What's new

The lack of inspiration during the 3D era

I, for one, loved the 3D era. But if I were to say that the new characters in that era were great, then I'd be lying to myself. If you want the audience to embrace a character, you need a good concept and a great execution. If you cannot pull these 2 crucial requirements off, then the character falls flat with the audience. With this slew of characters Midway established, there were good concepts with bad execution, bad concepts with awful executions, and the occasional good concept with great execution. Kenshi is the prime example of a good concept executed great. At the time of his creation, the idea of a blind swordsman was an intriguing thought to many; and midway pulled him off with a decent design visually and gameplay wise. Li Mei was the example of a decent concept pulled off in a bland way. Li Mei was created because they wanted her to represent what they felt MK lacked, a selfless young woman. Them making her a tragic hero was also a great idea, because it made the audience feel sympathy for her even if you didn't like her. Execution of her appearance and gameplay was ok, not great. To this day, Li Mei has enough of a fanbase that she doesn't fall completely to the wayside. But not nearly the fanbase Kenshi has. Other characters like Drahmin, Hsu Hao, and Mavado, Darrius, Hotaru, Nitara, exc. They all dwindled away. They had bad concepts (or unoriginal ones) and the fans could never really latch on. But that didn't stop Midway from trying; they kept putting out new characters, hoping they would strike a hit. I don't think Mortal Kombat found their footing in designing new characters until recently, actually.
 

GuamoKun

I Break Hearts, Not Combos
I wouldn't say their worthless, like the Order Realm crew have tons of untapped story potential especialy with the story behind how Hotaru ended up leaving the Seido & Darrius being a character with a ton of story depth as a Freedom Fighter who goes deep into Any means Nesscassary even killing women & Children. Nitara really just needed a better design, don't care what anyone says Drahmin looked cool as fuck.
YES the orderrealm vs chaosrealm is such a good story thingy.

AND YES YES DARRIUS HAS HELLA POTENTIAL WITH HIS STORY NO ONE EVER RECOGNIZES THAT. Even Dairou who is a former Seidan Guardsmen who is an Assassin has his history with Hotaru
 

RelentlessOhio

Divekick x 1000
I didn't mind Deception. Competitively yeah the 3D games were shit.

I've always been weird with them creating new characters. They seem to be doing much better at NRS, but I still just prefer the staple characters like Smoke, Ermac, Cage, etc.
 

haketh

Noob
YES the orderrealm vs chaosrealm is such a good story thingy.

AND YES YES DARRIUS HAS HELLA POTENTIAL WITH HIS STORY NO ONE EVER RECOGNIZES THAT. Even Dairou who is a former Seidan Guardsmen who is an Assassin has his history with Hotaru
Before Deception came out I ate up all the story stuff & the Orderrealm stuff was amazingly interesting to me. The fact we may never see the Orderrealm story get the shine it deserves is so fucking sad to me.
 

GuamoKun

I Break Hearts, Not Combos
Before Deception came out I ate up all the story stuff & the Orderrealm stuff was amazingly interesting to me. The fact we may never see the Orderrealm story get the shine it deserves is so fucking sad to me.
because theres not enough

666HELLFIREdarkSoulScorpion666 netherrealm involved
 

PaletteSwap

Misanthropiate
Most of the characters introduced post MK4 were garbage, but MK4 itself wasn't all that bad. It aged like shit, but I was stoked about it when it came out. It was the first 3D fighter I felt comfortable with. I know Tekken is much more sophisticated, but at the time I didn't like the delayed inputs and MK4 seemed more responsive (although broken).

Jarek and Kai seemed like lame filler characters, but I thought Tanya and Reiko were acceptable.

I liked Quan Chi, Shinnok and Fujin from MKM:SZ. Call it nostalgia. I guess pre-tweens like shitty games because I was way into both MKM and MK4.

From the MKDA-MKA era, the only new characters I liked were Kenshi and Havik. I also liked Sareena, but I liked her since MKM:SZ.

Midway was failing hard. Tobias was gone. MK was failing in the 3D fighting game scene. I doubt many people would care about MK anymore if they didn't go 2D and put such focus on the classic characters.
 

ChaosTheory

A fat woman came into the shoe store today...
People keep saying the 3D games were why Midway failed & that those games dragged them under, uuuuuuuuh what revionist history world are you living in? Those games sold gangbusters & were well received by the casual audiences.
Yeah they have it backwards. Everything else Midway had was doing nothing. MK was the only thing working. Which is why MK HAD to come out every two years nearly on the dot. Thus the uncorrected glitches, etc. But the games were fun as hell and the aesthetics were great.

Also, the new characters were brought in during a time when hand-to-hand and weapon fighting styles were the focus. That could explain a disconnect when people try to identify with characters based on specials like they did in the older games.

There were plenty of cool specials, but even I tend to ID certain characters based on particular normals or weapon attacks as opposed to traditional specials.
 

John Grizzly

The axe that clears the forest
Every new character beyond MK4 was fucking shit (aside from Kenshi). Just absolutely terrible. Uninspired is an excellent way to put it.

I am blown away by how awesome and different the new characters in MKX are, though. Kung Jin interests me the least of all of them, and even he will probably turn out to be cool.
 

Hexin_Wishes

Likes nerds with big ...
I disagree. Being completely honest, all the legacy characters would not be out of place (aside from canonical age/relation) in MKDA-A.

The ones like Kotal and D'Vorrah are actually interesting though.
 

Deyrax

Skarlet who ?
Yeah, because son/daughter of existing chars is very inspiring.
Sure there were out-of-place fuckers like Dairou but there were also great chars like Havik, Hotaru, Drahmin, etc.
Surprised to see people like Kenshi when he is just a bland blind copy of Ermac with a sword. Oh wow.
 
Last edited: