Is it time to say goodbye to story mode "chapters"?

[stokedAF]

And every character should win a fight at one point in the story, while controlled by the player?

Not necessary imo. Defeating every character would put you in the shoes of enough characters, good and evil perspectives. Even if just Cassie getting her ass kicked by Sonya or someone dying horrifically. It makes a good story imo.

 

[IceNine]

Honestly, I'd be happy if they put a shine on the MKDA Konquest mode of all things. Chronicled each character's personal journey and you'd piece everything together to see the full picture of what happens. Obviously it could not all be cinematic, which is probably reason why NRS would never do it. Their current format just seems too lucrative to drop.

 

[BlunderGod]

The one thing I remember about MKDA's Konquest mode was all that trivia about fighting styles. Ah, memories...

 

[Pterodactyl]

I’m fine with anything as long as they actually even the playing field.

I don’t want to see any more designated jobbers, good or bad everyone should be beating at least a little bit of ass.

 

[Vslayer]

so you wrote that 200 word essay comparing them but it doesnt matter now that you got btfo huh?

its ok to admit youre wrong on the internet bro. nrs players lul

That moment you realize this forum isn't 18+

 

[pure.Wasted]

I hope they go in this direction, it is much better both from a story and a player perspective.

It would help a lot to lose the silly filler fights and would give us the opportunity to play bad characters even if only for one or two fights, which is really good, as making chapters for the bad characters is tough. It's easier to justify good guys not finishing their opponents, because, i mean, why would Sektor not kill you?
When given many fights back to back it becomes a problem from a story perspective, how many times can they ally with a good guy that forbids them to kill, or be robbed of their victory with a cutscene where the opponent wins, or another guy coming to save the loser? If 4 bad characters got chapters of their own, and saying one of them actually kills one of the good guys, then that means we'll need an excuse for them not finishing the loser 15 times. If 2 of those same characters get 2 fights each, and the other two get only 1, then that means we'll need only need 5 excuses, a third of what we would need otherwise, allowing for a better story to be told while still allowing us to use those characters.

I definitely agree with you in general, but I think you're overstating how difficult it is to justify "bad guys" not killing people after fights. First of all, sometimes they will and that's OK, like you said. But otherwise... maybe the "bad guy" is doing something urgent and doesn't have time to finish off his opponent, or maybe he doesn't actually want to kill the person he's fighting, or maybe he's prevented from killing his opponent by other random shit happening.

I mean, it is a comic book story. I'm not saying they should just ignore it, but justifying it to a tolerable degree isn't all that hard either, you know? Especially when it's for a great cause like giving bad guys screentime.

 

[Cassie Cyrus]

Evil characters could win the battle, but not the fight? If you get my drift.

After the fight they don't have to be totally defeated and a cut-scene can easily take over to save the good-guys from death. Sometimes I think good-guys just need to die.

In Mk9, they should have spread the good-guys deaths more, not make them all die by the hands of Sindel.

 

[DixieFlatline78]

What the hell is with everyone trying to reinvent the wheel by writing a novel about "Do we get too much control over the brightness?"

 

[zerosebaz]

I definitely agree with you in general, but I think you're overstating how difficult it is to justify "bad guys" not killing people after fights. First of all, sometimes they will and that's OK, like you said. But otherwise... maybe the "bad guy" is doing something urgent and doesn't have time to finish off his opponent, or maybe he doesn't actually want to kill the person he's fighting, or maybe he's prevented from killing his opponent by other random shit happening.

I mean, it is a comic book story. I'm not saying they should just ignore it, but justifying it to a tolerable degree isn't all that hard either, you know? Especially when it's for a great cause like giving bad guys screentime.

I agree, it's not that hard, but doing it four times in a row leaves more room for it to be more noticeable.

For example, in MKX Kotal gets interrupted when about to kill the loser 3 times in his chapter, and in the other fight there is no reason as to why he didn't even attempted to kill Tanya.
It's not anything terrible, I get how from my post it could've seen that way, but it's something that having a more flexible chapter structure can help to avoid, making the story a little bit better.

 

[KaeBlade]

I don't really mind how NRS is breaking up their story into character specific chapters. They're miles above the competition in this respect. It would definitely still be better from a storytelling standpoint if they just abandon the practice and do what's best and what makes sense for their story. There are multiple ways they could go about it:

1. WWE 2K Showcase style... write a story around a specific character and just follow his/her point of view from start to finish. Other characters get ignored.

2. Game of Thrones style... write a story that weaves the involvement of key characters in and out. Better than option 1, but still, other characters get ignored.

3. Soul Calibur 6 style... write out the whole story. Designate the main character. Playing as the main character let's you play out the whole story. Playing the other characters let's you just play out their involvement in the story, no matter how small. This is somewhat an acceptable middle ground.

4. My Hero One's Justice style... There's one main story. You can choose to play a specific side. Hero path or Villain path.

I think there are several other ways of delivering the story but they're just a variation or a mix of what I described above.

Slightly relevant to this topic... Ed has confirmed that MK11's story will be reiterating Inj2's branching paths and lead to multiple endings. I'm hoping they also incorporate "losing" paths. In the past, if you lose a match, you can't progress the story and need to rematch. It'd be cool if losing doesn't stop the story but leads you to an alternate story and ending. Doesn't even have to apply to all matches, just designated key critical ones.

EDIT - I forgot to mention that I think the story should NOT be guided by the idea of "X character should have Y number of matches". That just results in forced logic or shallow motivation for some fights because they're trying to meet a number.