I'm not disagreeing with you on the new blank slate characters, and yeah, I've said for years that I'd like to know more about these characters that isn't just some "they were there all along" or the MK11 equivalent BS of Stephanie's "Lore Minute."
That said, for as much as I've heard complaints about Kronika, Kotal Kahn and D'Vorah being offenders of the whole blank slate / retcon / "they were there all along" fad in the last few games, how easily people forget that they did that shit with Quan Chi in Mythologies, somehow being the mastermind behind the Scorpion and Sub-Zero feud.
Yet, people give Quan Chi a hypocritical pass because he's "cool." M'kay.
Well you see, the older gen chars are debatable. When MK was still being built and things like Story in fighting games was nothing more, but a joke for the sake of simple entertainment, it was easier for them to add chars like that. Once again games back then, had huge limitations. Mythologies was pretty much the first "proper" story based game of MK world too. Games before that told majority of the story through arcade endings. Even so, once tech advanced and it was possible to add proper narrative to video games, without having to depend on text based narratives, the excuse of adding characters out of blue, flew out of the window. Games began evolving.
Midway games back then actually evolved with their fighting game stories. Yeah, sure. Story was still cheesy and cliche, but tell me one fighting game that gave you options like Deception, Armageddon or Shaolin Monks? They aren't remembered fondly just cause of nostalgia. They left an impact. For the first time fighting games introduced an option for players to travel the world of that universe. That helped build stable foundations for the lore. Even with things like Chaos language being just devs making jokes in reverse, it was still amazing to visit all of the different realms. Build the image of the world, as you explore it and meet all the known characters and find them at specific chapter of their journey.
But now? Chars appearing out of nowhere, random boring locations and instead of witnessing the story through your gameplay, you watch cutscenes.
Btw... Kotal Kahn got butchered as a char. I would say it is even worse than it was for me with Frost. Frost was never established as interesting character since her new reveal in MKX comics. She was always shown as an idiot with zero personality and constant whining.
But Kotal Kahn. While the char was one of those "He was always there", he was at least a legit interesting char in MKX comics, but then in MKX got butchered into some weakling that turns tail at every corner and gets beaten in a random duel. MK11 was pretty much death sentence for him.
Eh. I mean... damn it is obvious for us all here. They just threw random stuff together and said "looks good enough", before they set in on fire.
Oh and don't get me started on "Lore Minute". It's like Destiny 1. Hey look at all this cool lore! None of it is in the game though! You have to join our little shitty website and read it there! Cause characters in our games don't have time to explain, why they don't have time to explain.
Lately I noticed this thing with creators. Game of Thrones, Destiny and now MK. They add a character or write a shitty episode and then give us a 1 minute explanation of why that happened...