Cyrax Official Character Trailer!

[Felipe_Gewehr]

My prime example that photo realistic art style makes MK cringe is flaming skull Scorpion skin in MK1.

That great concept from the 3D era, an homage to a classic arcade fatality, one of my favorite skins as a teen, looks like shit in this game.

The big miss is that the Skull isn't actually a skull at all, it is a noseless face with charred skin and glowing orange eyes. Weirdly enough, we have the ACTUAL flaming skull scorpion right there in the Kameo scorpion fatality.

 

[rifraf]

From 2011 to who knows when, it could be over 20 years before we see Robot Sektor again

Oof, that sucks tbh and it makes me slightly nervous how this alt-universe Sektor will play compared to the OG. We've seen a couple of strings and fly? mode or whatever. I loved everything about him in MK9.

In terms of aesthetics, my favourite version of him is his Kameo in MK1 with MK9 being a close second.

 

[Vulgar]

I honestly don't see where people say that MK lost it's dark tone in the NRS era.

Fatalities aside, MKX had things like battle damage, the old school bridge stage re-created but way more interactive and detailed. You had stuff like the Netherrealm stage which had skulls and lava and shit, or Quan Chi's lab where a skinless creature was growing out of a pool of blood in the center.

In MK11, you had a ship stage in an actual sea of blood, Goro's stage from MK1 recreated and more detailed than ever, I could go on but you get the idea.

To me, the series is as dark and violent as it's ever been, and on the fatality side of things it's never been gorier than in the modern era. I've seen people on social media and on YouTube say that the fatalities have become too violent and graphic for them.

Is it because the sun is out in some stages? Is that what it is?

 

[ImpostorOak]

@Vulgar I like a lot of series and things that have not devolved into multi-verse, time travel, or other unnecessary plot contrivances. They are not "natural escalations."

A big reason for these plot devices is that a good story has a beginning, middle, and very importantly, an END. People don't want things to end anymore, so story tellers run out of ideas for their world, or they've blown they're load and feel pressured to up the ante or bring back certain things from more popular times in their respective media.

It's trite. I've liked certain movies and games that involve these kinds of stories, but usually they're just lazy.

And on the dark tone?

This is my childhood MK roster select:


This is MK1 at launch:


It shouldn't take words, but MK3 had flavor. It attempted to be scary or distinctly dark. There are THREE characters SMILING on Mk1's.

It's honestly a lot to do with Music, also. The music used to be tense and eerie and now it's triumphant and epic.

Mortal Kombat is and always will be dark, it's in its nature. But it used to hit that theme better. Even the story beats are far more optimistic, and characters like Cassie Cage sort of feel like hero protagonists when Mk used to kill those or turn them evil or have them actually lose.

There's levels to it that I think maybe you'd have to be media literate to appreciate.

 

[Eji1700]

There are THREE characters SMILING on Mk1's.

I don't exactly disagree with your larger point, but uh...are those 3 characters Johnny, Lao, and baraka(or maybe havik) because I have to say that's hardly a problem in my eyes. The two obnoxiously over cocky assholes smirking and the guy who's got resting cannibal face are ok in my book.

 

[ImpostorOak]

I don't exactly disagree with your larger point, but uh...are those 3 characters Johnny, Lao, and baraka(or maybe havik) because I have to say that's hardly a problem in my eyes. The two obnoxiously over cocky assholes smirking and the guy who's got resting cannibal face are ok in my book.

Reiko, Shang, Johnny, Lao, and I didn't personally count Havik or Baraka for the fact that they do not have lips.

I've never liked the new Lao that's an overtly cocky douche. He's the the dorkier Johnny, now. I also don't like the idea of Joker Havik that thinks Khaos is fun and silly. And Shang evil smirking is fine with me, and Johnny smiling fits his character, but there just seems like a lot of making characters have a funny side or a confident attitude in the face of what should be certain death.

BTW, these are all small nitpicks and nothing more. I don't think they're huge game ruining things or anything. I just would personally like the game more if some of the earlier core elements were still intact.

 

[YagamiFire]

I just liked it having what I would call, more personality.

OG Mortal Kombat looks like the weird but passionate output of a guy working from a sketchpad and a love of classic (and often cheesy) cinema. "Oh man what if we had like cyborgs and they were also ninjas and they looked kind of like the Predator and shot missiles and blew themselves up to teleport?!"

Modern MK looks like the output of a focus group test about Mortal Kombat "Hmm you know, the MCU is very popular right now and we could probably harness a lot of that energy if we..."

Just the way I see it. I feel no passion from pretty much anything in the current output of NRS. It feels safe, bland and filtered a dozen times through a dozen different visions to achieve maximum 'appeal' which results in a gray sludge with the MK name stamped on it. Primo example: In the 90's the current 'design' (and I'm stretching to even call it that) for Johnny Cage would have been laughed at in a video game for being 'generic guy in regular clothes with sunglasses on'. It would have been ridiculed for being a rip-off of Johnny Cage lacking in all imagination or effort. Literal Tattoo Assassins tier design. Nowadays? It's MK1's poster boy. Make it make sense.

 

[Promethium77]

I think having non-stiff animations in this game would be a surprise.

 

[Vulgar]

@Vulgar I like a lot of series and things that have not devolved into multi-verse, time travel, or other unnecessary plot contrivances. They are not "natural escalations."

A big reason for these plot devices is that a good story has a beginning, middle, and very importantly, an END. People don't want things to end anymore, so story tellers run out of ideas for their world, or they've blown they're load and feel pressured to up the ante or bring back certain things from more popular times in their respective media.

It's trite. I've liked certain movies and games that involve these kinds of stories, but usually they're just lazy.

And on the dark tone?

This is my childhood MK roster select:
View attachment 21889

This is MK1 at launch:
View attachment 21890

It shouldn't take words, but MK3 had flavor. It attempted to be scary or distinctly dark. There are THREE characters SMILING on Mk1's.

It's honestly a lot to do with Music, also. The music used to be tense and eerie and now it's triumphant and epic.

Mortal Kombat is and always will be dark, it's in its nature. But it used to hit that theme better. Even the story beats are far more optimistic, and characters like Cassie Cage sort of feel like hero protagonists when Mk used to kill those or turn them evil or have them actually lose.

There's levels to it that I think maybe you'd have to be media literate to appreciate.

I don't really agree with this. It mostly just seems like nostalgia, to me.

For one thing, several characters are way more fleshed out and have more distinct personalities to them than they ever did in the original Trilogy.

For the most part, in the vast majority of their appearances in old MK, Baraka and Reptile were lackies and nothing more. In MKDA, Reptile follows Nitara around because he has no one else to give him orders.

As far as character select screens go, I really don't give a shit that a dude is smiling. Not when you have a guy with no flesh on his mouth or Baraka's entire face or Shao looking perpetually pissed off.

As far as protagonists go...Liu Kang won every Mortal Kombat canonically until I think like MKDA? MKDA was really the only time except maybe Armageddon where the bad guys, "win."

And what happened in Deception? Random asshole Shujinko kills The Dragon King.

I'm sorry man but like...a lot of what people are talking about is them being married to nostalgia.

Listen, I'm as nostalgic for the old UMK3 midi files as the next guy. They're great for what they are, but that was like 30 or something years ago. Peoples' tastes and just the general cultural zeitgeist changes. And it's not like MK1 is lacking in atmospheric or dark music. The pyramid theme is epic as fuck.

If you don't think Baraka having to fight progressively more and more deformed Tarkatan experiments is dark...or a centaur straight up ripping a dude's arm off before Reiko attacks Lei Mei, or Mileena gouging Kenshi's eyes out, or that weird flesh thing in Shang's lab are dark then...I don't know what to tell you.

 

[Law Hero]

OG Mortal Kombat looks like the weird but passionate output of a guy working from a sketchpad and a love of classic (and often cheesy) cinema.

I agree with this, and I think this is one of the prime differences between a small studio of friends and a big corporate machine. Ed himself has mentioned that one of the things he misses about working with a small studio is being able to come up with ideas and just implement them, whereas now even the smallest change needs to go through a thousand-layer approval process.

When it comes to character design (or just design in general) I think that having a singular driving vision generally generates the best results. When you have one guy responsible for coming up with a character's costume, personality, history, etc., you get a really focused and cohesive design. If the guy's got talent, it's gonna be great, and that's what we had with the original MK games. Nowadays, (I would imagine) there is a large team of artists who send ideas to a large group of people for approval who then send those ideas to an even more detached group of people for approval, and any issues are sent back down the chain over and over again until something is created that pleases everyone. And the end result is likely to end up as some kind of mismatched, all-over-the-place, overdetailed mess.

To add to this, I don't think it's a stretch to assume that communication in a studio with several hundred employees can be sparse, and that artists working on character designs may not have the strongest lines of communication with those writing the story, working on movesets, writing dialogue, mocapping, etc.. In the end, even though there's tons of money and resources, I don't think a big studio is the ideal environment for groundbreaking art and ideas. That's not to say they can't make magic happen, but I don't think it's the best environment for it, and that's why a lot of the 'magic' tends to leave these franchises that grow too big.

 

[Vulgar]

OG Mortal Kombat looks like the weird but passionate output of a guy working from a sketchpad and a love of classic (and often cheesy) cinema. "Oh man what if we had like cyborgs and they were also ninjas and they looked kind of like the Predator and shot missiles and blew themselves up to teleport?!"

Modern MK looks like the output of a focus group test about Mortal Kombat "Hmm you know, the MCU is very popular right now and we could probably harness a lot of that energy if we..."

Just the way I see it. I feel no passion from pretty much anything in the current output of NRS. It feels safe, bland and filtered a dozen times through a dozen different visions to achieve maximum 'appeal' which results in a gray sludge with the MK name stamped on it. Primo example: In the 90's the current 'design' (and I'm stretching to even call it that) for Johnny Cage would have been laughed at in a video game for being 'generic guy in regular clothes with sunglasses on'. It would have been ridiculed for being a rip-off of Johnny Cage lacking in all imagination or effort. Literal Tattoo Assassins tier design. Nowadays? It's MK1's poster boy. Make it make sense.

You're right! A shirtless guy with some pants on is way less generic! Let's ignore the fact that OG trilogy Cage was always intended as a rip-off/homage to Jean Claude Van Damme and Bloodsport.

 

[YagamiFire]

I think having non-stiff animations in this game would be a surprise.

MK has NEVER had good animations and it baffles me that NRS remains so incompetent at basic fighting game animation. They've improved incrementally but it's still so much worse than much much smaller companies. Sugarpunch has some great video breakdowns on just how bad NRS animations are.

You're right! A shirtless guy with some pants on is way less generic!

Yes, a shirtless guy in martial arts pants throwing green fireballs and green shadow kicks is far less generic than 'guy in the latest Gap for Men mannequin fashion' that punches and kicks.

Pretty much by definition.

That's also ignoring, btw, that in MK9 Johnny also had a far more interesting design that built on his classic look and that was pretty damn popular. MK1 threw out quite literally everything interesting about Cage and made him worse in every way as a character visually.

a great post

Big agreement with this. The thing I will point out though is that Capcom is gargantuan and SF6 is huge with a big team...and they turned out brilliant character designs with a game that has IMMENSE focus on character details and their legacy in a way that positively dwarfs anything before it from them. So it's more than possible. It just seems like NRS lacks the talent/direction. It just seems like everything with NRS is quick and easy.

 

[Vulgar]

MK has NEVER had good animations and it baffles me that NRS remains so incompetent at basic fighting game animation. They've improved incrementally but it's still so much worse than much much smaller companies. Sugarpunch has some great video breakdowns on just how bad NRS animations are.



Yes, a shirtless guy in martial arts pants throwing green fireballs and green shadow kicks is far less generic than 'guy in the latest Gap for Men mannequin fashion' that punches and kicks.

Pretty much by definition.

That's also ignoring, btw, that in MK9 Johnny also had a far more interesting design that built on his classic look and that was pretty damn popular. MK1 threw out quite literally everything interesting about Cage and made him worse in every way as a character visually.



Big agreement with this. The thing I will point out though is that Capcom is gargantuan and SF6 is huge with a big team...and they turned out brilliant character designs with a game that has IMMENSE focus on character details and their legacy in a way that positively dwarfs anything before it from them. So it's more than possible. It just seems like NRS lacks the talent/direction. It just seems like everything with NRS is quick and easy.

You're right, green energy IS unique. Except for when Nightwolf did it. Or when Ermac did it. Or when Shang Tsung did it. Or when Shao Kahn did it. I could go on.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Why am I even arguing with you?

You don't even play this game. Shut the fuck up, scrub.

 

[Vulgar]

Johnny Cage, a character that breaks the 4th wall and hits characters with a video camera during his Fatal Blow, that gets his own FGC chant during combos with Star Power on, that does stunt man poses to build up said Star Power, that has unique, 4th wall crowd reactions with things like, "Finish me, Johnny" and boos when he loses...

.....is generic.

According to a dipshit that doesn't play the game.

 

[SaltShaker]

Johnny Cage, a character that breaks the 4th wall and hits characters with a video camera during his Fatal Blow, that gets his own FGC chant during combos with Star Power on, that does stunt man poses to build up said Star Power, that has unique, 4th wall crowd reactions with things like, "Finish me, Johnny" and boos when he loses...

.....is generic.

According to a dipshit that doesn't play the game.

Yea I don't get that part at all. Johnny Cage probably has one of the BIGGEST glow ups from MK9/MKX/MK11 to MK1 than any character on the roster. They made him REALLY be what Johnny is, even his moveset is strong and one of the most complete, but his character work with the charisma they gave him from story to actual gameplay updates is a 10/10.

 

[YagamiFire]

You're right, green energy IS unique. Except for when Nightwolf did it. Or when Ermac did it. Or when Shang Tsung did it. Or when Shao Kahn did it. I could go on.

Man you're really good at moving the goalposts on stuff when you have no fucking argument.

Johnny had it first and we're comparing versions of Johnny and his design aesthetics. Pretty simple concept you're struggling with.

Johnny's visual design was originally more unique than what he has in MK1. It's very straightforward and all your "hurr durr you don't play this shitty game" (no shit I don't because it's bad) is irrelevant to a discussion about what people can see with their eyes.

Yea I don't get that part at all. Johnny Cage probably has one of the BIGGEST glow ups from MK9/MKX/MK11 to MK1 than any character on the roster. They made him REALLY be what Johnny is, even his moveset is strong and one of the most complete, but his character work with the charisma they gave him from story to actual gameplay updates is a 10/10.

I agree entirely that Johnny has a lot of charisma thanks to his great voice actor and face capture and he even has some fun stuff with his story with Kenshi...though he then totally disappears from the narrative when it utterly falls apart with the multiverse stuff.

None of that is relevant to his visual character design in the game. All of that exists apart from how he looks...which is bad in this game. His visual presentation as a character design is very boring and would've been rightfully ridiculed in the hey-day of fighters for being boring AF.

According to a dipshit that doesn't play the game.

Google "visually" for me and figure out what it means in regards to a character design then come back and try to talk like a functional adult instead of internet keyboard warrior tough-guy. Thanks.

 

[YagamiFire]

Fighting game character vs JCPenny Men's Fall Fashion catalogue

Cage's MK1 look is just bland & generic AF (which is a disservice to his good gameplay and the great performance given by his VA)

 

[Vulgar]

Man you're really good at moving the goalposts on stuff when you have no fucking argument.

Johnny had it first and we're comparing versions of Johnny and his design aesthetics. Pretty simple concept you're struggling with.

Johnny's visual design was originally more unique than what he has in MK1. It's very straightforward and all your "hurr durr you don't play this shitty game" (no shit I don't because it's bad) is irrelevant to a discussion about what people can see with their eyes.



I agree entirely that Johnny has a lot of charisma thanks to his great voice actor and face capture and he even has some fun stuff with his story with Kenshi...though he then totally disappears from the narrative when it utterly falls apart with the multiverse stuff.

None of that is relevant to his visual character design in the game. All of that exists apart from how he looks...which is bad in this game. His visual presentation as a character design is very boring and would've been rightfully ridiculed in the hey-day of fighters for being boring AF.



Google "visually" for me and figure out what it means in regards to a character design then come back and try to talk like a functional adult instead of internet keyboard warrior tough-guy. Thanks.

You don't play the game. Didn't read.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

While I love MK1 Johnny's personality, I do agree that his new look does leave a lot to be desired. Its certainly better than military man Johnny we got in X and 11, but man when people saw that Johnny had his own name tatted on his chest and a CAGE belt buckle in 9? People lost their minds, it was so great.

 

[Lin Kuei93]

I'm sorry you think females suck...?? wtf dude? calm down

Nope I love women. I want to hug and kiss em and sleep with them in the bed. I just don’t like gender swapping characters. If they race swapped Black Panther into a white man their would be backlash or if they race swapped Wonder Woman into a Chinese woman people would get mad. Even race swapping original characters is not good.

 

[Eji1700]

While I love MK1 Johnny's personality, I do agree that his new look does leave a lot to be desired. Its certainly better than military man Johnny we got in X and 11, but man when people saw that Johnny had his own name tatted on his chest and a CAGE belt buckle in 9? People lost their minds, it was so great.

This comes back to the overall weird direction of mk1 thanks to the liu-verse.

I don't mind cage being a little more of a normally adult (visually), and I do like all the default character designs in isolation.

That said, I do get where people are coming from feeling that the cast overall has less "edge" or whatever you want to call it. Again i'm one of the people pointing out that "oh isn't it a shame that all these good guys don't agree" is extremely lame writing, and it absolutely effects the designs. Not only does everyone feels less violent, but their actual pre game taunts feel watered down because almost no one is allowed to be evil or have a real grudge.

 

[Vulgar]

This comes back to the overall weird direction of mk1 thanks to the liu-verse.

I don't mind cage being a little more of a normally adult (visually), and I do like all the default character designs in isolation.

That said, I do get where people are coming from feeling that the cast overall has less "edge" or whatever you want to call it. Again i'm one of the people pointing out that "oh isn't it a shame that all these good guys don't agree" is extremely lame writing, and it absolutely effects the designs. Not only does everyone feels less violent, but their actual pre game taunts feel watered down because almost no one is allowed to be evil or have a real grudge.

People that were allowed to be evil and have a real grudge in MK1:


General Shao
Reiko
Havik
Nitara
Ermac(before the collective lost control, and then re-gained control in his ending)
Shang Tsung
Quan Chi
Rain(Admittedly conditional, though he did a terrorism/mass murder to Orderrealm's capital)
Sub-Zero

(You know, the guy that's about to attack Scorpion's wedding)




Bonus round:

Homelander vs Everyone
Omni-Man vs Everyone

And that's off the top of my head.

Everyone feels less violent, except that time Mileena gouged Kenshi's eyes out, or Havik getting part of his fucking face burned off, or Titan Kitana decapitating Jacqui Briggs and actually just dismembering the other Kombat Kids.

It's like no one on this site actually plays the game. It's all just vibes to you people.

No violence anywhere to be found in MK1's story mode. Nope.

 

[Kiss the Missile]

Nope I love women. I want to hug and kiss em and sleep with them in the bed.

I pray you're 12 years old

 

[Kiss the Missile]

People that were allowed to be evil and have a real grudge in MK1:


General Shao
Reiko
Havik
Nitara
Ermac(before the collective lost control, and then re-gained control in his ending)
Shang Tsung
Quan Chi
Rain(Admittedly conditional, though he did a terrorism/mass murder to Orderrealm's capital)
Sub-Zero

(You know, the guy that's about to attack Scorpion's wedding)




Bonus round:

Homelander vs Everyone
Omni-Man vs Everyone

And that's off the top of my head.

Everyone feels less violent, except that time Mileena gouged Kenshi's eyes out, or Havik getting part of his fucking face burned off.

No violence anywhere to be found in MK1's story mode. Nope.

Nah man, everyone has a "reason" now.

Reiko and Shao are loyal to Outworld and do what they can to serve it. They're more like MKX Kotal than actual evil pre MK1 Shao Kahn.
Havik fights to free Seido from tyranny (this new Havik is evil tho)
Nitara fights to save her realm too
Rain did drown that city, but every intro where he talks about it is just him saying how sorry he is for doing it
Shang and Quan Chi I'll give you, although they did give them sadboi backstories with Liu forcing them into pitiful lives of poverty. Now they're underdogs rising up to their potential. And the character assassination of Quan is crazy. He went from the baddest mf in Mortal Kombat's mythos to a henchman for Shang.

Every character is just old timeline Reptile lmao. He wasn't necessarily evil, he was fighting for his people. Now everyone does the same.

I like when. at least some of, the characters are just straight up evil.

 

[Vulgar]

Nah man, everyone has a "reason" now.

Reiko and Shao are loyal to Outworld and do what they can to serve it. They're more like MKX Kotal than actual evil pre MK1 Shao Kahn.
Havik fights to free Seido from tyranny (this new Havik is evil tho)
Nitara fights to save her realm too
Rain did drown that city, but every intro where he talks about it is just him saying how sorry he is for doing it
Shang and Quan Chi I'll give you, although they did give them sadboi backstories with Liu forcing them into pitiful lives of poverty. Now they're underdogs rising up to their potential. And the character assassination of Quan is crazy. He went from the baddest mf in Mortal Kombat's mythos to a henchman for Shang.

Every character is just old timeline Reptile lmao. He wasn't necessarily evil, he was fighting for his people. Now everyone does the same.

I like when. at least some of, the characters are just straight up evil.

Antagonists typically have motivation for what they do, which is what we see in MK1.