Character Crisis

Raiden's Hat said:
they shouldn't have been playable. That's obviously my opinion on the matter.

Noob and Scorp were not "revenants" of the same sort. Kang, Lao and Kitana all have orange/green eyes and veins. Shang Tsung and Quan Chi serve different masters and Ermac is a lackey with some telepathic/telekinetic capabilities. Goro and Kintaro didn't take up spots on the playable roster. 2 shaolin warriors is fine , and was to be expected considering it was a retelling/reboot of the MK Trilogy timeline. Did we really need 3 in MKX (2 of them zombies)? And as I've been saying, the redundancy is the problem. Variety is a good thing. Your response to that sentiment is: "so what? This character and that character were sort of like that." I guess we'll agree to disagree.
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Hey - don't get me wrong. I would have loved a more diverse roster, and if it were up to me plenty of characters who made the cut wouldn't have. But I can understand NRS's reasoning perfectly. MK isn't just a story, and it's not just a competitive game, it's both. Every decision has to take both into account.

If NRS knows that they're going to bring Liu Kang and Kitana back in MK11 with big roles for sure, then why confuse competitive players by making their playstyles temporarily unavailable for just one game, only to bring them right back? It just doesn't make any sense. Especially because the Revenants did fulfill a necessary story function (albeit an uninteresting one).

And yes, we are talking about disregarding canon when they market Kang, Lao, and Kitana as human characters with their natural selves as defaults on the select screen.
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Trailers shouldn't mislead? The roster screen is canon? Lol? I won't even touch the marketing thing, but the roster screen being canon is just obviously untrue, or else Kuai Liang would never have been able to exist as two separate characters on the MK9 roster (SZ and CSZ).
 
p.W said:
Trailers shouldn't mislead? The roster screen is canon? Lol? I won't even touch the marketing thing, but the roster screen being canon is just obviously untrue, or else Kuai Liang would never have been able to exist as two separate characters on the MK9 roster (SZ and CSZ).
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why not? Kuai Liang appeared in both forms in the story campaign. He was Kuai Liang (aka SZ) and was later turned onto CSZ.



Where in MKX's story did Kang or Lao appear as aged gray haired men?
 
Raiden's Hat said:
why not? Kuai Liang appeared in both forms in the story campaign. He was Kuai Liang (aka SZ) and was later turned onto CSZ.
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Because "a canon roster," if that is to mean anything at all, should mean a snapshot of the world at some point in time. Kuai Liang cannot coexist as his MK9-2 self and his MK9-3 self at the same time within the same snapshot, because there were never two of him. He should be immortalized as one or the other.

Your assertion that Liu Kang's primary costume flies in the face of canon makes no sense to me because mirror matches also fly in the face of canon, as does one's ability in MK9 to fight as Sindel vs non-Cyborg Sub-Zero (remember that Sindel was not brought back from the dead until after Sub-Zero underwent the Cyber Initiative) and we've been fine with these non-canon elements for years.

I could look at MK9's roster and say that it's lying to me by telling me that these characters were all alive at the same time and capable of fighting each other... but that presupposes that the roster intended to show characters who were alive at the same time. This assumption is false.

You look at MKX's roster and say that it's lying to you by telling you Liu Kang was resurrected... but that presupposes that the roster intended to show all characters looking and sounding as they do in the story. This assumption is false.
 
p.W said:
Because "a canon roster," if that is to mean anything at all, should mean a snapshot of the world at some point in time. Kuai Liang cannot coexist as his MK9-2 self and his MK9-3 self at the same time within the same snapshot, because there were never two of him. He should be immortalized as one or the other.

Your assertion that Liu Kang's primary costume flies in the face of canon makes no sense to me because mirror matches also fly in the face of canon, as does one's ability in MK9 to fight as Sindel vs non-Cyborg Sub-Zero (remember that Sindel was not brought back from the dead until after Sub-Zero underwent the Cyber Initiative) and we've been fine with these non-canon elements for years.

I could look at MK9's roster and say that it's lying to me by telling me that these characters were all alive at the same time and capable of fighting each other... but that presupposes that the roster intended to show characters who were alive at the same time. This assumption is false.

You look at MKX's roster and say that it's lying to you by telling you Liu Kang was resurrected... but that presupposes that the roster intended to show all characters looking and sounding as they do in the story. This assumption is false.
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Uhh no. You're the only one asserting that individual fights (mirror matches, arcade latter) are canon.

The Day 1 select screen should be a representation (snap shot) of characters that appear in and through out the story campaign (which is canon). KLSZ as well as CSZ both appear in the story. So no, MK9's select screen didn't false advertise or "lie" about anything.
 
Raiden's Hat said:
Uhh no. You're the only one asserting that individual fights (mirror matches, arcade latter) are canon.

The Day 1 select screen should be a representation (snap shot) of characters that appear in the story campaign (which is canon). KLSZ as well as CSZ both appear in the story.
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Why should the Day 1 select screen be what you say it is?

In what rulebook is it written that a select screen must be canon in the sense that it represents the characters that appear in the story campaign precisely in the way they appear in it, but does not have to be canon in the sense that those characters don't need to ever exist in the same timeframe?

What I am asserting is that you have assumptions about what a select screen should be that don't come from anything in reality, they're just based on how MK has done things in the past. MKX exploited that tradition to create a plot twist. This is not a crime. It's not even wrong. It's simply a decision to do things differently this time from how they did things in the past, because the way they did things in the past was not "right" or "wrong," it just was.

The way they did it in MKX is not "right" or "wrong," either, it also, simply is.
 
p.W said:
Why should the Day 1 select screen be what you say it is?

In what rulebook is it written that a select screen must be canon in the sense that it represents the characters that appear in the story campaign precisely in the way they appear in it, but does not have to be canon in the sense that those characters don't need to ever exist in the same timeframe?

What I am asserting is that you have assumptions about what a select screen should be that don't come from anything in reality, they're just based on how MK has done things in the past. MKX exploited that tradition to create a plot twist. This is not a crime. It's not even wrong. It's simply a decision to do things differently this time from how they did things in the past, because the way they did things in the past was not "right" or "wrong," it just was.

The way they did it in MKX is not "right" or "wrong," either, it also, simply is.
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I think it is more a thing about "MY IMMERSION IS RUINED!!!" than anything else...
 
p.W said:
The select screen stopped being a source of immersion the moment P1 and P2 could pick the same character...
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You're right. They should just make up things that make no sense and have no context to the content provided in the game (so silly of me to expect that out of something that takes itself halfway seriously). Like Liu Kang's default being a "what if I was still human and aged 25 years" skin. Maybe in MK11 Mileena will be playable (because she has clones) and her default outfit will be a 6 foot birthday cake she gradually breaks out of and eats her way through with every combo....yeah that'd work.
 
Raiden's Hat said:
You're right. They should just make up things that make no sense and have no context to the content provided in the game (so silly of me to expect that out of something that takes itself halfway seriously). Like Liu Kang's default being a "what if I was still human and aged 25 years" skin. Maybe in MK11 Mileena will be playable (because she has clones) and her default outfit will be a 6 foot birthday cake she gradually breaks out of and eats her way through with every combo....yeah that'd work.
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lol, typical of people to come with ridiculous statements to try and prove their point, when in fact it doesn't prove anything, because that's not actually what is happening.
 
Take out old Liu Kang and put Kitana's primary as secondary and everything is fine for me.

I know gameplay and story touch each other at some points, even the second almost decides who will be, for most part, on the first, but that what if Liu Kang is absurdely ridiculous.
 
Yellow Ledbetter said:
Take out old Liu Kang and put Kitana's primary as secondary and everything is fine for me.

I know gameplay and story touch each other at some points, even the second almost decides who will be, for most part, on the first, but that what if Liu Kang is absurdely ridiculous.
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How is it any more ridiculous than playing a Sub-Zero + Sub-Zero vs Sub-Zero + Sub-Zero tag team match in MK9?
 
Yellow Ledbetter said:
Take out old Liu Kang and put Kitana's primary as secondary and everything is fine for me.

I know gameplay and story touch each other at some points, even the second almost decides who will be, for most part, on the first, but that what if Liu Kang is absurdely ridiculous.
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i love primary liu kang's design... only thing that i don't like is the gray hair. if it was black it would be perfect. love the ponytail, the outfit, etc.
 
Yaniv Shmuel Avizrats said:
That is why people complained about the absence of generic purple ninja, generic brown ninja, generic yellow ninja girl and generic red robot ninja.
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Hence why those you call "generic" and "ninja" should evolve being past those things. For example, Ermac started as a red palette-swap ninja, now he's nothing like that. Also, I do disagree with you calling some of those "generic" and even "ninja".
 
theincubuslord said:
Hence why those you call "generic" and "ninja" should evolve being past those things. For example, Ermac started as a red palette-swap ninja, now he's nothing like that. Also, I do disagree with you calling some of those "generic" and even "ninja".
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Agreed. So more undead characters are fine if they evolve. And to be frank, both Liu Kang and Kitana evolve in story mode. If the arcade endings has some truth to them (and I believe that in this case they are, because of the intro dialogs fit), Kung Lao evolves as well.
 
Yaniv Shmuel Avizrats said:
Agreed. So more undead characters are fine if they evolve. And to be frank, both Liu Kang and Kitana evolve in story mode. If the arcade endings has some truth to them (and I believe that in this case they are, because of the intro dialogs fit), Kung Lao evolves as well.
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Liu Kang and Kitana are nothing like Scorpion other than the fact they are all undead.

But wait! Scorpion is no longer Scorpion. He is now Hanzo and is ALIVE! He is no longer an undead.

So it's safe to say that no, they are nothing alike.
 
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