Ed Boon reveals a sneak peak at Sektor game play, a new Sonya Kameo move, and more!

Sektor game play, lore (Madame Bo's Daughter), a new sonya kameo move, and what appears to be a new character select or main menu background for the game. What are your thoughts!?

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1828190525951774796

 

Tolkien was a known racist and many of the fantasy creatures are directly inspired by stereotypes. Hate to fuck up your elves and shit, but that's why media is trying to scrub out the "inherently evil race," thing.

When the media is actually capable of achieving an inkling of that man's worth, wisdom and talent, then we can talk. Until then, they are pitiful little halfwits who think they can do better than the man who is indirectly responsible for more than half of the fantasy IPs people enjoy today.

And we have witnessed numerous occasions of those worthless piss ants who claim that creators like Tolkien and Lovecraft were 'problematic' and attempting to 'fix' their work. Because of course they would. Because they lack the talent, the creativity and the morality to create the worlds creators like those made. Because they are incapable of creating their own IPs, and must depend on hijacking a known IP and latch on to it to make their work known. Because no one would give them a second of their time otherwise.

In Tolkien's own immortal words, 'evil cannot create - it can only corrupt and destroy'.

 

When the media is actually capable of achieving an inkling of that man's worth, wisdom and talent, then we can talk. Until then, they are pitiful little halfwits who think they can do better than the man who is indirectly responsible for more than half of the fantasy IPs people enjoy today.

And we have witnessed numerous occasions of those worthless piss ants who claim that creators like Tolkien and Lovecraft were 'problematic' and attempting to 'fix' their work. Because of course they would. Because they lack the talent, the creativity and the morality to create the worlds creators like those made. Because they are incapable of creating their own IPs, and must depend on hijacking a known IP and latch on to it to make their work known. Because no one would give them a second of their time otherwise.

In Tolkien's own immortal words, 'evil cannot create - it can only corrupt and destroy'.

You remind me of this scene from one of my favorite movies.

 

You remind me of this scene from one of my favorite movies.

A hundred years from now, Tolkien and his work will still be known throughout the entire world.

Do you know who will remember Kevin Smith in a hundred years? Fucking no one.

 

When the media is actually capable of achieving an inkling of that man's worth, wisdom and talent, then we can talk. Until then, they are pitiful little halfwits who think they can do better than the man who is indirectly responsible for more than half of the fantasy IPs people enjoy today.

And we have witnessed numerous occasions of those worthless piss ants who claim that creators like Tolkien and Lovecraft were 'problematic' and attempting to 'fix' their work. Because of course they would. Because they lack the talent, the creativity and the morality to create the worlds creators like those made. Because they are incapable of creating their own IPs, and must depend on hijacking a known IP and latch on to it to make their work known. Because no one would give them a second of their time otherwise.

In Tolkien's own immortal words, 'evil cannot create - it can only corrupt and destroy'.

One: This post reads like the writer doesn't shower.

Two: Some things don't age particularly well. It's a fact of life. Some of HP Lovecraft's work falls into that category.

You lack empathy so I don't expect you to grasp this concept, but if you were a person if color reading a Lovecraft story where he describes a person with "negro blood" as "a very repulsive cast of countenance," you might not feel very served by that.

And so, making changes that allow more people to enjoy these things is a good thing.

Stories have been adapted and changed throughout history. Don't believe me? Look into any popular Greek mythos original versions and compare them to any adaptation afterwards. Lots of changes made to suit the sensibilities of that time.

 

A hundred years from now, Tolkien and his work will still be known throughout the entire world.

Do you know who will remember Kevin Smith in a hundred years? Fucking no one.

McDonald's argument. It's not even been 100 years since the hobbit was written, and Game of Thrones is already more in the Zeitgeist. When someone marvels at a new automobile, no one says, "Yeah, but you gotta think about how none of this would even be possible without Dr. Caveman Wheelson."

Fuck Tolkein and H.P. Lovecraft. Undoubtedly, they had great ideas, but not only were they held back by their bigotry, but tolkein honestly wrote the most boring, sanitized, and did I say boring? story ever in a fantastic world. Lovecraft's stories are far better, but he's also a bit worse of a piece of shit.

Like what you like, and sure, history may remember these men fondly, but what I'm saying isn't baseless.

The quote about evil not being able to create is anime levels of wholesome nonsense. Many things have been created by evil? Lmao.

 

A hundred years from now, Tolkien and his work will still be known throughout the entire world.

Do you know who will remember Kevin Smith in a hundred years? Fucking no one.

Someone's feelings are super hurt.

 

So would a better word be species then? Because I’m thinking of hypotheticals here. So like say Nitara. They did the same “demonized, downtrodden, and oppressed” thing with her (mildly) in MK1 with the whole, “Just because my people feed on blood doesn’t make us evil!” She’s a vampire and you could say the vampire race correct or would species be preferable? Because yes if her people want to feed on our people then indeed that does make her people evil.

That has no real world connotation because vampires are fictional, but yes the group as a whole is indeed bad. As is Baraka’s Tarkatans. They have human limbs roasting for christ’s sake.

What I’m saying is they take these fictional groups, races, species or whatever you want to call them and they are trying to make them sympathetic by having them be misunderstood or cast out which is like trying to make some weird sort of equivalency to real world races or groups. It doesn’t work though because those fictional groups are indeed bad so idk what they’re trying to do with that.

To go back to this, because you seem to be arguing in good faith:

There being a race of people that are evil is not realistic, and the need to portray that in a story is weird. It's one dimensional just at face value. You want Evil vampires? Make some evil Vampires. What does it achieve to insinuate that they are evil BECAUSE they are Vampires? Why make Vampires an evil race inherently? Is the message that some groups are just bad and meant to be overcame, feared, or eliminated? That's bad writing at best, or a narrative at worst.

It seems like a very shallow vision of what evil is in the world. Hitler was evil, Germans aren't.

I think it's bad writing also, to make every villain sympathetic, but making evil races seems very 20th Century to me, and instantly takes me out of any story.

 

I understand why, on a surface level, older fans of the franchise like the idea of Antagonists being evil for Evil's sake. There's some appeal in that from a Saturday Morning Cartoon perspective.

While some may dislike it, it's clear to me that there was an attempt to add some kind of nuance to the antagonists in the story. Which is a sign of good writing, because characters that have motivations are more compelling by and large than characters that aren't.

And it seems like Titan Havik is going to be a more traditional, "just wants to fuck shit up" kind of character. So if that's what you want, it seems like Khaos Reigns is going to provide.

Broadly speaking, I think the re-designs and changed backgrounds mostly work. There are cases where I think they could have gone further and it's weirdly fucked up that even in the New Era, Liu Kang refuses to give Kung Lao his time to shine, but overall it's fine.

 

LOTR and Lovecraft as orginial works do not stand the test of time. They had cool ideas to be picked apart and adapted.

No-one is going to look back at them in 100 years and marvel and their quality because i'd argue you couldn't even do that now. Try reading the Fellowship of the Ring now without falling asleep 10 times. I bet you can't. Shit was made for the radio era of entertainment. To say nothing of the whole bad ideologies being discussed here. It's just not good by today's standards of entertainment.

If someone tried writing a book so laboriously slow and drawn out with the overly detailed descriptions like Fellowship had, nobody would read it. It probably wouldn't ever get published.

 

There being a race of people that are evil is not realistic

I don't love getting into the quagmire of social norms, especially on a forum for a ball punching game, but that's sorta debatable when you start looking at nature, where LOTS of "evil" shit happens on the day to day. This is without even getting into the history of narratives which are filled with "bad cuz bad" factions of all sorts (which also gets really tricky when "racism" crosses the line with "they literally invaded and annihilated their cities")

Societies on earth are ALL human. D'vorah is a bug lady. It's pretty damn likely that a D'vorah like race, if taking inspiration from the various HORRIFYING insects in the world (which she clearly does), would be, at best, sociopathic from our point of view, if not actively evil. In fact should we find other life in the universe, it's decently likely they will not have morals the way we see them, OR they'll have them, but see us as roughly equivalent to cattle, which also would probably find humans almost entirely evil.

As always, good writing is nuanced, and yes having exceptions is interesting. Ashra is interesting BECAUSE she's the exception, and it casts an entire question on how all the other demons behave and are treated (one that is NEVER going to be used or explored in in ball punch game, but it works).

However in their push to make everyone "understandable" it all becomes the same writing. Ashra basically feels no different. The issue is that at the end of the day MK is NOT a novel. It's a fighting game (where, i can't stress this enough to get the tone across, you have a ball punch option) and thus only has so much time to explore it's material. Getting you to empathize with the various factions that are now "good" in mk1 while also making them not blur together is an impossible task.

You literally have Vampires, Demons, Tarkat victims, Havoc's people, Reptile's, Shao's forces, whatever the fuck else i'm forgetting and I'M SURE if we got Hotaru or any other character like that they'd be in the "but I have a good reason" stew as well.

The game doesn't have time to cover this, full stop. It makes everything very boring and samey when they just shove in "oh btw's i'm a good guy with a cause too" lines for everyone. It's a LOT easier when working with constrained writing to say "These people literally reproduce by planting eggs in you" like say, i dunno, xenomorphs.

Edit-

Since i'm on the soap box anyways, it's extra weird because they LITERALLY have the easiest excuse in the world to have "good cuz good" and "bad cuz bad", and they DO IT. You could just handwave a lot of the plot with "Yeah it's liu's universe so he tried to make people better but time is a bitch thing", but they also LITERALLY have not just evil races, but entirely evil UNIVERSES? Shao, Quan, and Sub in liu's world are STILL evil, but every good guy in Shang's world is not just alive, but 100% evil?

The part that bugs me is we waste time getting to know these people at all when it probably should've fast tracked the "oh shit there's other universes" thing and skipped over why every single faction in liu's world is in fact morally in the right.

It's not like this take is somehow more nuanced.

 

Its always a certain archetype of person who lauds authors like Tolkein in such a cringy fashion.

I feel like there are certain people in this thread whose heads would explode if they learned that a large portion of scifi and fantasy media has been built on the backs of women authors, like Ursula Le Guinn - cause, you know, boys like boy stuff and girls like girl stuff.

 

I don't love getting into the quagmire of social norms, especially on a forum for a ball punching game, but that's sorta debatable when you start looking at nature, where LOTS of "evil" shit happens on the day to day. This is without even getting into the history of narratives which are filled with "bad cuz bad" factions of all sorts (which also gets really tricky when "racism" crosses the line with "they literally invaded and annihilated their cities")

Societies on earth are ALL human. D'vorah is a bug lady. It's pretty damn likely that a D'vorah like race, if taking inspiration from the various HORRIFYING insects in the world (which she clearly does), would be, at best, sociopathic from our point of view, if not actively evil. In fact should we find other life in the universe, it's decently likely they will not have morals the way we see them, OR they'll have them, but see us as roughly equivalent to cattle, which also would probably find humans almost entirely evil.

As always, good writing is nuanced, and yes having exceptions is interesting. Ashra is interesting BECAUSE she's the exception, and it casts an entire question on how all the other demons behave and are treated (one that is NEVER going to be used or explored in in ball punch game, but it works).

However in their push to make everyone "understandable" it all becomes the same writing. Ashra basically feels no different. The issue is that at the end of the day MK is NOT a novel. It's a fighting game (where, i can't stress this enough to get the tone across, you have a ball punch option) and thus only has so much time to explore it's material. Getting you to empathize with the various factions that are now "good" in mk1 while also making them not blur together is an impossible task.

You literally have Vampires, Demons, Tarkat victims, Havoc's people, Reptile's, Shao's forces, whatever the fuck else i'm forgetting and I'M SURE if we got Hotaru or any other character like that they'd be in the "but I have a good reason" stew as well.

The game doesn't have time to cover this, full stop. It makes everything very boring and samey when they just shove in "oh btw's i'm a good guy with a cause too" lines for everyone. It's a LOT easier when working with constrained writing to say "These people literally reproduce by planting eggs in you" like say, i dunno, xenomorphs.

Edit-

Since i'm on the soap box anyways, it's extra weird because they LITERALLY have the easiest excuse in the world to have "good cuz good" and "bad cuz bad", and they DO IT. You could just handwave a lot of the plot with "Yeah it's liu's universe so he tried to make people better but time is a bitch thing", but they also LITERALLY have not just evil races, but entirely evil UNIVERSES? Shao, Quan, and Sub in liu's world are STILL evil, but every good guy in Shang's world is not just alive, but 100% evil?

It's not like this take is somehow more nuanced.

Using the word "evil," to describe what other species do seems disingenuous to the point, to me. Bugs are not behaving with evil intent, they are not totally sentient. Dvorah is a bug that is personified.

Evil as a concept is sort of like Angels and Demons, made up. If we found another sentient life form, comparable to humans at minimal, it would likely have some sense of morality, as that exact sense is what led us to civilize on the scale that we have.

Idk if I'm in Philosophy Class, Creative Writing Class, or what, but at the end of the day, it's very one dimensional to be wholly evil and that isn't something that often occurs in nature. Even Hitler has a shitty little Villain Origin Story. A bug living in an animals brain and eating it from the inside is natural, not in any way evil, unless you're using immature colorful language.

It's also lame asf for bad people to reform so often, as most people who go so far down the road of Bad tend to succumb to their vices. Being a nuanced villain and being a sympathetic villain are not the same.

Tim was beaten by his Father growing up. He's struggled to accept relationships with others and develops many anti social traits. Feeling mistreated and forgotten by society, he begins murdering strangers in gruesome fashion.

One story is about his dissent into madness and how long he can go until he's caught or completely loses his humanity.

Another story is about him realizing how what he's been doing is bad and turning himself in to the Police.

I'm extremely over the latter option, personally.

 

Using the word "evil," to describe what other species do seems disingenuous to the point, to me. Bugs are not behaving with evil intent, they are not totally sentient. Dvorah is a bug that is personified.

Evil as a concept is sort of like Angels and Demons, made up. If we found another sentient life form, comparable to humans at minimal, it would likely have some sense of morality, as that exact sense is what led us to civilize on the scale that we have.

Idk if I'm in Philosophy Class, Creative Writing Class, or what, but at the end of the day, it's very one dimensional to be wholly evil and that isn't something that often occurs in nature. Even Hitler has a shitty little Villain Origin Story. A bug living in an animals brain and eating it from the inside is natural, not in any way evil, unless you're using immature colorful language.

It's also lame asf for bad people to reform so often, as most people who go so far down the road of Bad tend to succumb to their vices. Being a nuanced villain and being a sympathetic villain are not the same.

Tim was beaten by his Father growing up. He's struggled to accept relationships with others and develops many anti social traits. Feeling mistreated and forgotten by society, he begins murdering strangers in gruesome fashion.

One story is about his dissent into madness and how long he can go until he's caught or completely loses his humanity.

Another story is about him realizing how what he's been doing is bad and turning himself in to the Police.

I'm extremely over the latter option, personally.

1. There are plenty of animals that do horrifying for enjoyment, or at least for less than reproduction or survival. If you want to ignore horrifying reproductive/predator/prey cycles as "well you need to do it to survive" then you get into the lovely issues of dolphins and various species of monkey, chimp, orangutan, and ape doing truly horrifying things for little more than entertainment (Jane Goodall has seen SOME SHIT). This is all over the natural world. Evil is very perspective based, and I doubt many people aren't going to say that serial killers aren't Evil simply because they often have mental issues AND a history of trauma.

2. I feel like the moment you have to say "Evil as a concept" you're already off the map for your fighting game plot. You have 60 hours of single player content to investigate moral choices and the ramifications of survival vs morals, go nuts. You have to find an excuse for a bunch of characters to punch each other in the face, probably shouldn't be getting philosophical in your writing.

Point being, yes you can discuss this stuff all day. MK is not a game that should be trying to, at all. Not just from a "personal preference" perspective but straight up from a "do you have the time and resources" one.

 

I can respect the opinion that MK story should stay shallower and more binary because they don't have the time to go to the depths they need to have a modern, well written story. 10 seconds of exposition and a few intro interactions aren't really doing it.

I'd ultimately prefer it to be more in the vein of Dark Souls where the lore, story and character motivations are completely vague and up to the player to decide. Based on little details you'd have to dig to find. I don't think a Fighting Game can have a great story without completely detracting from the actual gameplay. How many fights can a good story have? 2, 3? Ed Boon said himself that one of the difficult parts of making the games is fabricating reasons for people to go at each other.

 

1. There are plenty of animals that do horrifying for enjoyment, or at least for less than reproduction or survival. If you want to ignore horrifying reproductive/predator/prey cycles as "well you need to do it to survive" then you get into the lovely issues of dolphins and various species of monkey, chimp, orangutan, and ape doing truly horrifying things for little more than entertainment (Jane Goodall has seen SOME SHIT). This is all over the natural world. Evil is very perspective based, and I doubt many people aren't going to say that serial killers aren't Evil simply because they often have mental issues AND a history of trauma.

2. I feel like the moment you have to say "Evil as a concept" you're already off the map for your fighting game plot. You have 60 hours of single player content to investigate moral choices and the ramifications of survival vs morals, go nuts. You have to find an excuse for a bunch of characters to punch each other in the face, probably shouldn't be getting philosophical in your writing.

Point being, yes you can discuss this stuff all day. MK is not a game that should be trying to, at all. Not just from a "personal preference" perspective but straight up from a "do you have the time and resources" one.

I disagree with this last part especially. If they never tried to push boundaries within the context of what can be done in a fighting game story-wise, we'd have never gotten the genre-changing MK9 cinematic story mode. Which is a thing that basically every fighting game does now, starting with NRS.

Aiming for shallowness is how we got MKvsDC's story mode, with THE RAGE.

 

I disagree with this last part especially. If they never tried to push boundaries within the context of what can be done in a fighting game story-wise, we'd have never gotten the genre-changing MK9 cinematic story mode. Which is a thing that basically every fighting game does now, starting with NRS.

Aiming for shallowness is how we got MKvsDC's story mode, with THE RAGE.

The story mode for MK9 is literally the story mode for the previous games just mashed together. There's a large difference between pushing presentation boundaries and pushing themes.

Edit-
And LEGEND touched on something i've been hoping to see for awhile, which is more ambiguous/environmental storytelling for a fighting game. It's the perfect environment due to the conflict of storytelling vs gameplay, but it's probably not something you can shove into an existing franchise.

 

I really miss the simplicity of MK9's story man. MK1 had a great story until the multiverse shit came back.
Like Shang universe vs Liu universe is great, but when you just have an infinite number of everyone everywhere, what does anything matter?

I really, really hope this Havik dlc ends with all the universes being merged.

 

1. There are plenty of animals that do horrifying for enjoyment, or at least for less than reproduction or survival. If you want to ignore horrifying reproductive/predator/prey cycles as "well you need to do it to survive" then you get into the lovely issues of dolphins and various species of monkey, chimp, orangutan, and ape doing truly horrifying things for little more than entertainment (Jane Goodall has seen SOME SHIT). This is all over the natural world. Evil is very perspective based, and I doubt many people aren't going to say that serial killers aren't Evil simply because they often have mental issues AND a history of trauma.

2. I feel like the moment you have to say "Evil as a concept" you're already off the map for your fighting game plot. You have 60 hours of single player content to investigate moral choices and the ramifications of survival vs morals, go nuts. You have to find an excuse for a bunch of characters to punch each other in the face, probably shouldn't be getting philosophical in your writing.

Point being, yes you can discuss this stuff all day. MK is not a game that should be trying to, at all. Not just from a "personal preference" perspective but straight up from a "do you have the time and resources" one.

Sure, man. You're right. Chimpanzee's are evil.

I'm speaking on overall writing, not just MK. We've been talking about Tolkein's work.

 

The story mode for MK9 is literally the story mode for the previous games just mashed together. There's a large difference between pushing presentation boundaries and pushing themes.

Edit-
And LEGEND touched on something i've been hoping to see for awhile, which is more ambiguous/environmental storytelling for a fighting game. It's the perfect environment due to the conflict of storytelling vs gameplay, but it's probably not something you can shove into an existing franchise.

That's not actually true. There are a LOT differences between the original trilogy story and the MK9 story.

Off the top of my head: How Jax gets his arms, Johnny Cage being killed by Motaro, Kano being killed by Sonya, everything with Sindel, Kano killing Sheeva, etc. All of that was in the original UMK3 story and not present in the UMK3 portion of MK9's story.

In the original story, Kitana never meets Mileena in the flesh pits; they've been sisters for 10,000 years in the original.

And let us not forget Cyber Sub Zero's existence; a thing that did not exist in the original trilogy.

So no, MK9's story isn't just the original story mashed together.

 

Sure, man. You're right. Chimpanzee's are evil.

I'm speaking on overall writing, not just MK. We've been talking about Tolkein's work.

Infant killing and cannibalism in free-living chimpanzees - PubMed

Male chimpanzees at the Gombe National Park were twice seen to attack 'stranger' females and seize their infants. One infant was then killed and partially eaten: the other was 'rescued' and carried by three different males. Once several males were found eating a freshly killed 'stranger' infant...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Are they evil? Dunno. If you personified them, made a chimpanzee character, and had them do that would they be evil? 100%. This is all over nature and it's not like it's some secret. The natural world is quite horrifying and a wonderful source of inspiration for horror writers.

Further you're talking about tolkein's work in relation to nuance in MK and defending the, imo, bad writing of MK1 with "well we're moving away from bad writing tropes". There are plenty of good uses of "evil cuz evil" in larger writing as well. China mieville strikes me as a relevant example but you've also arguably got Kafka.

 

LOTR books are great.

 

That's not actually true. There are a LOT differences between the original trilogy story and the MK9 story.

Off the top of my head: How Jax gets his arms, Johnny Cage being killed by Motaro, Kano being killed by Sonya, everything with Sindel, Kano killing Sheeva, etc. All of that was in the original UMK3 story and not present in the UMK3 portion of MK9's story.

In the original story, Kitana never meets Mileena in the flesh pits; they've been sisters for 10,000 years in the original.

And let us not forget Cyber Sub Zero's existence; a thing that did not exist in the original trilogy.

So no, MK9's story isn't just the original story mashed together.

Are you purposely shifting the subject? We're talking about themes and character motivations.

Shao Khan is LITERALLY a saturday morning cartoon villain in MK9, as is basically everyone on his side. The nuanced characters from MK9 are just as nuanced in MK1-3. Cybersub didn't shift the paradigm of writing.

 

I really miss the simplicity of MK9's story man. MK1 had a great story until the multiverse shit came back.
Like Shang universe vs Liu universe is great, but when you just have an infinite number of everyone everywhere, what does anything matter?

I really, really hope this Havik dlc ends with all the universes being merged.

You should see Everything, Everywhere, All At Once. It answers that very question.

 

Are you purposely shifting the subject? We're talking about themes and character motivations.

Shao Khan is LITERALLY a saturday morning cartoon villain in MK9, as is basically everyone on his side. The nuanced characters from MK9 are just as nuanced in MK1-3. Cybersub didn't shift the paradigm of writing.

No, you specifically said MK9 was just a mash up of the original trilogy story.

And that just isn't true. Fake fan detected. Learn you lore, bro.

As far as themes go, sure, for MK9. But you can see that they try to expand on the thematics and character motivations as the games progress. Just look at the scene with Kung Jin and Kotal Kahn in X. It's awesome.

 

Infant killing and cannibalism in free-living chimpanzees - PubMed

Male chimpanzees at the Gombe National Park were twice seen to attack 'stranger' females and seize their infants. One infant was then killed and partially eaten: the other was 'rescued' and carried by three different males. Once several males were found eating a freshly killed 'stranger' infant...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Are they evil? Dunno. If you personified them, made a chimpanzee character, and had them do that would they be evil? 100%. This is all over nature and it's not like it's some secret. The natural world is quite horrifying and a wonderful source of inspiration for horror writers.

Further you're talking about tolkein's work in relation to nuance in MK and defending the, imo, bad writing of MK1 with "well we're moving away from bad writing tropes". There are plenty of good uses of "evil cuz evil" in larger writing as well. China mieville strikes me as a relevant example but you've also arguably got Kafka.

Lil bro is talking about Kafka on a Mortal Kombat forum. The plot has been lost.