All right, so let's think about this for a second...
You have Cassie Cage, Takashi Takeda, Jacqueline Briggs, Jax Briggs, Johnny Cage, and Sonya as special forces, right? All right.
Now we also have Kung Jin and Kung Lao. While Kung Jin is with the special forces group, he may very well be White Lotus society. Either way, we're assuming that they are Earthrealm warriors. Okay. Heck, let's throw in Raiden and Kitana for good measure.
So that's....10 Earthrrealm Warriors, yeah? Okay.
MK9 had Liu Kang, Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, Sonya, Jax, Stryker, Kabal, Cyber Sub-Zero, Raiden, Kitana, Kenshi(Arcade mode story end, still counts), Nightwolf, and Jade if we're counting Kitana since both defected to Earthrealm. So that's....13 Earthrealm warriors in MK9.
If you want to remove Kitana, Kenshi, and Jade from that list...you still have 10 Earthrealm Warrors, most of which are just humans with some magic powers, or special forces.
So what's the difference, exactly? Because in MKX, a couple of characters share the same last name? Really?
Did Stryker play like Jax? No.
Did Jax and Sonya play alike at all or have a similar personality? No. They were both military/special forces types.
What about Kung Lao and Liu Kang? Both Shaolin Monks. Both members of the White Lotus Society. Both trained together. And yet, their personalities/playstyles were completely different.
Now you could argue that characters like Kabal and Cyber Sub subverted the trope by being high-concept characters. I would counter-argue by suggesting that we have not really seen much of what Takeda can do. His moveset may be as bizarre and diverse as Kabal. Same for Kung Jin, who is the ONLY archer I can think of in the MK Franchise. (Although, I'm willing to hold that if someone finds another.)
So what's the problem? Why are you people so butt-hurt? You essentially have the same amount of Earthrealm warriors as MK9 had.
And what would people have in favor of these characters? Noob Saibot, a magic ninja when we already have 4 magic ninjas in the game?
Reiko? A re-design of Noob Saibot in MK 4, with borrowed moves from several characters. A character who only very recently started developing his own identity after being roped into "OMG, he's Shao Kahn" tropes. The Crude Hammer. Really?
Let's look at some of Reiko's finer moments, shall we?
In MK Armageddon, his default costume was a re-working of Shao Kahn's garb, and his alt was the ninja costume he wore in MK4:
Even his ending is almost intrinsically linked to Shao Kahn:
So what people are clamouring for is to get rid of "copy" characters of Takeda and Jacqui and the likes, in favor for characters that ARE copies of other characters, such as Reiko and Noob, who started out life as a UMK3 palette swap with no special moves. He didn't really approach much of an identity until Trilogy, and then later with the 3D MK games where the devs realized that he was so uninteresting, they needed to connect him with Smoke so people would give a shit.
If my info about Noob is slightly off, I'll hold that.
I mean...can we PLEASE get some perspective here, people?
Tsk, tsk, tsk.
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