hindsight the clones route ala Mileena might have been a much better part than what we ended up getting lol. Especially if they pulled off a "he/she was actually the clone all along". I don't think I've ever heard that immortality tournament one though, I actually like that one a lot. I'm not sure how they get from that to fighting Onaga though. My head might explode if MK2 is more multiverse stuff again though. I want to say there's been enough feedback to not do it, but I also think they might get "told" to do it.

 

[TomShane]

Keep in mind, in the NetherRealm developed titles, intros and Klassic Tower endings are not canon (though they may reference canonical elements). Because of this, we have characters in multiplayer who are completely different versions of themselves than they're canonical Story Mode representations. Cassie Cage is an excellent example of this.

I'm aware of all of that, I have been in the fighting game block for a long time. However, Dominic Cianciolo from NRS has confirmed that all endings in MK1 are canon. This is one of the reasons why NRS/WB decided to start the New Era, to make a whole new canon, and the endings are gonna keep the world building of the New Era going. All of this is coming from Dominic himself. As for the intros, yes they are still on the verge of "some are canon, some are not". But yet these are that tease Sindel not being that good don't contradict the story that much, or the endings, which once again, are all confirmed to be canon this time.

View attachment 22306
*Khaos Reigns has to offer for cyrax and sektor. Fixed.

That's a.... non-answer dude.

 

[Juxtapose]

This part I disagree. I don't think a lot of people want "new stuff". I think most people want faithful adaptation to what they already enjoy, and expansion on what they like a lot, not a bunch of new things or revamps or soft reboots.

We've had different experiences/observations then.

Set aside Mortal Kombat and looking at other franchises, and I see things being taken in logical progressive directions, and fans get pissed. When devs bring things back to a more classic story and feel, fans get pissed. It's a no-win situation.

I've seen this in Starcraft, Halo, Diablo, Gears of War, and other franchises that I'm forgetting right now.

Having said that, I'm not a fan of reboots and prefer things keep going consistently, even if some bad choices have been made.