I like you, because you understand exactly the set of issues I have with where the lore started to seriously overcomplicate/contradict itself post-Mk3. It shouldn't even be an issue as to who would overcome who as far as Shinnok and Shao Kahn goes, because based on the lore alone Shinnok would curb stomp Shao Kahn into the next millennia!
Thank you! And yes, according to the lore and supposed power rankings,, Shinnok should roll over Kahn no problem. But that isn't the case any more, or at lease that isn't how we should have been thinking about this all along.
Kahn, at the end of MK9, I believe wholeheartedly would have eaten Shinnok alive, and most likely was more powerful than even Corrupted Shinnok.
Let us start with MK4 as a base launching point to why I don't get this whole "Oh, the divinity we've been told to revere so much since the series' inception are now obsolete in the face of powerful enough magik and/or certain circumstances. Sub-Zero pretty much stomped out half of the known elemental gods by himself in their own temples! There are so many things wrong with this I won't even bore you with the details, which I'm sure you already know. They have eons of kombat experience, hand to hand and otherwise, and the homefield advantage! What in the entire eff?! I guess we just needed to move the narrative along, so I can forgive those oversights for the sake of Mythologies. They never even address, as you said, the exact set of circumstances under which Liu defeated Shinnok, but he's been my favorite character since the first game, so I can forgive that as well.
Yeah, Mythologies never sat well with me either. I hate the fact that these "gods" have countless years of battle experience, yet a 20 to 30 something can stand a chance. It gets kind of old with the "the gods underestimate mortals" bit. You've also got to take into account that MK has always pushed these characters to be a cut above the rest. All champions in there own right. And now that MK11 makes them all out to be
NOT just street level fighters, but straight up superhuman in many respects, I think the Mythologies pill is a bit easier to swallow.
Bi-han was the best of the best during that time frame, so now knowing that Fujin and the others were in fact vulnerable, coupled the fact that Bi-han really just had to get to the Amulet for Quan to just teleport in to swipe it...ehh...
I dig the fact that you mention the sorcerer's part in the downfall of the gods, but then that spawns a whole other mess of issues because who was it that taught these sorcerer's the magik they use in the first place? That's right....THE GODS! Shao Kahn, a god, taught Shang Tsung the art of soul manipulation and presumably a plethora of other kinds of magik as well. The same can be said for Skarlet with her use of blood magik, too! So you mean to tell me that the big boys gave the babies guns and were content to think that they wouldn't somehow turn that back around on them in some kind of shape or form at some point in time? If one thing we know about Kahn, it's that he's a meticulous planner and infinitely devious to the point that I find it hard to believe that the conqueror of entire worlds would teach his underlings how to ultimately undermine him without SOME kind of back-up plan being set in place.
The only thing I'd say here is that for Shang, Shao did have a contingency plan. Remember in Shang's Armageddon bio where after Shang died his soul appeared in front of Shao and Goro? As powerful as Shang is/was, Shao owned his soul, along with the souls of all his other minions at least in the old timeline.
Long ago I had pledged my soul to the emperor. That pledge was binding even beyond death. But if he were to die, so too would those who served him. At the time I believed it to be merely another empty vow, yet here I am. My soul has returned from beyond to rejoin Shao Kahn.
I highly doubt the NRS writers even remember this tidbit as it has never been even hinted at in the new timeline, but yeah, old-timeline Kahn thought of just about everything.
With some head canon we can excuse this, saying that when the EGs intervened and erased (?) Shao Kahn in MK9 that this somewhat saved the souls of all those that he bound to Kahn. Or when Shang killed Kahn at the end of Aftermath, Shang had just become so much more powerful that the spell just was ineffective. But yeah, this could have been retconned too. We just don't know.
Quan-Chi would've served as some kind of wild card, what with him being the whole reason that Shinnok was released from the NetherRealm and all, only for us to observe the fact that Shinnok was the source of Quan-Chi's power in the first place! Let's not forget that the only reason that Quan-Chi was even able to check Shinnok once upon a time was with the aid of Shinnok's own amulet. It literally took the power of a god to defeat/overthrow him, and that makes sense with the whole Deadly Alliance scenario since Quan-Chi used Shinnok's magik in conjunction with Shang Tsung's to overthrow Kahn. Shinnok is a much bigger dog, and thus, able to teach a far more potent form of magik as it relates to taking on lesser deities.
Agreed. Shinnok has the power to reshape reality to his whim (see what he did to the Netherrealm in Mythologies), but you can make an argument for Kahn that he grew way beyond his original station with all his conquests. Again, it was never stated / explained, but in MK3 Kahn didn't just take all the mortal souls of earth, but when he merged Outworld with Earthrealm, he was essentially expanding is territory / influence in the realms.
And what about this "Great Spirit" of Nightwolf? Where is did this being come from, and who is she? Why haven't we seen her commune with the other gods since they've pretty much brought most of Earth's hierarchy to the forefront? Methinks the Deus Ex is strong with this one, eh?
Maybe. In a few of the intro dialogues NW talks about the Great Spirit with Fujin, who says that he fought along side her many times in the past. It definitely is a new thing in MK11, but I think they are setting her up as a being who no longer wants to be involved with anything, so she just will her power to another to have access to..
Another thing though, apparently there are even MORE earth gods than we know. In one of Fujin/Nightwolf's dialogues, Fujin asks him if there are other gods in his pantheon, to which Nightwolf says yes. So we could have a full on Olympian / Egyptian / Norse / etc. type thing going on in MK, and had never known it.
I've ranted enough, but the bottom line is that I don't like how NRS is just basically throwing away any semblance of respect/reverence we were told to have for the gods by allowing them to give mortals the tools to undermine them for the sake of advancing the story along! These beings created the very fabric of reality and then just pissed away the keys to the kingom by giving them to mortals? Okay....
I get you, but I don't agree with this. If anything I feel that the new NRS has empowered the mortal characters even more to stand against the gods, rather than de-power the gods to stand against mortals. The EGs have there rules, and for the most part they stuck with them...to not get involved. They did give a push in the beginning by calling upon the sorcerers, and they did appoint protectors to each realm, but yeah, that was about it until the MK tournament was a thing (as far as we know). I just wish they would explain more, and use the facts already on the table to do so.
- Talk about the One Being and how it is a part of all the mortals.
- Explain the distinction be an EGs and a "demi-god" (that one still kills me).
- Really explain why god are vulnerable in their "mortal" forms
- Explain the tiers of power in the verse
Honestly this is all why I want the MK encyclopedia to be a thing, for nothing less than I want the MK team to HAVE to write some of this stuff down and set it into stone.
