MK X and the state of story/writing in fighting games

[Tony at Home]

The writing in Tekken is cringeworthy
The writing is Soul Calibur makes my ears want to jump off my head
Dead or Alive’s story mode actually caused me to lose brain cells.
Killer Instinct doesn’t even have a story mode.
Street Fighters attempt at story is so weak I’m not sure why they even bothered to try in the first place.
BlazBlue and Mortal Kombat put in a decent focus on story, but stab themselves in the foot with occasional fits of campiness, cliches, and overused tropes.

For whatever reason, fighting games in general have sub-par plots, sub-par voice acting, and cringeworthy writing. It’s ridiculous that of all genres, fighting games seem to be behind the rest of the industry in terms of writing and voice acting. I know you all probably want NRS to focus more on gameplay on story, but I call BS to anyone who claims they can’t do both.

Mortal Kombat X needs to have a story so good that it sends a strong message to the rest of the industry- being a fighting game is no longer an excuse for having a dumb story. Injustice was a HUGE improvement, but we still deserve better.

So here's some good examples of what we should have (spoilers if you haven't played Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Bioshock, or Halo 4):

There needs to be extremely intelligent story points. The plot shouldn’t insult my intelligence. We deserve moments like this that make us excited about the game’s story.

The voice acting needs to be brilliant. I can’t care about a story if I can’t believe it would be real in any universe. I can’t pick out a single line in the Half-Life 2 + episodes that wasn’t well delivered.

MK9 relies on stakes such as “The fate of Earthrealm is in the balance”. Well guess what? No one cares about the Earth merely because it exists. It’s just a hunk of rock looping around a big star in space. We care about this big hunk of rock because of what’s on it. That is what makes a plot great. It not only tells you what’s at stake, but encourages you to care about it. The Halo series can have some repeated sci-fi tropes, and there are a few cases bad dialogue, but it’s clear the developers care deeply about the story, and go out of their way to make us invest not only in the plot, but the characters as well.

 

[Art]

Seeing as how Ed Boon stated that the story of MKX spans over 25 years I'm sure we'll see some decent story (at least I hope). Especially now with new characters that are the children of the old ones like Casey Cage.

 

[TheSpore]

"Story in a video game is like a story in porn, its expected to be there, but its not important" John Carmack creator of Doom

On a serious note I agree FGs need a good storyline and each character needs to be fleshed out and explained why they exist within that game's universe. SF's story is just odd and unless you manage to play each character's story in the right order it just comes out as a very convoluted mess that makes no sense at all (at least that's what I am seeing when I play the Arcade mode in the game). In many FGs the character's background is what forces me to choose that character as a main. I have to feel some kind of connection to that character on both personality and playstyle.

Its the reason why I wound up maining Mileena all these years, she was the outcast that always strived to be accepted and never truly could find her place in life, much like myself and that helped me relate to the character and made me want to use that character. Sure this all sounds goofy, but at least its how I feel when I pick my main.

 

[Fred Marvel]

NRS is moving in the right direction with the stories so there should be nothing to worry about and having a good story in a fighting game will be the standard soon enough, it should have always been

 

[Faded Dreams V]

NRS has set a standard with its Story Modes that I hope other developers follow. That said, you can't expect them to invest more time developing a story with more depth when no other fighting game franchise has a real Story Mode at all.

I theorize that when other fighting games get up to speed and try to outdo NRS in this department, the competition will lead to a rise in quality. And this is if they ever even bother with it. Stories, especially in fighting games, do not effect the quality of the game itself, and only increase the appeal to casual gamers, which these developers may not even be targeting due to the complexity of fighting games (FYI, NRS fighters are very easy to learn).

 

[Tony at Home]

"Story in a video game is like a story in porn, its expected to be there, but its not important" John Carmack creator of Doom

I actually agree with this statement- to the extent it describes the futility of a well-thought out story mode, as not fitting well when the actual product is just wank-film. It's not worth it to have story in something that is meant only for mindless entertainment... or wanking... It's basically the issue they have with DoA5. You can't have a story built from the ground up to be serious, and characters built from the ground up for people to wank off to.

The statement doesn't really apply to games that don't treat themselves as mindless entertainment, and therefore wouldn't be overdoing it to have a story that takes itself seriously. MK at least looks like it's trying to be more than just a mindless joyride, so it deserves a story mode to match.

It's kinda like that scene from Spinal tap

"Yeah, it's a beautiful melody. It's a bit of a mix of Mozart and Bach- a 'Mach' if you will. Pays homage to the great classic composers in its tune"
"That's incredible, what's the name of the song?"
"umm... 'Suck My Love Pump'"

 

[TaffyMeat]

When mk started it was about saving the earth from an invading force. With mkm:sz it became more about fate of reality and keeping the balance because otherwise the mk tournament could be bypassed by simply force of will. If you desire conquest bad enough you can bend reality and take it. Which lead to the different realms. I like end of season 5 of Buffy where she jumps off a tower to her death, through a portal that was bending reality. I digress. Some things that I want but we will probably never see are the champion of the elder gods and the one being as a character.

 

[TheSpore]

I actually agree with this statement- to the extent it describes the futility of a well-thought out story mode, as not fitting well when the actual product is just wank-film. It's not worth it to have story in something that is meant only for mindless entertainment... or wanking... It's basically the issue they have with DoA5. You can't have a story built from the ground up to be serious, and characters built from the ground up for people to wank off to.

The statement doesn't really apply to games that don't treat themselves as mindless entertainment, and therefore wouldn't be overdoing it to have a story that takes itself seriously. MK at least looks like it's trying to be more than just a mindless joyride, so it deserves a story mode to match.

It's kinda like that scene from Spinal tap

"Yeah, it's a beautiful melody. It's a bit of a mix of Mozart and Bach- a 'Mach' if you will. Pays homage to the great classic composers in its tune"
"That's incredible, what's the name of the song?"
"umm... 'Suck My Love Pump'"

Its also his statement which led to the decline of quality in ID's games as well, since all Carmack cared about was creating the engine for the games and nothing for the filler within the engine.

The story in a game has to know how to take itself seriously and when to make fun of itself too. As I said after while though the story is what gets you invested in the game and what drives you forward. Hell, lately I have been playing Watch Dogs and if it wasn't for the story in the game I would likely have played it for an hour and never touch the game again.

 

[TaffyMeat]

Its also his statement which led to the decline of quality in ID's games as well, since all Carmack cared about was creating the engine for the games and nothing for the filler within the engine.

The story in a game has to know how to take itself seriously and when to make fun of itself too. As I said after while though the story is what gets you invested in the game and what drives you forward. Hell, lately I have been playing Watch Dogs and if it wasn't for the story in the game I would likely have played it for an hour and never touch the game again.

This is what makes MK unique. Ignorant people play mk for blood but what they don't understand is the cultural impact and influence it comes from. Sure pop cultural references such as Rain is from Prince. Raiden is from Big Trouble in Little China. Shokan from Hare Krishna. The Courtyard stage from Enter the Dragon. Liu Kang's arcade machine drop fatality. MK is able to laugh at itself

 

[CryOfCanary]

Well I play rpgs more than anything else, and I acquired a taste for Mk because of its story, actually. I feel like it isn't as strong as it should be, like you still have to fill in the blanks with your imagination a little. More argument and character development isn't that hard to achieve though. I think this game will be better. For once, they have to explain how Sonya and Johnny were so depressed they actually fell in love. Whether playable or not, they will be in the story.

I also understand people who don't care. After all, it's a fighting game. But I do. I choose my characters because of emotional connections to their backgrounds, however vague.

 

[callMEcrazy]

This is because fighting games are not hinged on their stories like most other games are. It's the versus fighting where the focus is. Producing and executing a high quality story is expensive, but in a fighting game it yields very small returns. Like you said, SF's attempt at story is weak but it is still considered the best fighter around.

I admire MK for continually trying to produce good stories, even if it's not always successful. This has resulted in a strong brand, so much so that it can hide some of the deficiencies of the versus fighter.

 

[trufenix]

...

MK9 and Injustice have comfortably cemented themselves as the gold standard for fighting game stories, no one argues this. I'm not sure why there would even be a concern that MKX won't have a dynamite story. Certainly, most devs need to take it more seriously (ie: Capcom) but even with Amy Hennig at the helm, a fighting game just can't have the kind of story those games you linked have. It just can't. Here are a couple reasons;

#1 Gameplay:
First and foremost, the story has to be delivered framed around the concept that two (or more) people are going to fight each other and one of them is going to lose. Some of your other examples (shooters, adventure games) have a HUGE realm of possibility in story telling through the game, but fighters generally only have the one avenue, x and y met for z reason and got into a fight. Most fighters (like Blaz) take care of this hurdle by having LARGE swaths of plot take place outside of gameplay. While this makes story telling easier, it removes the player's interaction from the story (which is important if you want any of the story to have something to do with player impact) and depending on the delivery reduces story mode to a series of fights seperated by walls of text or completely unrelated cinematics. Barring that, developers are left with programming in things like unwinnable fights, or stupid fight conditions, or even mini games that people who tune in for the fighting may not actually want to participate in. Lord knows enough people hated modes like Subspace Emmissary and Star Labs .

#2 The Cast:
In a fighting game, every character is essentially a main character. No other genre (save sports, which is generally storyless) has that limitation. Given that most players gravitate to certain characters or pick a main, this means no matter how wonderful a story you craft for half the cast everybody who uses the other characters gets dicked. In a "perfect" fighting game story every character would be relevant, but even the NRS games (which admittedly make more effort than most) struggle to spread the wealth. The other half just kind of get lumped in there losely as punching bags, throw away stories, or camp that only exists to make those characters not feel left out. Some games just don't let you play as unimportant characters, but as we saw with MK9 and SCV, this just made all the people who like those other characters resent never gettting to use them. And again, you have to tie this point #1 about gameplay. All these characters are fighters, often they are killers, and they have to be able to run into each other, fight, win or lose, and keep going. Otherwise its just Xenosaga, where you watch a 10 hour movie occasionally broken up by irrelevant gameplay. Think about how MGS' story would have to be gutted to allow all the agents of FOXHOUND have to be relevant or playable. You gonna tell every Vulcan Raven player sorry, he's got no role in story mode, hope you main Meryl.

#3 Sequels:
MKX is a sequel and at this point most fighters are. That means characters are coming back. Probably a lot of them. SOme of whome the previous story defeated, killed, or simply moved passed. You'd think the invention of Cassie would be the end of Johnny and Sonya, but since Jin's introduction both Kazuya AND Jun have been brought back to the plot. Brass may have already pulled the trigger and said fuck it, MK needs X/Y/Z character. Like Sub Zero. He died like four times in MK9 all said and done, but he HAS to come back. Has to. Now KoF goes through this every single game with like 50% of the cast. In like 20 years of games and stories, Athena is still a teenaged pop star because that's her character and she has to come back. Most other genres never go through this. Nobody expects Dom or Noble Six or John Marston or Vergil or Aeris or tons of other characters to just "come back" because they're popular.

There's more reasons, most of which have to do with the fact that most devs (and most players) simply don't give a shit about plot but, if you really want to see how hard it is I'd challenge you to try and write a fighting game story. Even a very simple one involving something small, like 10 characters. Make every one of them get the same number of fights, or every one of them fight everyone else. Now, don't use any character cloning / stretching copouts like time travel (bb) or alternate dimensions (injustice), don't involve a bunch of fake characters that aren't in the game (Skullgirls), don't make any characters with irrelevant plots (tekken), don't turn anybody into punching bags (mk), and don't pretend the fights don't actually matter either (sf). I've been writing my entire life and let me tell you, its a tall fucking order even at the scale of 5 characters. You bump it up to 20 or 30, you might start saying to yourself who gives a shit. Then you'll be 95% of fighting game producers.