The Mortal Kombat Story

S

Sub-Zero_Wraith

BANALITY
I've been a "hardcore" Mortal Kombat since Deadly Alliance. I was aware of Mortal Kombat prior to that, I remember playing it on the Super Nintendo. I was born in 91, so the series has been around for about as long as I have, and obviously I didn't have any prior, conscious, knowledge of anything Mortal Kombat until Deadly Alliance. Nonetheless, I have read as much as I possibly could, learning the history of Mortal Kombat and watching just about everything I could find. I've also played the original games on my computer by way of emulators and whatnot.

Now, that the boring history part is done, I wanted to start a discussion about the Mortal Kombat storyline.

Am I the only one the genuinely cares about the entire storyline? I understand that Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, but the storyline intrigues me. It's like a book that could be continually written for many, many years. We, as fans, grow close to the characters, but I see a lot of posts about people bashing the storyline or the story modes in the games. So I wanted to see what other people's opinions are, and what people would think would be awesome to be revealed to the public.

One of the biggest things I would like to have elaborated on, hopefully in the relaunch of Mortal Kombat, is the past of Smoke. I would have to say that he is one of my top three favorite characters and that I think it would be cool to get more insight into his history, and have him as a playable character before he made his debut as a cyborg, i.e. still human.

So any thoughts of my opinions, or anything else that has to do with the Mortal Kombat Story.
 
Sub-Zero_Wraith said:
I've been a "hardcore" Mortal Kombat since Deadly Alliance. I was aware of Mortal Kombat prior to that, I remember playing it on the Super Nintendo. I was born in 91, so the series has been around for about as long as I have, and obviously I didn't have any prior, conscious, knowledge of anything Mortal Kombat until Deadly Alliance. Nonetheless, I have read as much as I possibly could, learning the history of Mortal Kombat and watching just about everything I could find. I've also played the original games on my computer by way of emulators and whatnot.

Now, that the boring history part is done, I wanted to start a discussion about the Mortal Kombat storyline.

Am I the only one the genuinely cares about the entire storyline? I understand that Mortal Kombat is a fighting game, but the storyline intrigues me. It's like a book that could be continually written for many, many years. We, as fans, grow close to the characters, but I see a lot of posts about people bashing the storyline or the story modes in the games. So I wanted to see what other people's opinions are, and what people would think would be awesome to be revealed to the public.

One of the biggest things I would like to have elaborated on, hopefully in the relaunch of Mortal Kombat, is the past of Smoke. I would have to say that he is one of my top three favorite characters and that I think it would be cool to get more insight into his history, and have him as a playable character before he made his debut as a cyborg, i.e. still human.

So any thoughts of my opinions, or anything else that has to do with the Mortal Kombat Story.
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I wouldn't like the game if it weren't for the storyline.

Sent from my Moment while I should be working...
 
Yeah, I highly doubt that I would either. It gets kind of irritating reading posts of people who bash the storyline aspect of the game.
 
I don't know where exactly you see people bashing the storyline, but I can guarantee you that a shit ton of members here care about the storyline, if not the overwhelming majority of them. The storylines for certain games may get bashed from time to time (such as the whole Armageddon fiasco and the odd twist for this game), but I don't think too many would deny that the story is a huge part of what makes the series so interesting.
 
Deadly Alliance story ftw. The storyline is extremely important to the franchise, without it it would not be as strong a series.
 
The story of MK Deception is the most interesting one to me. I especially liked the Jade vs Tanya rivalry and how Jade became good.
 
The only MK story line I hate is for the new game, if you can even call that a legit story.

Otherwise, the story has always kept MK intriguing and fun. No other fighting game's story can even remotely compare to Mortal Kombat.
 
Kurtis Stryker said:
The only MK story line I hate is for the new game, if you can even call that a legit story.

Otherwise, the story has always kept MK intriguing and fun. No other fighting game's story can even remotely compare to Mortal Kombat.
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I wouldn't mind a new boss, characters, arenas and storyline but think they went this route because they want MK to continue for years and they might be running out of some ideas and reboot means people keep jobs and security to "redo" franchise, I mean we might have Stryker as boss in MK10 or MK11, who knows.
 
Swordslayer said:
I wouldn't mind a new boss, characters, arenas and storyline but think they went this route because they want MK to continue for years and they might be running out of some ideas and reboot means people keep jobs and security to "redo" franchise, I mean we might have Stryker as boss in MK10 or MK11, who knows.
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I think they also did it just to clear up the story a little. With them doing a story mode like in MK vs. DC it gives us a definitive this is what happened and this is how it happened. One big collective story rather than a bunch of character endings that some time contradict each other. As far as bosses go I feel like the later games were just a little lack luster and just mucked up the story. Shao Kahn and Shinnok have really good back story but Onaga and Blaze felt tacked on. Its like here is an unbelievably powerful evil dude from the past that has nothing to do with anything we have told you so far but yeah he is trying to eff the world up. Go stop him. Sorry we didn't mention him earlier just slipped our mind. Really? Shao Kahn has been trying to take Earth Realm for hundreds of years before the first one and Raiden has always stopped him. They have a real yin and yang classic bad dude vs. good dude thing going on and to just kill them off in an opening cut scene felt like a cop out. I know you got to keep it fresh but they should have put up more of a fight.
 
I'm a little confused about the story. I know they haven't revealed TOO much about it but what they have said leaves me questioning the format of the story.
-Are they Doing the story line where you play as one character for a little, then switch characters?
-Are we going to choose one character at the start and the story is made up of multiple "mini-stories"
-Is the story just one long play-through with the main character (raiden?)?

They said it would be like MKvs.DC which leads you to believe its the first choice, but then again they could just be saying that in the sense of fight-->cutscene-->fight-->cutscene etc.
 
Hansplusmatic said:
I'm a little confused about the story. I know they haven't revealed TOO much about it but what they have said leaves me questioning the format of the story.
-Are they Doing the story line where you play as one character for a little, then switch characters?
-Are we going to choose one character at the start and the story is made up of multiple "mini-stories"
-Is the story just one long play-through with the main character (raiden?)?

They said it would be like MK vs.DC which leads you to believe its the first choice, but then again they could just be saying that in the sense of fight-->cutscene-->fight-->cutscene etc.
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Seem like to me Ed was talking about a story line where you play as one character for a little, then switch characters like in MK vs. DC but much longer. He said its longer than both side combined so maybe play as one character for more than just one fight or maybe come back to that character later. It is a tournament so it should be in rounds with loser gone and winner going on to the next but as the game went on it became less and less of a tournament and more of an all out war and that makes it a lot harder to have one central storyline. I hope they go back to the tournament structure with each fighting for their own reasons and not so much a good vs. evil cut and dry war for the realms.
 
whtillnvrb said:
I hope they go back to the tournament structure with each fighting for their own reasons and not so much a good vs. evil cut and dry war for the realms.
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Well since it IS a tournament for the control of the realms, i think it would be interesting to identify characters fighting for each specific realm, almost like 'teams'.
 
Hansplusmatic said:
Well since it IS a tournament for the control of the realms, i think it would be interesting to identify characters fighting for each specific realm, almost like 'teams'.
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I don't know. It just don't seem as personal that way. In the beginning Soyna joined the tournament after following Kano who was just in it for himself but as the story went on they just became more and more just generic good guy 1 and generic bad guy 2. Having teams take away from the personal grudges. The same can be said for most of the characters with the exception of maybe Scorpion who never really takes sides. With it being a tournament to the death it should be every one for themselves. Common goals mean little when you are face to face with some one that will kill you in cold blood if that is what they have to do to accomplish their personal vendetta. If Liu Kang the ultimate good guy had to kill Johnny Cage to save Earth Realm he would and you better believe that if it came down to that Johnny would be doing his best to kill Liu just to survive. No one is just going to lay down and die just because they meet up with their buddy in a round. Well maybe a few would. Don't think Jax would give it all against Soyna. But say in this retelling Sub-Zero meets Sub-Zero (hope there isn't 2 of them but lets say there is) Older Sub wouldn't think twice to kill his baby bro just to keep living and they are blood. Well that and the fact that Old Sub-Zero is pretty much evil.
 
whtillnvrb said:
I don't know. It just don't seem as personal that way. In the beginning Soyna joined the tournament after following Kano who was just in it for himself but as the story went on they just became more and more just generic good guy 1 and generic bad guy 2. Having teams take away from the personal grudges. The same can be said for most of the characters with the exception of maybe Scorpion who never really takes sides. With it being a tournament to the death it should be every one for themselves. Common goals mean little when you are face to face with some one that will kill you in cold blood if that is what they have to do to accomplish their personal vendetta. If Liu Kang the ultimate good guy had to kill Johnny Cage to save Earth Realm he would and you better believe that if it came down to that Johnny would be doing his best to kill Liu just to survive. No one is just going to lay down and die just because they meet up with their buddy in a round. Well maybe a few would. Don't think Jax would give it all against Soyna. But say in this retelling Sub-Zero meets Sub-Zero (hope there isn't 2 of them but lets say there is) Older Sub wouldn't think twice to kill his baby bro just to keep living and they are blood. Well that and the fact that Old Sub-Zero is pretty much evil.
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I thought the format of the tournament was: Each realms best fighters go against each other. The realm that can win 10 tournaments in a row is the victor, thus allowed to take over the other realm and merge it with their own. Now to me, it wouldn't make sense to have 2 fighters who are basically fighting for the same goal, to fight one-another because then it's just one less kombatant for their realm. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade and Raiden all rallied together to stop outworld from winning a 10th tournament (as they previously won 9 straight), not as personal gain, but as survival. Now that sounds like a team to me! I don't think JC and Liu Kang would be fighting each other anywhere in the first 3 MK games. There were only official Mortal Kombat tournaments held in the first 2 MK games anyway.

Yes, there are personal reasons for some characters to fight, but they don't really exist in any 'tournaments' and characters with alliances wouldn't fight each other if they didn't have to. Even though there aren't any real tournaments after MK2, that still leaves a big chunk of the story dealing with actual tournaments and i don't think they would just leave information on those out of MK9. Now, since it is pretty necessary to have tournaments to be in the story mode, i think it would be cool to show the Earthrealm gang have basically a polar-opposite Outworld gang consisting of Goro, Baraka etc. so each character can face off against one other character of the other team for each round, thus creating a very personal effect. It'd be like the power-puff girls versus the rowdy-ruff boys, except with more death.
 
I think the Story is interesting , but what i aam curious about is How LONG the STORY mode is going to be. I know Ed Boon mentioned that it was going to be Longer than the MK vs DC storylines combined. But i am just curious to JUST how long its going to be. 5,6,7,8,9,10 hrs long?! hopefully thaatll be revealed soon too!
 
Hansplusmatic said:
I thought the format of the tournament was: Each realms best fighters go against each other. The realm that can win 10 tournaments in a row is the victor, thus allowed to take over the other realm and merge it with their own. Now to me, it wouldn't make sense to have 2 fighters who are basically fighting for the same goal, to fight one-another because then it's just one less kombatant for their realm. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade and Raiden all rallied together to stop outworld from winning a 10th tournament (as they previously won 9 straight), not as personal gain, but as survival. Now that sounds like a team to me! I don't think JC and Liu Kang would be fighting each other anywhere in the first 3 MK games. There were only official Mortal Kombat tournaments held in the first 2 MK games anyway.
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I get what you are saying but just look at the first MK roster. It is all Earth Realm and every body fought against one and other. As the games went on them became more cut and dry good vs. evil. I like anti-heroes myself. Characters where it isn't so easy to say he is a good guy and the ugly thing is a bad guy. That's why I like old Sub-Zero and Scorpion. They didn't fit in to the stereotypes. I mean Scorpion is pretty much a good guy from hell and Sub-Zero is trying to kill Shang Tsung but he is in fact a pretty evil dude himself. That's also why I don't like Jax, Sonya and Liu Kang as much because they are just the same good guys that you would get in another game, movie or TV show. It shouldn't be so black and white but more of a gray area. I under stand there has to be a protagonist and an antagonist but it gives a story more life if you can't be sure who is who and who is really on your side.
 
whtillnvrb said:
I get what you are saying but just look at the first MK roster. It is all Earth Realm and every body fought against one and other. As the games went on them became more cut and dry good vs. evil. I like anti-heroes myself. Characters where it isn't so easy to say he is a good guy and the ugly thing is a bad guy. That's why I like old Sub-Zero and Scorpion. They didn't fit in to the stereotypes. I mean Scorpion is pretty much a good guy from hell and Sub-Zero is trying to kill Shang Tsung but he is in fact a pretty evil dude himself. That's also why I don't like Jax, Sonya and Liu Kang as much because they are just the same good guys that you would get in another game, movie or TV show. It shouldn't be so black and white but more of a gray area. I under stand there has to be a protagonist and an antagonist but it gives a story more life if you can't be sure who is who and who is really on your side.
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You make a good point. Meeting character's with their own goals is interesting because you really don't know what their goals are when you first meet them, or if they are going to contradict the main character's plans. The only thing is, most people can tell who is 'good' and who is 'bad'. It's hard to create that "gray area" when you are using old characters because people already know their intentions. New characters would make that much easier. Now im not saying I want new characters (i just want to play with my favorites) but just that it would add uncertainty with new characters.

I was just thinking that it would be cool to see an MK game where the focus is each realm has multiple kombatants for their team (not just Earthrealm and Outworld, those were just examples relative to the canon-story) and all the realms fight to see which one can come out on top. However, this game is not the right time to do that. It would require at least 5-6 characters per realm (6 main realms i believe) which is a pretty large roster.

Your idea is probably best for this game, while my idea will probably never happen sadly because it would either have to come after armageddon or be considered completely non-canon which i know wouldn't fly too well with the fanbase.
 
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