Lack of Compelling Characters (Mortal Kombat)

I spoke in length about MK12’s less than captivating story and the reasons for why it was. It’s mostly because the characters aren’t compelling, but I should probably have prefaced that my own personal tastes in characters… don’t align with the types of characters present in Mortal Kombat. That and combined with my limited experience with the series due to having a soccer mom growing up largely contributes to why I find it impossible to get attached to most of the characters in the series… outside of the Shaolin Monks…. and Reptile.

There were a couple of videos in regards to how fatalities ruin the narrative of Mortal Kombat, and how Liu Kang’s own fatality showed an ounce of character unlike so many others who’s fatalities are in complete contradiction with their own characters. I think the guy’s name was Aditorial or something… and I think I understand exactly why I don’t find the vast majority of MK characters to be… “good”, persay.

I grew up reading and watching Heroes who were mostly the stoic goody two shoes types of characters that you could always count on to get the job done no matter the odds. These ranged from Lion-O of the Thundercats, Leonardo of Ninja Turtles (to an extent), Goliath of Gargoyles, Jason of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Keith of Voltron, WildWing of Mighty Ducks (It was an awesome show, fuck anyone who says otherwise) and for an extremely brief time, Goku of Dragon Ball Z. These characters and more informed me as to what a hero was in the sense that they commanded respect via skill and leadership qualities. And they weren’t dicks, that’s important (again, Leo wasn’t exactly perfect… and neither was Lion-O, now that I think about it). This hasn’t exactly changed as I got older, Alphen being #3 in my top favorite Tales protagonists speaks for itself. The strong-willed, stoic hero is often the most appropiate hero for any franchise where evil must constantly be battled imo. If I were into Transformers, I’d probably ride Optimus’s nuts and bolts as well.

This is… honestly how I perceive Liu Kang in the Mortal Kombat series. Granted, my first introduction to this franchise didn’t exactly have Liu Kang portraying this archtype. The 95 film had Liu Kang who was consumed with revenge and anger against Shang Tsung for the murder of his brother. But I was a kid when I watched the movie, and I never took note of those details when I first watched the film. Compliments of a short attention span. With that in mind, when I actually did get invested in the games (After 2000 when I was actually allowed har har), my perception of Liu Kang didn’t change since, for the most part, that’s how the games portrayed him. He was that goody two shoes, strong willed martial artist who bowed to no one. The one you can actually count on to defeat the big bad at the end of the tournament and save Earthrealm with outer dimensional tyrants and fallen elder gods. He IS the hero of Mortal Kombat. He sees a world in turmoil, under siege by ambitious warlocks, despotic imperialists, and genocidal Gods who thrive in a world of death and wonton bloodshed, and decides of his own accord to go in, get shit done, and put a stop to the carnage once and for all. I know that sounds corny as all hell, and I don’t give a shred of fucks.

Obviously (and maybe unfortunately), this archytype was not exactly the most popular. For many people, their favorite characters were often the *coughs*… “Bad Boys”. The kinds of characters that didn’t give a rip about ethical boundaries and did whatever they needed (or wanted) to kick the most amount of ass without a care in the world. They were Han Solo, Wolverine, Raphael from Ninja Turtles, Tommy Oliver, Batman (wouldn’t kill, though), Spawn, Terminator, Vegeta, Judge Dredd, Blade, Punisher, Cable from X-Men, and Amma forbid, Iron Man, Iron Man, and Iron Man. These are the kinds of characters that people find most appealing, and reason being is that they are more relatable as characters. Not in the sense that people are automatically badasses who can and will do as they please, but because they offer a sense of liberation from a status quo.

There was a series of youtube videos where someone would often use action figures to do movie reviews of superhero films. You might’ve heard of them, do the words “Hi, I’m a Marvel: and I’m a DC” ring any bells? There was one “miniseries” of sorts where, after the Civil War series, you had a dead Captain America talking to a depressed Superman about how he lacked relevance in the modern world. The crux of that series was that DC was a universe of characters you could aspire to be, while Marvel was a universe of characters you could relate to, and that ultimately, that’s what people wanted. Captain America, of course, was the exception to the rule, but they killed him off anyway because that’s what you do with unpopular characters. You either corrupt them or be done with them.

I’m pretty sure there was more to the vid, but that point stands out the most. DC definitely was a universe of heroes you aspire to be as those heroes were mostly “perfect”. They had god level powers and skills that couldn’t be matched by most other heroes or villains, and would (until the 90s) often win their battles against evil doers. With the exception of Batman, these were heroes without any real, tangible flaws that would hold them back from being to save the day. Marvel, on the other hand, had down to earth, relatable characters that are brimming with flaws and personal failings. They don’t save the day all the time, and they have aspects of their personalities that might be crude, ill-mannered, unprofessional, and even depressed. But Marvel says “that’s ok. You don’t have to be perfect”. Thus, Marvel characters tend to be interesting to more people because these characters are deeply flawed. There’s a reason Batman is DC’s most iconic superhero, and Superman isn’t (uhhhhh…. don’t quote me on that).

In other words, the strong willed stoic hero will never be embraced. The imperfect hero will always be embraced. The imperfect will never encourage people to be better versions of themselves, something that everyone can get behind because no one wants to change who they are just to meet the standards that someone else puts before them, which is what the stoic hero boils down to. A barometer by which heroes are judged.

Or to put it another way, Liu Kang is a DC. Johnny Cage is a Marvel.

“So… so wait! Why don’t you like DC over Marvel if that’s the case!?”

…Because I was exposed to X-Men and Fantastic Four first, Ok!? The Superfriends cartoon sucked!

ANYWAY, taking this a step further, lets compare a typical Superman story to that of a typical Spider-Man story. In Superman, we usually see Clark Kent having some conversation or spat with Lois Lane. Just then, there is a news report of a bank robbery or even a kidnapping in progress. Clark then has to take a break from his work, find a phone booth or a bathroom to change into his superman costume, and then go out to fight crime. Superman swoops in to beat up bad guys and save the day. Maybe there will be a twist in the plot where Superman also has to save a little girl who is trapped in a burning building, thus having to let the crooks go briefly to save the little girl first. He is able to do so, but now must track down the criminals as quickly as possible. Given his capabilities, he is able to do so immediately, find the badguys, and take them to justice with little to no trouble. OR another twist, the crooks happen to be supervillains that manage to get one over Superman, say Parasite who can drain Superman of his powers. Now weakened, Superman has to find a way to stop this new, more powerful foe who has all of his powers. But then he figures that with all his strength, Parasite must also have his weakness. So he makes a devil’s bargain to find Kryptonite that defeats Parasite all the same, and takes him to prison. After some rest, Superman goes back to his job as Clark Kent, and reads a news story about how Superman defeated Parasite and saved a little girl from a burning building. This girl then wants to be a Superwoman when she grows up. Everyone at the Daily Planet smiles, and Clark is at ease now that he’s saved the day.

In Spider-Man, we usually see Peter Parker having some conversation or spat with his friends or love interest, whether it be at school or the Daily Bugle. Suddenly, there’s a news report about a crime that takes place, a bank robbery perhaps. Peter then breaks away from whoever he was with to find a place to change into his Spidey costume to save the day. He manages to track down the crooks who are robbing the bank, but then there is a little girl who is trapped in a burning building. Spider-Man makes the choice to save the little girl first before pursuing the criminals. He manages to save the girl, but because his abilities are limited, he isn’t fast enough to find the baddies that were robbing the bank. They got away (work with me, I’m pretty sure he could catch ’em, but work with me). He returns to his friends or lover who is now pissed at him for leaving them behind. They storm off in anger leaving Peter by himself. The next day, a news report sounds off with the horrifying reveal that the little girl Spiderman saved… was just killed by the very criminals he let get away! While they are eventually apprehended, the police are angry and frustrated because Spider-Man had the opportunity to stop those criminals once and for all, but refused to do so. JJJ then uses this as fuel for his typical anti-Spidey rants. Despite this, Peter then wonders if he is actually making a difference in the world. He’s not the best hero, and even though he tries his best, he often comes up short. That and his fluttering hero career is causing strife between himself and his friends and family. He wonders if he can keep this up. So he makes the conscious decision… to stop being Spider-Man.

I’m pretty sure there’s a more technical and accurate definition of the term, but this is how I come to understand Story vs Character driven narratives. The Superman example is one of Story-Driven where the actions of the characters affect the world around them, where as the Spider-Man example is one of Character-Driven where the world affects the characters. Story Driven, there is a central all encompassing plot that the characters follow to a certain goal post. Character Driven, there is no goal post, there is only how the character develops as a person.

While the former can be interesting in it’s own right, the latter is certainly more captivating to audiences. The reason being is because of the human element. It’s much easier to empathize with characters that struggle with personal conflicts than it is with someone who can practically do no wrong. Spider-Man struggles to balance his dual life as a man and a hero, and we see it take a toll on him. As a result, we feel sorry for him and want to succeed. He’s like an underdog of sorts. On the other hand, Superman doesn’t struggle at all. We know he’s going to win, we know he’s going to succeed, because he’s just that damn good. Thus, we expect nothing from him but his absolute best. But with Spider-Man, we DON’T know if he’ll come out on top or fail. This makes his stories more interesting because we don’t know what to expect, and we’re more interested in seeing how he reacts or grows as a person from these conflicts.

In other words, we KNOW Liu Kang will win and have no qualms with how he goes about victory, thus we don’t care when, not if, but when he wins. We DON’T know if Johnny Cage will win and how he’ll react and/or grow from his experiences, thus we’re more taken with his battles.

So clearly, someone like Liu Kang is more befitting of Story-Driven narratives while someone like Johnny Cage is more fitting of Character-Driven narratives. So what exactly is the problem? They both exist within the genre of fighting games.

Fighting Games are known for kicking ass, not having compelling stories. There’s just too many characters to focus on. Not in the sense that having too many characters automatically leads to bad stories, but by having too many characters, it’s far more difficult to make a compelling story that involves all of them. You have to naturally shaft several characters in order to focus on the few that are the most relevent in your story. But fighting games aren’t really geared to simply focus on one are two characters at the expense of everyone else. If you make a game with loads and loads of characters, they all deserve equal focus or else, people will start to wonder what the point of these characters are if they just exist to be thrown at each other. People (like myself) have been in denial over the importance of content in fighting games. People care about the relevance of certain characters in fighting games, people get attached to certain characters for more than just their power sets. They may like their designs, their personalities, etc. And regardless of what many may say, people are interested in what those characters do. So naturally, every character is given their own bios and storylines that are often fleshed out in the endings of Arcade mode. This is how you see what those characters are all about. Why they entered the tournament in the first place, what their motives are, and what would happen if they succeeded in their quests. Because of this, fighting games are often more suited to Character Driven narratives. The fighters are not there to affect the world in any way (with some exceptions like Bison and Shao Khan), they are often involved for their own personal gain. Soul Blade is a great example of this with characters that seek out Soul Edge for their own personal reasons. It’s an evil and corrupt sword that can possess people, but also grant them immeasurable powers. For Mitsurugi, he didn’t want to be outdone by the rifle Tanegashima, so he sought out the sword to not be outdone. But he finds that Soul Edge wasn’t worth it, and destroys it instead, deciding to challenge a rifleman to a duel without a crutch. Or Sophitia who seeks to destroy Soul Edge because it is pure evil. Or Hwang who seeks Soul Edge to stave the Toyotomi’s invasion of Korea. These are characters who have their own motivations and desires regarding Soul Edge, and they don’t care how that impacts the world.

Mortal Kombat, on the other hand, doesn’t really work out that well in this regard. Mortal Kombat is a series with a central plot that it’s cast of characters are all tangently involved in whether their motives line up with it or not. It is more Story-Driven than other fighting games out there. The games often tell you that there is this big, grand evil that must be stopped at all costs, and whatever character you choose will be the catalyst to stopping that big evil character. At that point, the game is telling you that there is one story that takes priority over everything else. As such, the personal goals of certain characters within the game are going to be seen as minor distractions and nothing more. They are not important to the overall big picture. As such, the characters who do infact have the most story importance will… obviously, take priority over the rest of the cast. The stories often have Liu Kang as the champion of Mortal Kombat, thus his importance is over-stated. So much so that his death at the hands of Shang Tsung was so panic-inducing that Raiden gathered several warriors together to do battle against them. The characters at this point are not there of their own volition, they are there for a specific goal. A goal of defeating a common foe. It doesn’t matter what their personal goals are. There is a central plot that needs to be resolved.

Of course, the developers wanted to have their cake and eat it too, so characters still had their individual and obligatory character endings, none of which actually matter in the end as the series would get rebooted twice. But even the individual endings get sidelined by the existence of the storymode.

The story mode is the canon event of that particular game. Whether it be Konquest from Deception and Armageddon or the regular story modes from the NRS series, it doesn’t matter. The story mode takes priority over everything else in the game. Characters that aren’t important in Storymode will be seen as having less value than those who are. When the Tekken series is coming out with these grandiose trailers of the Mishima family once again having their violent feuds with each other, it communicates that their feud is more important than whatever the other characters are doing. Tekken 7 epitomized this way of thinking by reducing every other character’s arcade ending… to a single fight with a fated rival while the most important players (Heihachi and Kazuya Mishima) were actually involved in the game’s storyline. However, that was actually a good call. By reducing the focus of certain characters in favor of others, the storymode itself is much shorter and more focused, allowing itself to develop naturally.

NRS on the other hand, throws all of that logic out of the window and tries to involve every single character they can think of into the plot without any forethought into how disruptive and contrived it becomes when you try to give every character a shot at relevance. You’ve already told the audience that there is a central plot to focus on, so trying to give everyone their own chapter and subplot gets in the way of having a more focused narrative. The Konquest modes handled the stories a helluva lot better than NRS because they focused on one character at the expense of everyone else. A more central plot sort of requires this.

But for me, because of the storymodes, I had less motivation to play arcade mode with my favorite characters because the story modes communicated to me that they don’t matter. Most of them are not canon, most of them will not matter in the next game, nothing… matters. The only reason to play Arcade mode with certain characters is now just for achievements or extra characters or some other unlockables. Playing the character because I’m interested in the character becomes impossible because the storymode has made the character irrelevant. Now of course, this could just be a me problem-

“It IS, herp derp!”

Quiet you.

As I was saying, this could just be a me problem, but some part of me believes that NRS feels the same way, thus they shove in all the characters they can into storymode. Of course, they don’t do a good job of this as they exchange story importance… for popularity contests. As I said in the last post, most of MK12 boils down to the characters that people actually wanted to see more of, which is fine, but if your favorite character doesn’t line up with the majority’s, you’re kinda shit out of luck regardless. But even if they did, NRS… still… kinda sucks at this. As I’ve said before, Reptile was one of my favorite characters in the series, but that’s a result of my proclivities toward lizards and birds (don’t ask me why, just don’t). Reptile’s story was actually pretty compelling to me. The last of his kind wishing to ressurect his species before he himself goes extinct is pretty solid stuff. We got none of that for MK9 and MKX’s storymodes, instead having Reptile be nothing more than a servant of whoever the big bad is. Sure, MK9’s arcade ending had Reptile revive the Zatarrans (only for them to go crazy and kill people anyway), but that isn’t canon because it didn’t occur in the storymode. Instead, all Reptile does is take his marching orders from Shang Tsung like a good little henchman and job for every single match. I would actually LIKE if Reptile’s ending had some actual weight to it, but clearly it doesn’t because it led to events that lead to the death of the human race, something that cannot happen if the next game is to have humans fighting against Shinnok’s forces. Instead of that, here’s Johnny Cage’s mediterranian magic ending that defeats Shinnok instead.

So having Reptile back in 12 would’ve been a nice touch. Except now, his story is completely different. He doesn’t care about ressurecting his kind at all, and was only motivated to save his family from Shang Tsung. But it’s revealed that he killed them, thus he wants revenge. That’s… that’s the best they could do? Another revenge story?

I harp about Johnny Cage a lot when concerning Mortal Kombat, and I should probably clarify that if I didn’t already. I… USED… to like Johnny Cage before MKX tarnished him. I used to think he was actually pretty cool. A celebrity who wanted to prove that he was a real fighter instead of a faker is actually pretty solid as a story for a fighting game. I’ve never been privy to the idea of Johnny being a douchebag which is what he is now. Even worse, a douchebag with God crushing powers, it’s the worst thing they’ve actually done with his character because it’s now unbelievable. But people will talk all day long about Johnny Cage being their favorite character because he has a personality. He’s funny, he’s interesting, his finishers actually convey character unlike everyone else. This is actually a huge problem. Not with Johnny Cage himself, but with the entirety of the MK cast. There’s barely anything interesting with them. Why? Well… lets take a look at one character like Sonya Blade.

Sonya Blade debuted in MK1 as a last minute decision by Midway. They wanted a female fighter in the game, and that’s how we got Sonya. Her story is pretty simple. She wants to take revenge on Kano for the murder of her partner. For most of what I’ve seen of Sonya’s character, this is her only story motivation throughout the course of the series. Every… single… appearance that Sonya has, she’s always in some eternal strife against Kano. The movies, she’s in conflict with Kano. The cartoons, she beefs with Kano. In the games, she hates and wants to kill… Kano. This is her entire character boiled down to a single, stale motivation. Revenge against Kano. Because of this, I don’t give a shit about Sonya… or Kano! It’s the same reason I don’t give a shit about Nina and Anna Williams because their stories are all about trying to kill or humiliate each other. Scorpion is always pissed off about the deaths of his family and clan, and is always looking for revenge against either Sub-Zero or Quan Cheap over this. Goro, a character who apparently was going to be a good guy after MK4, went right back into villain territory because he’s a monster. Various characters in the series can be boiled down to revenge plots if we’re being honest. Characters don’t express much more than a desire to either get revenge… or come into power and rule the world. The amount of clones in the series doesn’t help with the feeling of redundancy. The Edenian royal family is often in some weird power struggle with each other that I could care less about, the villains are always trying to take power for themselves for one reason or another, and betraying each other several times in the process.. the characters themselves are just excuse plots within a long and drawn out narrative. They don’t have the most compelling stories because they feel copy/pasted and modified for each and every character so that people wouldn’t wise up to the scam.

Except Liu Kang.

Liu Kang is the only character in this series (to my knowledge) that wants nothing from the world around him. He’s perfectly content with perfecting his craft and being the protector of Earthrealm. But because he has no motivations, it’s difficult for most writers to write a story centered on him. Why bother when you have a bunch characters with clearly established motivations in and of themselves? You can write a story around Scorpion, you can write a story around Sonya, you can write a story around Mileena (all of these centered on fucking revenge, mind you), you get the picture. They had to give Liu Kang a revenge story just to make him relevent and interesting the 90s movie, they had to kill him off and turn him into a zombie (TWICE!), and then turn him into a God just to do something with him. Otherwise, they simply don’t know what to do. It’s easier (and albeit more fun and interesting) for them to come up with scenarios for everyone else in the game.

But then… wait a minute. If Liu Kang is the stoic hero more suited to a Story-Driven narrative, and Mortal Kombat is mostly a Story-Driven narrative despite, then… why does Liu Kang get sidelined so often? I include MK12 in this instance because it seems like exchanging the roles between Liu Kang and Raiden was a convenient excuse to keep Liu Kang out of the plot for most of the story (it’s easy to forget Liu Kang is even in the story since his character is quite different). Yes, even Liu Kang became less interesting as the result of turning him into a God that affects people’s lives and makes boneheaded decisions like Raiden did. But back to the question. Why does Liu Kang get sidelined so often, even in films where his role in the story should be more important? Well… it’s because of what Mortal Kombat is, or rather what it became.

Looking at the first game in the series, Mortal Kombat was basically a gorey version of Enter the Dragon. It was a Martial Arts tournament taking place on an Island, and from all the history vids I’ve watched, MK1 was a completely different canon! The original story was that the Mortal Kombat tournament was one that was seized from the Shaolin Monks by Shang Tsung, turning it from a mild tournament to a bloodsport for the sake of Shang Tsung stealing the souls of the fallen warriors to prolong his life span. Liu Kang, being one of the Shaolin Monks, enters the Tournament for the sake of reclaiming it from the evil Wizard, and restoring Mortal Kombat to it’s natural, less bloody state. Already, I like MK1’s original canon better!

In that sense, Liu Kang’s role in the first game is far more important than any other in the series. He is undisputedly the hero of MK1. But more importantly, MK1 was actually about Martial Arts. Not in the strictest sense that characters marveled at each other’s craft or skill in their particular arts. Hell, I don’t even know each character’s individual fighting style outside of Liu Kang’s because… for Boon and Tobias, all Martial Arts were the same punches and kicks (And… to be fair, that’s sorta true). But because it really was a tournament of martial artists fighting in a bloodsport against each other… to the death! But the tone and atmosphere of MK1 didn’t really convince you that it was this dark and gritty game that mommy won’t let you play. The finishers were just secret moves that players could perform to give the loser a grissly fate. But the game didn’t revolve around the finisher. They were “secret moves” in the same vain as the Hadouken or Shoryuken. The characters did bleed, but so did those in Street Fighter (just not to the same extent). People get bloodied up in real fights all the time. Fighting by itself is violent! Mortal Kombat was just a little closer to home than most other fighting games on the market, but the fatalities were not the crux of the game. The main point was that it was Martial Arts Tournament. The game’s presentation and marketing was not centered on fatalities and grissly murder (to my memory). The announcer (Shang Tsung) sounded rather robotic and unenthusiastic, not dark and sinister. Nothing about the game conveyed any sense of dread and harrowing terror.

So with Liu Kang, he didn’t feel out of place. He was right at home in a good ol’ fashioned, violent as fuck tournament. Plus, it goes without saying that there were some finishers that weren’t the most violent things out there, some of them were pretty goofy such as Sonya’s kiss of death. The shit that was pulled off in Mortal Kombat… were basic bitch violent deaths that occurred in classic 80s movies. The Kano fatality came from Temple of Doom, a movie that, iirc, was rated PG-13! Liu Kang being the hero in this game was just fine. He naturally with the rest of the cast as there were just other fighters, Ninjas, a Thunder God, a 4 armed freak of nature, and a wizard. For the most part, Liu Kang couldn’t have fit into a better game. But what was more important was that… Liu Kang didn’t kill. As he was a Shaolin Kung, murder is something they do not do, even if they are perfectly justified in doing so. Liu Kang, taking on those principles and just being the big damn hero, would have the only finisher in the series that did not kill his opponent. He finished them via knockout, not death.

But then… we get to Mortal Kombat 2, and it takes on a much… darker… much more sinister tone than it’s predecessor. The fatalities became… the identity of Mortal Kombat, and that was being reflected in the new setting of Outworld. Outworld was a dimension of horror movies with denizens that would be described as freaks of nature. Baraka being the defining character of MK2’s roster who is a monster with deadly arm blades. Kung Lao comes out the gate with a bladed fedora that’s meant to kill. Kitana has bladed fans, Mileena is wielding deadly sais, and Shang Tsung is out for blood. Suddenly, Mortal Kombat isn’t simple Martial Arts Tournament, these have now become gladitorial death matches with people wielding weapons and powers for the distinct purpose of killing their opponent. The atmosphere is more oppressive, filling the air with as much dread as it possibly could. The announcer sounds especially evil with a deeper, more demonic sounding voice than ever before! The game is actively trying to tell you that you will meet your doom in Mortal Kombat 2! There is no more focus on Martial Arts, there is just the violence and bloodshed.

And it didn’t stop there. Each new entry in the series continued pushing the idea that Mortal Kombat was this dark, gritty, and violent series of horror and bloodshed simply because fatalities were a thing you could do. As the series went on, Liu Kang became more and more… out of place. While he had wild chicken screams that meshed well with all the gibberish the characters were mouthing off, Liu Kang suddenly had to start killing his opponents just to keep pace with the rest of the cast in the game, to have a sense of consistency with the rest of the cast. And then… they killed him off and turned him into a zombie simply because merely having the means to kill simply didn’t make him interesting enough as a hero of the franchise. People were digging Scorpion and the sexy demon ninjas in the franchise while Liu Kang got shoved further and further into the background of irrelevance. Even Mortal Kombat doesn’t like Liu Kang. He is literally and figuratively… “too good”… for Mortal Kombat.

But that aspect is what makes him the most interesting for me.

In a franchise of what one youtuber describes as “expendable assholes who just want to kill each other”, Liu Kang stands out amongst the crowd. A Maverick among Mavericks that isn’t afraid to say “no” when the announcer says “finish him”. The goody two shoes hero in a world of horror and bloodshed that seeks to create a semblance of sanity and peace when all around him demands he forsake any sort of ethics to fulfill everyone else’s bloodlust. While every character in the series embraces the madness and bloodlust, being motivated purely through vengence, conquest, or merely a show of force, Liu Kang is the only one who seeks to put a stop to the madness as much as he possibly could. He is the hero that Mortal Kombat doesn’t want, but so desperately needs.

So lets kill him off again and pass his role off to a douchebag instead? I know… being upset about how MKX handled this shit is petty at this point when MK12 “somewhat” rectifies this issue, but it still bugs me that they even did this. And the way MK11 and 12 “rectifies” this is somewhat insincere. It’s clear they wanted Johnny Cage to be the hero, but felt obligated to give Liu Kang the final hero role with a bullshit power up that comes out of nowhere, and turning him into flaming Raiden (Or “Kakyuu” or… whatever the Japanese word is for Fireball…). It comes out of nowhere, it’s not earned, it’s just there so that whiners like me would stop complaining that they pushed Johnny Cage at the expense of Liu Kang. This was a problem for the entirety of MK11, mind you. It objectively has the absolute worst writing in the entirety of the series because things just happen without rhyme or reason. But… yeah. Lets talk about MK12.

The more I think about the story of MK12, the more I… honestly don’t like this new version of Liu Kang. The Liu Kang I’m familiar with is more akin to an adventurer who gets his hands dirty to save the day. But God Kang takes on a more passive role than even Raiden. With Raiden, he’s actively fighting against evil forces throughout the game, lending a hand whenever he needs to for those in danger (or… letting them die ala Kung Lao and Kuai Liang). Liu Kang is inactive for most of the game until the latter half of the story, and unlike Raiden, he never truly shows the full extent of his powers. He seems like a completely different character. Seemingly emotionless and lacking in empathy. Textbook definition of stoicism, sure, but not in the sense that he truly cares. In this sense, he comes off like a manager. He crafted this timeline to be a certain way, and when things go wrong, he commands other people to do the work for him, risking their lives for his own playground. It feels out of character, and that shouldn’t be the case. Pretty sure that’s the point since he’s now a God, but I don’t have to like it. He’s just not the same character. If anything, he’s no better than most of the God characters now. He’s just Raiden with Pyromancy.

The first trailer of MK12 displays Liu Kang viciously murdering Shang Tsung, which itself should be out of character as Liu Kang shouldn’t really be using such a brutal method of execution where he presses his head so hard that he splits his entire body in half. That’s not… something Liu Kang would do, imo! Yes, he killed Shao Khan with a punch to the chest, but that was the extent of his kill. He didn’t do anything more extreme than that! This is because the people in charge of WB have completely missed the point of Liu Kang’s character. Well that shouldn’t be a surprise seeing what they did to Sindel the first time. And of course, that’s just a fatality Liu Kang can do in the game, it exists to show a traditional feature of the game, but that informs us of Liu Kang’s character in that he’s this mighty and intolerant God who will viciously punish those that mess with HIS perfectly crafted timeline. It’s just… not the same anymore. And I’m tired of pretending that’s ok.

The existence of fractured and multiple timelines seem to be a convenient excuse for NRS to do whatever the hell they want in terms of characterization. Since these are all reboots of the same universe, there is no sense of “wrong” characterization. They are just one of many different ones. A Liu Kang that doesn’t viciously murder his enemies exists, but he’s simply not the one we’re going to focus on for this game. Instead, here’s God Kang who splits wigs open for all the juicy red bits to splatter all over the place! Again, if the writers can do shit like this, then how the hell can anyone be invested in the work?

To summarize because I know I’ve gone off the deep end, the characters in Mortal Kombat are too samey, too redundant, all possessing revenge and conquest boners, thus they do not make for compelling characters. It’s a glorified super hero series with storymodes that practically force you to pay attention to several characters over the course of the game despite not being well suited to focus on several indistinctive and dull subplots, and the few characters that did appeal to me, they’ve managed to fuck up. I think if Mortal Kombat stuck with the Martial Arts aspect of the original game and not allowed fatalities to dictate the direction of the series, Mortal Kombat would’ve turned out much better than what we have now. A series that is basically about mutilation with character motivations as excuse plots for the carnage. They don’t actually matter as characters, they are expendable assets to see get fucked up in horrific ways. You’d think with a series that has a ton of horrible shit happening to characters, they’d make them more appealing. Imagine if the characters were actually enjoyable to the point that you don’t WANT them to die only for them to meet horrible horrible fates. Instead, you just have these avatars who are so unfulfilling that you become desensitized to the horrible shit that happens to them. You don’t care. In fact, you’re more likely to want to see them get eviscerated because most of them are just not likable characters, most of them are scumbags or monsters with no likable qualities. Their designs get uglier overtime making them less distinctive, thus lowering any appeal they have, so you won’t care if these overly designed, busy, ugly character models get torn to shreds. It doesn’t help that WB only uses MK as a tool for merch and cheap gamified franchise material.

I… don’t really have anything more to add here, so I’ll end with this tidbit. Defenders of the Realm had better characters than the NRS writers. I will take that shit to the grave.

The story mode has run it’s course. (MK12, Dragon Ball)

The Story Mode may have run it’s Course (MK12)

I decided to watch the cutscenes to MK12 (or M1K or Mortal Kombat 1, w/e the fuck people wanna call it) out of morbid curiousity. MKX and 11 were both massive trainwrecks in every sense of the word, but because I played and loved MK9, I’m still invested in whatever madness comes from this company, though not financially.

For the most part…. I think MK12’s story is a marked improvement from whatever the hell was going on with MK11. There’s zero special forces and zero black dragon which makes the story much more tolerable and less bloated as they were always the least interesting aspects of Mortal Kombat. Those bastards got an UNHEALTHY amount of focus in X and 11. Sure Jax is gone, but they’ve already tarnished his character after 11, so not much of value was lost. Though I will miss the outrage that erupted from his ending.

Trimming the fat seemed to be the goal of MK12 this time around, and it shows. Less characters to keep track of always makes for a more enjoyable tale. However, despite this, I think this feature of fighting games is starting to show it’s cracks. Perhaps it’s the lacking talent of the writers (which is still a thing despite the improvements), or the trend of Multiverses getting in the way of being invested in the story, or that the character designs are still getting worse with face models being lazy copy/pastes of real people rather than giving the characters unique features, and costumes being over-designed just to show more detail rather than showing more style. Now everyone looks like they were ripped out of some western RPG with the lacking fashion sense to boot. With the exception of Liu Kang, Kung Lao (as always),  Kenshi, Shang Tsung and maaaaaaaybe Rain(?), the cast looks dull and lifeless. Sareena got hideous too which is weird seeing as she was one of the better looking characters in MKX’s sea of fuglies. WB can’t stop themselves from whoring out celebrities without a care for talent (Megan Fox, why in the absolute fuck!?). I mean…. Shao Khan (Or “General Shao”) looks like a poor stand in for those horned bastards from the Dragon Age series. Or Motaro’s cousin, take your pick. I don’t understand how people cannot look at these character designs and think “Wow, this is NOT Mortal Kombat. These people look ALIEN to Mortal Kombat. They don’t FIT Mortal Kombat!” The design ethos for this series gets worse and worse as every new installment comes along. I don’t know what’s going through NRS’s minds. Perhaps it’s absolutely shit taste or shit quality in designing characters, but everyone looks so drab and indistinguishable. Even the Ninjas look like crap now! Lets take away the Solid Snake bandana and awesome hoodies in exchange for Samurai Topknots! Yeah, that’ll make Sub-Zero and Scorpion look like total badasses! Instead of being ugly designs, MK12 has the most boring and uninspired character design I’ve seen in a Mortal Kombat game to date. These bastards used to look awesome back in the day, and this is coming from a guy who’s barely had the chance to play any of these games before Armageddon. Armageddon had some questionable designs too (Shang Tsung looking like some weird Arabian Jafar looking dude was always bizarre) but even the “worst game in the series” had some bangers in there (Jade’s alternate will always be the best Jade costume in all of Mortal Kombat). It’s like they opted to not look to Comic Books for inspiration and instead geared itself towards the more generic LOTR/Prince of Persia/God of War/Diablo/Dragon Age asthetic, and it just doesn’t work. Some costumes look over-designed, others are too simplified and lazily stitched together (Johnny Cage is uncharacteristically bland with his alt being Striker’s costume from Armageddon…. I think). For the love of the Elder Gods, NRS, please give us badass costumes again. Or a better looking aesthetic. The MK Legends films have better character designs even if they come from that hideous MKX, the art style brought them to life. Maybe that’s the problem, they’re trying waaaaaaay to fucking hard to be “realistic” because… I guess since that’s how the series started (“So Real, it Hurts!” You ain’t kiddin!). But around the time of the “3D era”, they opted for a more cartoony aesthetic for those games… which worked wonders! I’d assume that continued with MK9 because… damn, they looked amazing! They looked awesome! But whooooo boy, that desire to show off their technological prowess took precedence over everything else, and in order to do that, we have to make everything look fucking hideous! We have to have characters modeled after their actors for some truly terrifying uncanny valley while they save money on their laziness by having you with the options to “customize character appearances” with DLC costume packs, or whatever they’re monetizing nowadays.

I… hate… the look of these games. They are ugly to the core now. A bad spinoff cartoon should not be looking better than the main games, but here we are. The designs are shit, I feel the need to over-emphasize that point because we moved away from something awesome to something horrendous. “Well, we just need to make a sequel, so lets make the games look NOTHING like the old titles despite being essentially a remake of that old title”. I don’t understand why the character designs are so terrible now, and why there is a literal refusal to improve anything.

Gameplay still looks like trash. Again, it looks so slow. Must be some new trend in the industry, we gotta SLOW DOWN every fighting game that comes out because spectacle demands that we make the animations longer to show off our animation prowess rather than make the fighting fast paced and fluid. SF4-6 have the same goddamn problem, looks like Strive has the same issue, SS8 was even slower than previous Samurai Shodown games (which I didn’t think was possible!), even MVCI is slower than dirt, and that’s supposed to be a game based on speed! Arika shitted on these AAA fighters with something as low budget as Fighting EX Layer. The increase in technology would appear to have a detriment on fighting game processing speed, but Namco shits on that notion with SC6 and T7, so I don’t know where this idiocy is coming from. Then again, looks like T8 is blowing chunks just to have those special effects that break the pacing of the fight. Among the weird animu facelifts (Jin does NOT look the same anymore!). MK12 is no better in this regard, and it looks even slower than MK11 in some cases. But hey, at least it’s not as brown as MK11!

But I know how much you guys love when I type up unnecessarily long winded plot summaries combined with unfunny commentary, so…. lez git on wit it!

The game starts off with narration by Liu Kang. I know narration is a common critique amongst critics, but I think it’s due to how common narration is. It shows that writers are often unoriginal with how they open up a game or movie by giving the audience exposition. And considering the marketing, I think this really ISN’T the most appropiate time to use narration for exposition. I think it would’ve been better to just open up the game with Shang Tsung trying to sell some snake oil to a populace without any indication as to what is going on. It gives a sense of mystery, leaving the audience to ponder exactly who this version of Shang Tsung is or why he’s wasting time trying to sell snake oil to people. By opening up the game and telling us “Yep! This is a new timeline, here’s all the changes that are made!”, it kinda diminishes the interest that people might have in the story. Right off the back, you’re explaining that this is a brand new timeline, and if Liu Kang wanted, he could restart history and make a new one right off the bat, meaning any investment one could have in this new universe is all but meaningless. Course… considering all the marketing (and cliffhanger ending of MK11) that gave this all away beforehand, I suppose the writers felt that it was pointless to try and hide the truth of the matter. It’s a matter of presentation imo, I just think it would’ve been better to have a sense of mystery in the opening rather than tell people upfront that it’s a new timeline. And here’s why.

We have Shang Tsung dressed up as his old self (har har) who’s selling snake oil. Well it’s a miracle cure that he promises will heal the sick. But one of the peasants of outworld exposes him as a fraud because he bought said snake oil to cure his daughter. His daughter is dead and he is rightfully livid. He spurs the crowd into beating Shang Tsung’s ass and trashing his little cart. Later that night, he is visited by someone who looks like Kronika but sounds like Ivy from Soul Calibur. Or if you prefer, Rouge the Bat. This being tells Shang Tsung that his destiny was dictated by a higher being, and he can change it if he joins her in her plans.

So going back to my original point, if we didn’t have the marketing or the opening narration pointing out that this was a new timeline, there would be some air of imagination in the player. They’d likely be guessing what’s going on, why Shang Tsung was a fool selling snake oil, why he doesn’t use magic to kick ass (in other words, Aftermath kinda ruined this game’s premise by it’s mere existence). Then we get to this point where the player would start wondering “wait, did Liu Kang restart the timeline and make THIS!? Holy shit!” or something along those lines. Instead, we have a situation where the player wonders nothing and is completely unsurprised by the events unfolding. “Oh of course Shang Tsung is going to be the catalyst for everything that goes wrong, the first trailer LITERALLY spelled that out for all of us!” Plus knowing anything about Mortal Kombat would’ve told yah that, I get it. But hey, new timeline, new rules, right? Or are we only going to give Mileena all the good stuff because she’s the most popular character? Right, right. Fuck me.

On the other hand, Shang Tsung’s set up into becoming the villain… is absolutely perfect. It would really lean into the concept of MK11’s endings where characters would arrogantly believe that they could craft a perfect world by restarting everything, and then finding out that things are gonna go wrong no matter what, and Liu Kang’s heavy hands in crafting Tsung and other villains would never lead to a perfect world, which would actually build his own character further, maybe he could understand that being a God isn’t easy, maybe come to understand why Raiden went the route he did in trying to save Earthrealm from Shao Khan (plothole, sure, but when have these games ever given a flip about that!?). But… this is WB, and they chose to cash in on a fad. I’ll get to that later.

So we jump over to muh boi Kung Lao… and Raiden who sort of looks like that one guy from the Halle Berry Catwoman movie. They’re kung fu farmers who don’t seem to be tied down to any Shaolin school, White Lotus Society, or anything of the sort. They’re just dudes who know kung fu. I guess this is ok as it allows them a bit more freedom in their development. Furthermore, their relationship is a lot less volitile. Like… Kung Lao doesn’t have his inferiority complex (mainly because he’s better at fighting than Raiden, so he doesn’t have that hang up) and he doesn’t hold that over other people’s heads. He’s just a bro, and that is definitely a change for the better! Raiden, on the other hand…. yeah, I’m not gonna get used to this version. He’s just so… lesser now than when he was the Protector of Earthrealm. He literally and figuratively isn’t the same character, and yes, I know that’s intentional. It still isn’t my cup of tea. BUT… because WB wanted to chase a fad, you don’t even have the luxury of getting accustomed to this version of Raiden (or Kung Lao for that matter) before being introduced to a far superior version that reminds you of when Richard Epcar was still in the business.

But these 2 doorknobs are proof positive of why the character designs are so shit in this game, while less so than MK11. Raiden and Lao are completely indistinguishable from each other! You’d think they were both alternate costumes for each other! Is it sad that the only way to tell them apart is from their hats? And even when they’re indoors, Kung Lao has to keep his hat on just to distinguish himself from Raiden! The costumes are that poor!

Anywho, they have brunch in some old town house where Bo Rai Cho was turned into an old lady, Mada’am Bo, thankfully without the drunkardness and farts. Raiden and Lao have a fist fight over who pays the tab (because splitting the bill is just not feasible?), and Lao eats like Goku. Right before they get to paying for their meal, the restaurant is attacked by the Lin Kuei… plus Scorpion. This is one of the many changes Kang made to this world. Scorpion is Lin Kuei, and is in fact… Kuai Liang. For the uninitiated, Kuai Liang is the younger brother of Sub-Zero/Bi Han (why they have a different family name is anyone’s guess). There is no Hanzo Hasashi or Shirai Ryu as an opposing rival clan. This is because Liu Kang wanted to create a timeline of peace and not bloodshed, and I guess he figured making Hanzo a non-entity would lead to that peace. I’m… kinda ok with this change as it makes Kuai Liang his own character with Pyromancy as opposed to being an expy of his big bro, and cancels out that godawful Noob Saibot as a character. On the other hand, because the design team sucks, Kuai Liang LITERALLY looks like a palette swapped Sub-Zero because apparently the topknot is just sooooooo grand a hair style, yah know?

Lao and Raiden beat their asses for a while before Liu Kang appears talking about “DIS A TEST!” as they were being prepped for Pacifist Kombat. More on this later.

So here we cut to…. *sighs*… currently the most overrated character in all of MK because this generation thinks Iron Man was such a great character due to his quips alone. Johnny…. goddamn…. Cage.

His chapter opens up with him shooting an Indiana Jones ripoff with a guy voiced by Yuri Lowenthal (why does he always play whiny characters in these games!?) playing his sidekick. The only thing I remember from Indiana Jones is that scene that forever left me scarred, so I can’t pinpoint exactly why Indie Cage is kind of a douche, but hey, it’s all a movie! Regular Cage couldn’t be this much of an intolerable asshat throughout the game, right? Well if you haven’t paid enough attention to how he’s been portrayed in media since the rise of Iron Man, you’re in for a treat!

There was a video that came out months ago titled “Millenial Writing” which got a lot of flack from… well… my generation for basically suggesting that everything wrong with writing today is the direct result of my generation being man children, because that’s the golden ticket to pandering to Boomers since Millenials are often blamed for everything that’s gone wrong. It used examples from everything like Borderlands to Saints Row 5 to the new Wolfenstein Games, etc. etc. Cherry picked examples, of course, from AAA Western gaming. I’m not in the mood to divulge in the entirety of that crap fest, but basically, he’s sick of everything being devolved into comedy, something I personally refuse to put on Millenials exclusively, and put more toward the Birdman fallacy. MCU is super popular because they are glorified comedies. Thus everything becomes a glorified comedy to make dat money. Nobody wants to take anything seriously, everyone just wants to laugh.

And BOY does Johnny Cage embody that talking point! So much of his antics are predicated on the presumption that you will enjoy everything that he does just because he’s suddenly everyone’s favorite character… based exclusively on the fact that he’s comic relief! When the game literally pauses the story for him to explain a pop culture reference, you know he’s fucked as a character. This was the sole reason he became “powerful enough to beat Shinnok through the power of love”, btw. Somehow the comedian becomes integral to the plot… sorry, that’s a rant for a previous entry where he becomes Mr. Awesome for a little while and somehow manhandles 2 revenant ninjas and a fallen elder god. But hey, it’s Liu Kang’s timeline, and he never really had a high opinion of Johnny Cage throughout the NRS Timeline so…. perhaps he’s toned him down!?

NOPE! He folds Kenshi in the very next scene after his wife leaves him. Kenshi.. happens to be a character that my sister loves to death. So much so that he, more so than her annoying ass Raiden and Sektor combined, was the bane of my existence for both 9 and X. She was that pro with him. Needless to say, she hated Johnny Cage since the old movies. You guys should’ve been there to see the “pissed off” in her face when Johnny Cage whooped his ass in the following scene! But why is Cage whoopin Kenshi’s ass? Well it’s conveniently tied into why his wife left him (Also kudos to including his family ties from the old 90s comic). See, Cage has this really bad habit of spending his F-U money on priceless artifacts from around the world. Uh… why? Idk! Maybe it’s a quirk Liu Kang gave him as some sort of improvement? Idk. One of those artifacts happens to be Sento, Kenshi’s sword. I admit, I don’t know shit about Kenshi as a character, his story and lore, etc. All I knew was he was connected to Ermac for some reason. Regardless, Kenshi storms Johnny’s house demanding the return of the sword. Johnny is… annoyingly knowledgeable about the “Taira” and it’s Yakuza ties so much so that this entire engagement feels like it came out of a bad movie itself. Nevertheless, Cage isn’t handing Sento over without a fight which Kenshi loses. I’m certain the Cage fanboys creamed themselves when yet another overrated character is defeated by him.

So Cage ties him to a chair and begins questioning him about Sento, yadda yadda Kenshi’s past, and Cage calls bullshit on his claims. And… I don’t know why he would. Kenshi would not have invaded your home for that one sword if it wasn’t important to him, but I guess we have to show that Johnny Cage is “smart” by knowing a little something about history. Yah know, just to get away from the tropes established by the MK Legends movies. I just remembered they made a new one about Johnny Cage. Ewwww….

After their brief argument, Liu Kang and his pet Lin Kuei pay him a visit, to which Cage is… uncharacteristically hospitable to them. Why!? Because now he suddenly believes that his wife is punking him. Well nevermind, he’s just as moronic AS in those movies! Liu Kang tries to explain the situation, Johnny makes a callback to the superior MK9, and then believes that this is somehow a setup for a movie. So in his idiocy, he “plays along” as Sub-Zero tries to untie Kenshi. He grabs Sub’s arm to which he believes is a threat, and knocks the movie star into an expensive vase. NOW HE’S PISSED! SO they fight, and because it’s a character chapter, Johnny once again beats Sub-Zero in a straight match because we have to be convinced that Johnny Cage can match up with magical ninjas, wizards, and apparently fucking Elder Gods because unlike Japan, the concept of power scaling is truly a foreign concept to the west (what with Batman being able to squeeze Wonder Woman’s ears and cause her pain, yet he gets folded by Bane. Huh… rhyme!). Liu Kang breaks up the fight and explains to Cage again the low down on what’s going on.

And we cut to Liu Kang’s Shaolin temple with the Chapter focusing on Raiden. Goddammit, he’s so difficult to get adjusted to! So… stupidly enough, Liu Kang wants to prepare these four for a tournament that is not Mortal Kombat, but is instead a peace accord to make sure that the realms don’t go to war. So it’s kinda like G Gundam where a representative of each nation fights in a tournament to determine… something, it’s been ages since I’ve seen that show, and I’m probably getting the plot mixed up with another show.

On the one hand… THIS IS MUCH BETTER THAN WHAT THE ELDER GODS COOKED UP! See, I didn’t understand this nonsense where you have the 6 Kamidogu/realms split apart from The One Being who is basically MK’s version of the one above all, or Nemesis since the infinity gems came from it. The reason the Elder Gods busted his ass into 6 parts was because the One Being was apparently a genocidal maniac or something, you’d have to ask a real MK fan for why. So they have 6 realms, and the Elder Gods were hellbent on keeping the One Being from being ressurected via the merger of realms. So…why… in the grandest…. of all hells… did they construct a Tournament… that would allow… for the merger… of realms… when the merger of realms… would bring the One Being back!?

I’m pretty sure everyone agrees that the Elder Gods were the biggest idiots in all of gaming, but this is an oversight that had never been corrected within series canon since… uh… when did this factoid even come in? The 5th game? 6th? I’m pretty sure it had to have been around the time John Tobias left (seems when the head lore masters leave their franchises, the people in charge start fucking it all up, eh Borderlands 3 with Siren powers that can be transferred!? Fuck that game). But this one detail completely misses the point of preventing the One Being from coming back. You gave the One Being an OUT! So if some douchebag wanted to merge all realms for the sake of conquest (Shao Khan), he or she now has an option to do so. Just win 50 MKs in total and you get to bring back our destruction! Make it make sense!

So Liu Kang’s version of an outerdimensional tournament is PERFECT in comparison to the retardation of the Elder Gods. Sure there’s no stakes and thus no tension, but it actually makes sense! Have it be an alternative to warlike tensions among the realms and not some idiotic factor in whether or not someone gets to MERGE realms and conquer another world.

On the other hand…. Liu Kang only needs one Champion? So you drag these 4 dudes out of their own lives… just to say only one of them can compete? Idk about you guys, but I’d pretty pissed off if I was dragged halfway across the globe just to say I have to earn the right to participate in a tournament via a trial by combat, something that could EASILY end in a goddamn fluke! And the Lin Kuei aren’t even included as possible contestants?! I’d say their chances of victory are MUCH higher than these 4 dorks you pulled out of thin air since they actually have super powers at this point, but fuck power scaling. Since this is Raiden’s chapter, Liu Kang operates on MK9 tournament rules and pretends this is just a good ol’ fashion ladder match where Raiden beats Johnny, Kenshi, and Kung Lao in that order. Again, fuck power scaling. Didn’t Kung Lao say he never beat him in a fight, and here he is wiping his ass with Johnny Cage, a dude that could fend off magic ninjas and a would-be assas-wait, why am I complaining about that? Fuck Johnny Cage!

So after winning that, Liu Kang gifts Raiden with an amulet (would’ve been nice if it were the same one from MK9, but this one looks pretty different) that grants him electrokinesis. And of course Johnny Cage streams it because acknowledging that social media exists is both “funny” and the only way old people know how to relate to the youth. Liu Kang no longer has need of the other 3 dinkwads but to simply have them as a cheer squad for Raiden. I think being a God gives you sufficient brain trauma or something.

Thus they transport to Edenia… I’m sorry, “Outworld” because for some goddamn reason, NRS currently has no plans of acknowledging the existence of Edenia… even though… in the context of this very game, the merger of realms shouldn’t even be a thing! Sindel and Jarrod were the rulers of “EDENIA!!!!!” NOT “OUTWORLD!!!” That is Shao Khan’s thing! Oh… oh what? “Liu Kang from the NRS timeline never heard of Edenia which to his knowledge was always possessed by Outworld, so he wouldn’t know about it to recreate it or give it that exact name!” Oh yeah? Well there’s an Order Realm and a Chaos Realm that was acknowledged! Liu Kang sure as shit didn’t know about those places, yet here’s denizens from those areas! Here’s Havik, Darius, and a passing mention to Damashi! There’s Nitara… no wait, that bitch is from the Netherrealm… ah shit, I don’t know. The point is if you’re gonna make Sindel’s domain look pretty as fuck, you might as well call it it’s actual fucking name! EDENIA!!! This shit…. drives me up the walls for no reason! Why… the hell… did they call it Outworld!? WHY DID THEY CALL IT OUTWORLD!?!?!!??!?!

……………….FUCK!!!

So… Liu Kang takes the 4 to….*deep breath* …. to “Outworld”… to meet with Mileena, Kitana, Li Mei (YAY!!!) And Tanya-…..

Uh… Tanya? Don’t panic, but they stripped you of all your sex appeal! And I’m only referring to the Post DLC return of yo skin tone! Good lord, child, you look ROUGH! I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, Tanya was a fox back in MKX, especially since they turned Kitana into a man jawwed hag. I guess they wanted to focus on making Mileena and Sindel the most appealing females in the game since they’re showing off alllll their breast meat.

Speaking of which, Sindel in this game is a massive overcorrection which everyone probably saw coming a mile away. After the massive backlash that was her portrayel in MK11 (good lord, that game), Sindel is now on King Jarrod’s nuts, and pretty much hates Shao Khan in all but his duties. Speaking of which, here is how Shao Khan looks in this game.

BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SHIT?! Don’t he look like one of them assholes from Dragon Age 2? What’s with the horns?! Why did they feel the need to add that!? He doesn’t even look the same anymore! He might as well be an orc from lord of the rings! He could pass for Samael from Darksiders! Granted, his face is MUCH better than that shit from MK11, but everything just doesn’t work! The fucking horns just collapses the entire design, they suck!

While he’s referred to simply as General Shao, I’m still trippin off the fact that “Khan” was a title and not his actual name. Yet just calling him Shao does him no favors. Also… he doesn’t use a hammer now!? Why!?

In either case, they meet and greet the “EDENIANS” before they start the tournament. Everyone hates Li Mei because she failed to protect King Jarrod and is no longer a part of the Umgadi (everytime they say that name, I keep thinking them French supercars) which…. lets be honest, they’re discount Dora Milage from Black Panther. So Mileena already tells Li Mei to piss off just to show that they don’t get along. After that, they meet Shao Khan who ponders whether or not Raiden even lifts. Liu Kang does mention that Earthrealm keeps winning all of their tournaments… which is hilariously egotistical of Liu Kang to make Earthrealm stronger than EDENIA. Sindel seems to be on good terms with Liu Kang, though something told me it was a front. So after the trash talk, they start the tournament, and Raiden beats Li Mei. I guess they just wanted to humiliate her or something. The next opponent is… fucking Reiko.

And you know what the best part is? For a character that most people don’t even like… his design… is the only one in the cast that closely resembles his design from a previous game! Whereas everyone else has these drastic changes to their character designs, Reiko actually looks like he was taken from the 3D era games, and I could not be anymore impressed with their restraint! It’s just too bad that this level of restraint is not seen for everyone else that isn’t a ninja.

Regardless, Raiden kicks his ass despite all the hype Shao Khan gives him, and Raiden eagerly demands his next opponent. Sindel rebuffs him with “young one” which just… it’s weird with Raiden being called “young”, and they instead have a banquet. During this feast, Mileena nearly reveals that something is definitely wrong with her, prompting Tanya to get her the hell out of dodge. In the same vain, Some talk about peace between the realms triggers Shao Khan to the point that he rants about that peace, prompting Sindel to get him the hell out of dodge. The scene quickly cuts to an argument between Sindel and Shao Khan about his behavior, and I can’t help but feel that this was done purely as an overcorrection to Sindel’s portrayel in the last game. Infact, a LOT of MK12 is written in response to a lot of the whining. Mileena not being playable until Ultimate? Gets more focus than Kitana in the game’s story. Sindel not a good guy and is head over heels for Shao Khan? Practically hates Shao Khan in the story and cries about Jarrod every chance she gets. Everyone hated Jax’s ending? He’s just a striker with zero story importance (Liu Kang didn’t even bring Kai back, so we can assume he hates bl-hahahahahahahahaha).

Sindel also requests an audience with her daughters and explains that Mileena is in deep shit because her “disease” is getting out of control, and lambasts her for being reckless. As a result, Kitana will take her place. This is a detail I could care less about, but for some reason, my sister was furious with this change. More on that later.

So Raiden fights Kitana in the semi-finals, and for some reason, everyone has an issue with this. Liu Kang expresses that her hier, Mileena, should be the next fighter instead of Kitana. This detail DOES infuriate me because Kitana gets pushed into the background as a character of lesser importance, and she doesn’t have any agency to express the blatant favoritism on display here. As everyone knows, Kitana was the next in line to rule Edenia, but Mileena was created as a clone of her to be Shao Khan’s next in line since he didn’t trust Kitana to remain loyal to him. MKX wasted the potential of Mileena trying to wrestle control of Outworld from Kotal Khan by killing her off via D’vorah’s hands which kickstarted her path on being the most hated MK character ahead of Hsu Hao. Because Mileena is more popular, however, she is given an intense amount of favoritism by the writers as being Sindel’s next in line. And Kitana has no qualms about this? Maybe they were trying to establish that Kitana is more peaceful and less jealous than Mileena would be if the roles were reversed, but they don’t really do anything of significance with this dynamic. Kitana is just shoved into the background with no care in the world as she is basically an expy to her expy. She too is a princess under Sindel, yet she doesn’t seem to care that her own authority dwindels in comparison to her sister. We don’t get any details as to why Sindel chose Mileena as her successor when she already expresses outrage to her recklessness, thus her fucking disease being the result of her own irresponsibility, which is something that a RULER OF AN ENTIRE REALM needs less of. It’s one thing to write a story with the fans in mind, something I will give credit to MK12, but it’s something else when it’s written completely devoid of all logic. I’ve yet to see individual character endings, but I get the feeling this doesn’t get addressed.

In eithercase, Raiden kicks Kitana’s ass, and then moves on to Shao Khan. He kicks his ass too (what, no Goro?) and thus, Earthrealm wins the peace tournament. Sindel is certainly not happy with the results, but what can she do?

A lot of people take issue with how the tournament was handled, IE the lack of stakes and general lack of… “Mortal Kombating”. Sure it’s not an interesting tournament at all considering the kontestants are all lame, but… it’s kinda like “whatever”. Liu Kang wants to make a perfect world, and that includes removing the bloodshed and stakes in an interdimensional contest of who gets to screw whoever. So I can’t complain.

The next scene, however, would’ve made the story far more interesting had the story not gone the route it did! So Liu Kang is meditating near a fire when Garrus arrives. Apparently, the Garrus here is one he made up entirely, and not the same one that served Kronika? I guess it makes sense as he looks more like a buffed up Kai than he does some Greek God played by Michael Jai White. There’s some exposition here to explain why Garrus is still kicking despite being tossed into a river of infinite depths in the last game, but then he immediately tells Liu Kang that Shang Tsung has broken out of the cycle that was originally intended for him, and is in the ear of Sindel. This distresses Liu Kang obviously, so he sends Kung Lao, Johnny Cage, and Kenshi on an undercover mission to discover his whereabouts in outworld. This… isn’t the best plan he could have considering this leads to a series of events that could’ve been avoided had he not brought those 3 there for the tournament in the first place. More on this later. I’ve been saying that a lot, haven’t I?

Anywho, the trio don new costumes. Kung Lao is now in a more traditional badass version of his MK2 attire, Cage seems to have ripped off Striker’s outfit from Armageddon, and Kenshi raided Dante’s wardrobe from Devil May Cry. Look at that! They actually look cool now! See what happens when you give them less generic costumes? I wasn’t digging that weird shit Kung Lao was rockin in the last game anyway, just wasn’t Kung Lao at all. While Johnny has a better costume, he just looks like some weird Ninja. Then again, Johnny’s never had a decent costume since the first game so I’ll take a win where I can get it. Kenshi, goddamn… one thing I’ll give this series is that Kenshi looks cool in every game he’s appeared in since the designers had a semblance of restraint regarding him and him alone, but he really pulls off the DMC look! Sort of seems like a blend of Devil May Cry and Samurai Warriors Masamune Date, or Sengoku Basara’s Kojiro. Hats off to whoever did Kenshi’s design in this game!

Kung Lao doesn’t really matter in this portion of the chapter as it’s completely devoted to a pissing contest between Cage and Kenshi over Sento and the Taira. Again, it irks me that Cage is so knowledgable on the history of a sword he likely bought off an auction, and is so brazen as to casually mock Kenshi over this detail over and over and over for most of the story, and it’s all justified because Kenshi was the home invader who made an ass of himself first. The conflict between these 2 feels contrived in some vain attempt to make Cage look better compared to a fan favorite before Johnny became the Tony Stark of the series, and I hate it. Not as much as my sister, though, since this is done at the expense of her personal favorite character unlike what the MCU does to every character that I’ve ever loved (Captain America, Doctor Strange, especially Spider-Man).

In eithercase, the 3 track down Shang Tsung in an old Tarkatan camp where he’s extracting some of Baraka’s marrow. It’s interesting to note that Steven Blum is still voicing Baraka but isn’t doing Sub-Zero or Reptile this time around, owing to WB’s desire to have more ethnically accurate voices once more. While I don’t mind this, I think it’s a waste of Blum’s by reducing his role to this one dipshit who’s popularity I still don’t understand anymore than I do Erron Black. Shang Tsung gets his sample, but Baraka breaks free and starts a riot that gets most of Tsung’s men killed. Shang Tsung then promptly gets his ass kicked by Baraka who doesn’t take the opportunity to kill him here and now. This… really doesn’t make Shang Tsung look good at all, especially when compared to how much ass he whooped in MK11, probably one of the few things that travesty did right. Still, considering his background, it makes him more of an underdog villain since his entire motivation is to break free of the piss poor life that Liu Kang shackled him with.

Cage feels like things are going well and prefers to leave this to the Tarkatans, but Kenshi figures they need Shang Tsung alive in order for Liu Kang to get information. At first, I thought Kenshi was really being an idiot because if Shang Tsung died here, then story over! But then I remember “wait, he has allies that need to be brought down as well”. So ok, Kenshi was right. They jump down to save Shang Tsung and initiate a fight with Baraka. Shang Tsung takes advantage of this and disguises himself as a Tarkatan and escapes. FUCK! Afterward, Kenshi defuses the situation quickly and explains that Shang Tsung is needed alive. Then Baraka reveals to the party that he is the result of a disease. Being a Tarkatan is now the equivalent of getting Covid, and… again, I don’t care. But for some reason, this ALSO irked my sister! It’s hilarious, she’s more anal about this game than I am, but I’m sure it has more to do with Kenshi being dogged on by Cage than anything else.

Anywho, Baraka explains that they can find Shang Tsung in a nearby lab… which leads me to believe he’s kind of an idiot. He explains that Shang was doing this crap for months. But… he never planned to raid that bastard’s lab to stop him or kill him at least? Uhhhh…. why? Considering how easily you’ve kicked their asses in your colony, what have you got to fear!? It’s clear he’s no match for any of you, nor or his security detail, just go in there and skewer his punk ass!!!

Whatever, Kenshi tells Baraka to wait outside (WHY!!?) and the trio go in to discover that Shang, Rain, and Tanya are all experimenting on Mileena. So they all spring out of their hiding place and…

KENSHI: Get away from her!
CAGE: You…. Bitch!

And the scene stops for a moment… so that Cage can explain his Alien reference. Why? Because Kung Lao suddenly cares about respecting women for no apparent reason. Seriously, fuck this character, fuck the writers for even thinking this was necessary at all, and fuck that video for being validated thanks to shit writing like this. Since this series is all “realism”, what celebrity in their right mind like to make constant references and callbacks to famous Hollywood movies!? It makes Cage come off like a movie nerd/buff rather than a professional celebrity more concerned with proving his moves aren’t fake… which… no, that’s no longer his character, but what exactly is!? What is Cage’s motivation or reason for being here other than being overrated as all hell!? He’s basically Spider-Fan who’s geeking out over all the “awesome stuff” that happens in outworld! He has ZERO REASON for being here! Also, if you have to explain the joke, then it simply wasn’t funny to begin with (which is exactly the case!) Also also, the captions for this scene explicitly stated that Cage was “Eyeing Tanya” when he said this line. Why exactly was this detail important? You have 3 assholes working on Mileena, and Shang Tsung is the one holding the syringe! So if anything, it’d make more sense that Cage would be eyeing Shang Tsung since he’s the one trying to stick it in! This stupidity is just there so that the writers can once again justify the existence of the anti-woke youtubian pimps out there so that they can easily reference this game as being yet another example of the downfall of western media, more so than the new Spider-Man game apparently (Oh lawd, what’s going on now with Spider-Man!? Can’t go one minute without THAT series being roasted for being foke!).

Kenshi and the boys go to town on the 3 with Shang Tsung once again getting folded, Tanya showing off her 3 stick nun-chucks (can they give her a consistent weapon for a change?) and dealing with Final Fantasy Rain before they discover that… OH NOES, Mileena was infected with Tarkat all along, and Shang Tsung was actually trying to help her! They fight, Kari Whalgreen actually shows improvement as Mileena even though she still sounds like a pissed off Powerpuff Girl, and she uses 2 conveniently random sais to stab Kenshi in the eyes. Goddamn………. that’s painful to watch, but it wouldn’t be Kenshi if he didn’t lose his eyes. After that, Shang injects her with Blade’s serum and puts her to sleep. Just then, Kitana, Goro, and Shao Khan all enter the room. Kitana demands to know what happens and… as expected, Shang Tsung sells the trio out to cover his hide.

CAGE: What!? That’s totally fake news!

Oh amma, SHUT THE FUCK UP, JOHNNY CAGE!!!!

Ugggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggh! Low hanging Trump references are more painful than Kenshi’s eyes getting fucked up!

Thankfully, Goro knocks him out to spare us from anymore cringe, and proceeds to knock out Kung Lao and subdue the blinded Kenshi. They also mention capturing Baraka who.. I guess was just standing around like a good little Tarkatan with his thumb up his ass, so I’m left wondering if NRS actually hates the guy, and only include him because they want to appease the fanboys this time around. Kitana doesn’t believe that Liu Kang would actually be a threat to… EDENIA… until a portal randomly pops up to reveal 4th Snake’s Nightmare. QUAN CHEAP!

Oh yes, the Marty Stu of MK9 returns! He clarifies that he had some sort of prophecy detailing that yes, Liu Kang is a bastard that must be stopped at all costs! So they proceed to take them all to the dungeons. Though Shao Khan is curious as to what really went on with Shang Tsung, he doesn’t pay it too much mind. Because developing Shao Khan to be anything more than some angry brute is too much to ask for from NRS these days. Isn’t this the guy who poisoned Onaga, the original ruler of Outworld, because he knew he couldn’t take him one on one?

But back to an earlier point I had made, this entire plan is Liu Kang’s own fuck up. Why? He sends in 3 key people from the tournament on a mission to uncover Shang Tsung’s whereabouts… without Sindel’s knowledge. The reason being is utterly stupid because Sindel has never once shown herself to be mistrusting of Liu Kang in the slightest to not hear him out. So when Garrus tells Liu Kang that Shang Tsung has Sindel’s trust, that should never have been license to go behind her back and instigate a secret mission. You have no idea what Shang Tsung is doing that would encourage Sindel’s good faith, thus any action taken to remove Shang Tsung from the picture was bound to arouse suspicions and cause more strife between the realms, something that Shao Khan is eager to cause because he’s just a generic villain destined to be evil because tradition says so, and apparently Liu Kang didn’t bother to change his role or wipe him from his own timeline to preserve any sort of peace that he desired. But Shang Tsung is more of a threat than Shao Khan!?

Secondly, you use 3 people… that the Edenians have already seen?! Before this recon mission began, Kenshi acts like a prick and requests Raiden’s help in the place of Johnny Cage because he’s still pretty bitter about not getting sword back and receiving an ass whoopin in return. Liu Kang denies this saying that Raiden’s face is too familiar because he’s the champion of Pacifist Kombat. But that doesn’t make any sense because the Edenians have seen the other 3’s faces as well! It would’ve been far wiser for him to send in the Lin Kuei. Sindel and the Edenians don’t know about them yet which gives Liu Kang plausible deniability should they be discovered, and one could logically assume that the ninjas are better at infiltration and discretion more so than a monk, a pre-blind samurai with anger management issues, and a noisy celebrity with all the douchebagness that rivals Michael Bay. Not to mention… Kenshi is kind of a blabbermouth. He more than anyone jeapordizes any sort of peace between the realms by constantly revealing that it was Liu Kang that sent them in on this mission to retrieve Shang Tsung. Had he kept his mouth shut on the matter, there would likely be less tensions between the realms, Liu Kang would again have plausible deniability, and the situation could have been defused easily. OR BETTER YET… go to Li Mei first and try to find an alliance with her to find Shang Tsung WITH or WITHOUT Kenshi and boys so that, AGAIN, Liu Kang could have plausible deniability by way of Li Mei already having bad blood between herself and the royal family. If discovered, they could assume that Li Mei wanted some sort of revenge against Sindel’s heirs or wanted to sabotage Mileena’s ascension to the throne, or SOMETHING other than Liu Kang is up to no good. And the latter plan is something that Liu Kang is not above doing. Afterall, he deceived Shang Tsung at the end of Aftermath which involved sacrificing Fujin and several of his friends in an old timeline, all just to see if Shang Tsung would indeed try to take power again, not even to stop him before hand! So if he really wanted to, he could’ve convinced Li Mei to help them out if only as a means to defuse any tensions between their realms should they be discovered.

But again, all of this started… as a result of Liu Kang’s short-sightedness. This is the level of idiocy that Raiden would be capable of seeing as Raiden isn’t exactly subtle or light handed in his approach to protecting Earthrealm. Liu Kang wants to maintain peace above all else, yet is infected with PIS in order for the story to progress in a manner that isn’t important to most of what happens in the plot next. So whatever war that occurs now is the direct result of Liu Kang’s stupidity. Just imagine if Liu Kang decided to talk to Sindel about Shang Tsung PRIOR to initiating a recon mission. Sindel would likely have suspicions of Shang Tsung and instruct Tanya, Shao Khan, and others under her to keep a watchful eye on him so as to make sure he remains loyal to her, OR to bring him to her for questioning by the Queen or Liu Kang himself. But those she instructs are already in bed with Shang Tsung, and Shao Khan is already thinking of overthrowing Sindel, so they likely protect him or keep him as far from Sindel as possible (WITH Mileena’s help, of course). So with Liu Kang being denied access to Shang Tsung, THEN he sends in the boys to find him.

OR

Sindel herself denies Liu Kang his request to question or capture Shang Tsung BECAUSE he promised a cure for Mileena’s condition DESPITE having no reason to distrust Liu Kang’s motives for why he wants to. Again, Sindel has no reason to mistrust Liu Kang, and I don’t think she was ever in on Quan Cheap’s BS prophecy of Liu Kang destroying EDENIA, so her motive for keeping Liu Kang from Shang Tsung would purely be out of the love she has for her daughter. Eitherway, Liu Kang would’ve shown a level of diplomacy and trust in Sindel to go to her first before taking any sort of action. That way, at the absolute very least… if Liu Kang proceeded with his plan to capture Shang Tsung by infiltrative force, then maybe….. MAYBE… there wouldn’t be such high tensions between the realms. That’s a very… TINY… possibility. Perhaps only having beef with Liu Kang nad his actions rather than feeding into Shao Khan’s blatant desire for war.

We then head into the flesh pits where Reptile is introduced in his skid row glory. In this continuity, he can shapeshift from his human form to his Zatarran form at will, and it’s this reason that Shang Tsung blackmailed him into serving him. Which is kinda dumb, but I guess there’d need to be some sort of reason as to why Reptile would go along with whatever Shang Tsung has going on since he doesn’t have Shao Khan as a leader. And…. *sighs*… look, I get his design in the game is based on his MK1-3 appearance where he was just a palette swapped ninja, but ignoring the lore reasons for why he looks more lizard-like after MK4, giving the Ninjas more distinctive designs was just common sense. The limitations brought on by taking pictures and saving memory wasn’t a thing when 3D came around, so making Reptile more reptillian to further distinguish him from the other ninjas was a logical step forward. It also got around the issue of mistaking Reptile and other clone ninjas from being associated with the Lin Kuei. And honestly, Reptile’s design just kept getting better and better as time went on. His best look ironically coming from Scorpion’s Revenge. So going back to human Reptile after all this time just to explain where new Shang Tsung got his Chameleon ability from is just… ass! Now he just looks boring and oftentimes methed out, with his transformation looking uglier than his 2021 appearance. And to think, the ONLY time NRS bothers to give him an actual story and personality, they turn him human. It’s as though characters don’t matter unless they have more distinct human features, and Baraka is obligatory because he’s actually popular. And even then, the story they give him is “Shang Tsung kidnapped/killed my family, blaaargeh”.

This is just plain lazy and unimaginative, mainly because we will never know a damn thing about Reptile’s family, it’s purely an excuse plot for contrived drama. It’s the same shit that Baraka got saddled with, and we’re supposed to care about their family woes because they decided to tell and not show. The only reason I can imagine this being a thing outside of Liu Kang wanting to create a perfect world… is because Mortal Kombat has too many characters that for some reason, NRS feels compelled to put into the game with the distinct purpose of ALL of them (or at least 50-70% of them) having some sort of importance because in this day and age, just having a story driven narrative isn’t enough. The kids today want character driven, meaning every character has to “develop” regardless of whether or not that development is earned or even warranted, they just have to develop as people in order for audiences to claim that they’re good characters, and if they so dare to be “one-dimensional”, they’re written off as boring unless they’re the comic relief. I… don’t even know what I’m ranting about, I just know this whole “muh family ” bullshit has gotten old by the time Baraka brought it up. I think the issue is that there’s more exposition about things we don’t get to witness just to quickly explain why certain characters are doing what they are doing. But with Reptile, there’s no real reason to do so. Who cares why Reptile is actually helping Shang Tsung? That’s been his role since MK1, you don’t have to explain it. The notion of “Shang Tsung has my family” is laughable because Shang Tsung’s capabilities as a fighter are piss poor to the point that you should have NO PROBLEM killing him to get them back. Trying to explain that knowing what we the audience have witnessed shows a lack of imagination and a desire to justify why certain narrative decisions were made. It communicates a lack of faith in your work. More so than the existence of multiple timelines to get around the issue of narrative decisions that do infact piss people off.

And yeah, maybe I am a little sour about this, but with a character that I happen to enjoy getting jack shit for 3 straight games, THIS IS THE BEST THEY COULD COME UP WITH!? A skidrow bum design with a “muh family” angle!? Fuck that! Give me the Reptile that was desperate to revive his entire species! Give me the last of his kind trying to survive in a world where he is despised for being Zatarran! Give me the fish out of water, give me the reincarnation of Onaga the Dragon King! Get this “muh family” bullshit out of my Reptile!

This is also the chapter in which the story takes a turn for the dull as it starts to focus on characters that most people honestly couldn’t give a fuck about simply because none of them are actually compelling as characters. This focuses on Baraka just fighting against assholes, but there is partial interest because we want to see how Kenshi gets around being blind. Reptile is a least a good sport that gives him some meds for his eyes, and they wrap that cream shit into his traditional blind fold. Then comes Reptile’s “muh family” excuse, then Shang Tsung unleashes a Tarkatan horde to try and kill them, fighting fighting, Shang reveals he killed Reptile’s family, Reptile fights with Baraka and the boys, Kung Lao is basically invisible which chaps my ass, they escape and meet up with Asirah…. who is a lot more demonic this time around. I only remember her from Armageddon, but I don’t know what her story was. I’m just concerned with the fact that she has a demonic visage now. She looks like a bootleg D’vorah, and that is not a compliment. I don’t understand this need to change Asirah’s face (or Sareena’s for that matter), but they have a little spat because she thinks they all work for Quan Cheap. Why? Uh… because we need a fight! So they fight, they clear shit up, then Asirah leads the group to Quan Cheap-this entire chapter only exists to have fan service for the 3D era games. You’ve got Darrius, you’ve got Havik who unfortunately looks like John Cena, you’ve got Megan Fox as Nitara because WB is run by morons who think that no-acting hoe still has relevance after Bayformers 2, and they all fight because fanservice and horrible voice acting. Quan Cheap then creates Ermac using the souls of the Living Forest, and he proceeds to kick everyone’s ass because he will forever be the most overpowered character in all of MK.

Oh and I forgot to mention that Cage gave Kenshi his sword back because he saved his life from Mileena, and this is supposed to be the blooming of a new friendship that fanboys were quick to call good writing even though it was more likely done to ensure that Cage doesn’t come off like an asshole by keeping the sword from a blind guy who wanted to retrieve it in the first place. On the one hand, it’s whatever. At least he has enough gratitude to not be a dick to him (even if he’s partially justified given that Kenshi invaded his home), but I can’t help but feel this was done to be a quick reference to the rivalry that Kenshi had with Ermac back in the older titles as Sento becomes the key to defeating Ermac. Everyone quickly warms up to Kenshi’s power boost because without it, they would’ve all died.

CAGE: Just remember the guy who gave it to you!

Sister: OH FUCK YOU JOHNNY!!! *flips 2 birds*

*chuckles* Her actual words. She really…. REALLY hated this part! And because I’m such a spiteful little turd, I laid it on thick. “Now you know how I feel about Spider-Fan!”

The next chapter is just the gang escaping Outworld with Baraka, Reptile, and Asirah in tow. Not much needs to be said here.

Back to Liu Kang, Garrus informs him that Shang Tsung was getting help from an outside timeline which… is dumb and is more DC multiverse bullshit being spoon fed into MK by way of WB’s incompetence and trend chasing. But with that in mind, with everyone reunited, Liu Kang has the Lin Kuei infiltrate Shang Tsung’s fortress to capture him and whoever else is involved with his schemes. But because it’s Sub-Zero and Scorpion, we have to have a subplot involving Sub-Zero revealing that he killed their father to take over the lin Kuei, and Scorpion (who is Kuai Liang in this timeline, btw) basically leaving the Lin Kuei as Sub-Zero joins the wizard in a bid to take over Earthrealm. They could really have done without the whole “Cain and Abel” angle in my opinion, and just have a frustrated Bi-Han not wanting to be Liu Kang’s pet enforcer as being the sole motivation for his heel face turn. Especially since we don’t have an actual motivation for him murdering their father outside of “he was too old to have ambition, so I let him die.” It’s a very by the numbers subplot that was only introduced to give Bi-Han a credible excuse to join the badguys. Again, unimaginative. Beyond that, it just seems excessive. Did we really need a detail where Sub-Zero killed his father? It comes out of nowhere, thus there is no emotional weight, and just seems tactless in how it was revealed. Maybe it would’ve been better if their father died of natural causes while Subs and Scorp were still kids, believing on the values of the Lin Kuei in service to Liu Kang. But overtime, Subs gets frustrated being a kneel hound to Liu Kang, thus joining Shang Tsung’s side. We didn’t need the angle of Sub-Zero killing his own father because now he’s passed the moral even horizon. If the point of Liu Kang’s new timeline was to create a perfect world (or something close to it), having beings that have yet to be corrupted until influenced by Shang Tsung would’ve worked a lot better. Sure it removes agency from Sub-Zero as a character, but some sacrifices have to be made or else you have generic chapters prolonging the game itself for no other reason than to make the story long-… ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So Sub-Zero joins Shang Tsung, Scorpion and Smoke escape back to Liu Kang to report the bad news. At least they know about the Dragon King’s Army (Onaga reference!?), but considering everything they’ve uncovered, Liu Kang decides to reveal everything to Sindel in order to salvage relations between the realms. He goes to Li Mei first because she has no incentive to actually mistrust him, and because fans have been clamoring for Li Mei’s return, so lets give her something to do. Shit happens, and Mileena accidently reveals that she’s got the clap to almost everyone in… EDENIA… so Tanya gives her another hit to calm her down. Sindel is rip shit pissed at Liu Kang for everything that’s happened. Liu Kang then leads her to Shang Tsung’s flesh pits, and to her horror, she’s finally open to an explanation. Liu Kang then goes into a clip show explaining the bastardization that was MK11’s entire story including why Kronika was so brain dead in the first place. Apparently Kronika was obsessed with maintaining a balance of good vs evil which is why she made so many stupid decisions that ultimately ended with her demise at both Liu Kang and Shang Tsung’s hands. I’m still not sure why she was ever considered a villain considering it’s her timeline, she can do whatever she wants, but whatever. Excuse plot to reboot the franchise and get things done right the second time is excused, and as we all know when it comes to comic books, ANY plot that is used to reboot the franchise is going to be shit regardless because too many leaps in logic have to be made in order for that reboot to exist.

It’s also here that Liu Kang explains that he gave up the power to control the Hourglass because he didn’t want to be driven mad by it like Kronika… as if that was some sort of foregone conclusion. Yeah yeah I know, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”, and so far, everyone in the MK series that comes into power tends to abuse it regardless of their previous intentions at least in their own personal endings, AND it wouldn’t be fun or interesting for the whiners if Liu Kang was just the boring incorruptable God who’s good intentions with the hourglass panned out without corruption, so there’s that.

Sindel is all sorts of pissed about this, knowing now that Liu Kang shaped her into the queen she is, and gets right snooty with questions of “should I now bow to my creator!?” and “Is that an order from our God!?”. Like… girl… chill! I could see if you would look at the state of Mileena and think he forged a timeline where she gets sick and becomes half Tarkatan (which would’ve been an AWESOME take on this), or that her entire world view has been completely shattered by the idea that she was made to think the way she does, her very being was shaped by an external, all sorts of existential crisis that also should’ve come about in MK11 now that I think about it, and perhaps it would’ve also made Liu Kang reflect on his decisions to so affect the course of people’s lives to the point that they lack free will. This could’ve made for some kick ass material! It was sort of brought up in MK9 with characters thinking if history had stayed the course, would they be in the positions they are now. If Jax would’ve gotten cybernetic implants if Raiden didn’t affect history. It would’ve made Sub-Zero’s defection more potent if it was purely motivated out of spite for being under Liu Kang’s thumb. The entire premise of this game could’ve been brought about by the characters’s kollective desires to break free of the destinies that were set for them by a God. And perhaps Liu Kang could’ve seen first hand the struggles of being that sort of God when they use the free will he’s granted them to decide their own fates, even if it means rising up against their creator. This would’ve also tied into the Elder Gods and their battle against the One Being if we’re being totally honest because something tells me the One Being is the original creator God, and the Elder Gods were in rebellion against it (which is often the case in certain mythologies, most notably Greek mythology where Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades rebelled against their Titan father, Chronos).

There is some genuine fucking gold here which makes it all the more frustrating of the shit that comes next.

So… Shao Khan comes out of nowhere and attacks the group with Shinnoks amulet, something that “shouldn’t exist in the current timeline”. Luckly, his rebellion is foiled without any real trouble, and Sindel and her Edenians are fully on board with kicking Shang Tsung’s ass. So they all storm his fortress. Mileena gets into a fight with Ermac and manages to kick his ass so hard that he knocks Jarrod’s soul into the driver’s seat. So now, Ermac is purely controlled by Jarrod which is their way of reuniting him with his girls. This is both the canonization of his MK9 ending, AND what I think was a great way to actually have Jarrod interacting with Sindel on-screen for the first time in the entire series history. It would’ve been even better to have Jarrod kick Shao Khan’s ass for an even greater sense of satisfaction for the bullshit they pulled in MK11, but you can’t have it all. The reunion is cut short as they head into Shang Tsung’s fortress to do battle against his forces and the newly ressurected Dragon Army. And somehow, Liu Kang’s squad get wrecked by them! HOW!? Liu Kang is still a God, Garrus isa Demigod, Sindel has always been overpowered along with Ermac, this really shouldn’t be a fight! But alas, Mileena saves the day because this is her chapter and is once again an example of why this chapter system should go the way of the dodo.

After the fighting, Shang Tsung explains that their benefactor was someone named Damashi who I think was another character in the 3D era (I thought it was that bald monk looking dude who was with Hotaru in the Orderrealm). Instead of that… we have… fucking… Titan Shang Tsung. Who the fuck is Titan Tsung!? Well, according to him, the fighting between Liu Kang and Titan Tsung back in the Aftermath fight… caused there to be fractured timelines like this is Tales of Xillia 2. In doing so, there were 2 outcomes. One where Liu Kang wins, and the other where Titan Tsung wins. Titan Tsung acknowledges that it took ages for him to find out that other timelines existed, and thus resolved to merge both his timeline and Liu Kang’s. Idk why, I guess it’s supposed to sound bad because Shao Khan wanted to merge realms, but Titan Tsung doesn’t really need to bother. He has his timeline that he can control whichever way he wants to, and seems only interested in conquering Liu Kang’s out of vindictive spite. Eh I guess not much more motivation needs to exist because herp derp, stories need conflict regardless of what little sense they make.

On the one hand, this is a nice little nod to the fact that there were 2 endings in Aftermath depending on who you choose to beat the other in much like the Final Battle in Injustice 2 between Batman and Superman. And it is sort of cool to see the canonization of both endings rather than just go with the good ending. But….*sighs* this… fucks up… everything that would’ve been awesome. Instead of a theme of existensialism, instead of Liu Kang reflecting on his being a God and how he can fuck up just as much as any other God, the story… completely devolves… into a Crisis of Infinite Earths. This multiverse bullshit that has infect the industry after the release of Spider-Fan 3, infecting the likes of the DCU, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, spawning Everything Everywhere All at Once (good movie but vastly overrated because America wants to appeal to the CCP), etc. The entire premise of characters rebelling against their destiny.. is undone for a generic multiverse plot that diminishes everything that occurred prior. Now you have some stupid battle between different universes which are referred to as timelines to get around the redundancy, and whatever interesting plot points that could come about for the rest of the game is gone like tears in rain. This moment is the DOWNFALL of the entire game, and everything afterward has no purpose but to sell you DLC cosmetics and surprise mechanics.

So… you have Dark Raiden… voiced by Travis Whilhelm (OH DEAR LORD!!!) because for some bizarre reason, Richard Epcar decided not to reprise his role indefinitely. Maybe he was fucked off with how WB and NRS were handling his character and voice actors in general to the point that he no longer wanted any part in the series for the foreseeable future. It’s really sad because while I could think of better voices for Raiden (Clancy Brown was DEFINITELY superior!), Epcar’s voice has become iconic and synonymous with Raiden since MKvsDC. His departure, regardless of his reasoning, ultimately sucks, but at least that was his decision (unlike Seitz and Strassman), so I’d be remiss if I criticized him for that. While I despise Travis’s voice acting (and am still miffed that he ever touched Knuckles), he’s actually not that bad as Raiden. He actually manages to sound like Epcar in certain cases, though I’m certain his voice is manipulated to sound like Epcar in some way.

But pay attention to his costume. It’s the same he wore in MK11. Keep this in mind for the end because it’ll be important for a very… long… rant!

You also have Evil Bitch Sindel arguably from MK11 even though she doesn’t look the same at all. And because NRS wants to push this idea of Sindel being a certified bad bitch, she once again steam rolls the good guys in a 1vAll fight. Then you have New Sindel vs Evil Sindel in what is a poor attempt at fan service because they assumed fans would automatically love this new version of Sindel so much so that they would just be on board with this fight (could be true, idk), but the reason it fails is because they have evil Sindel KILL New Sindel without that much of a fight!

….WHAT…. THE FUCK… WERE YOU THINKING!? Did you assholes not learn anything from D’vorah killing off fan favorites over and over again!? When your fandom hates a character, it’s best to NOT let that character steamroll everyone else! Evil Sindel was more hated than D’vorah, and I didn’t think that was possible! What with the bug bitch killing Mileena, Baraka, and FUCKING SCORPION, 3 of the most beloved characters in the whole franchise, you’d think they’d learn not to cock this up with Evil Sindel killing an objectively more favorable Sindel! It’s so weird! When the fandom started hating Quan Cheap, they cracked his nuts and killed him off in MKX! When the fans hated D’vorah, she’s allowed to kill off one more fan favorite character before dissappearing from the story and not being given any sort of payback until Battle of the Realms where Sonya dusts the bitch off. Again, it’s this sort of shit that vindicates Anti-Woke youtubers because you only decide to punish characters that fans hate based on their genders! If MK12 is the fanservice game, you gotta go all out! Instead, more favorable Sindel is killed by most hated Sindel ever in order to motivate Mileena to kick her ass. I assume Mileena killed her because she doesn’t show up ever again in the game. Idk, the version of the scenes I got were censored (I guess MKIceandFire was afraid of getting demonitized), so if a kill did take place, it’s not shown. But seriously, wtf?!

Good Sindel dies and her soul is absorbed into Ermac which is… weird. Whatever. I guess it’s supposed to be bitter sweet? But now you have a new power couple that can basically have sex with itself. Uhhhhhh….

They leave Shang Tsung’s fortress, Shang Tsung now joins the good guys because he was deceived into giving Titan Tsung access to more souls (is this a reference to MKD? I’m sure it’s a reference to MKD), and Garrus suggests that it’s best for Liu Kang to regain his power as Keeper of Time, something that is quote “irreversable” because for some reason, the good guys having more power is somehow a bad thing. Seriously, where is the conflict in that sort of situation!? “Oh no, I need to be able to control time again in order to defeat my nemesis which doesn’t have any real tangible consequences for me or the rest of the people who’s lives I can effectively control! Whatever shall I do!?” Uggggggggggh.

So some more unimportant shit happens where Shang Tsung, Quan Cheap, and Raiden all go to destroy some time portals that look like Cave Man Star Gates because this game has effectively ousted itself as 3D Era fanservice. Because those same 3 characters teamed up to fight Onaga (and FAILED, btw). This chapter is meaningless, lets move on.

“It is the FAR GATE! Not the Star Gate! We’ll give it a wheelchair and a mohawk if we have to!” Goddamn I miss that show.

So Liu Kang and Garrus go to find the Hour Glass, and somehow, Kitana shows up as another keeper of time… looking like a bootleg Chun Li without the thicc thighs. It goes without saying that her costume is dreadful. But whatever, Liu Kang’s pussy has returned to him, and they share some intimacy because this unresolved sexual tension went unacknowledged for quite some time, despite the fact that their relationship hadn’t gone that far in the NRS timeline for them to be all romantic and shit, that and this is a different version of Kitana despite what the obligatory and desperate exposition would suggest in this scene, so them making out here makes little sense. Whatever, it keeps the fans happy. And for what it’s worth, at least Kitana has something going for her in this game because I would’ve been seriously pissed if she got shoved into the background just to push Mileena for the sake of fanboy masturbation. So they meet up with 2 other keepers of time. FUCK YEAH, KUNG LAO!!!! And Raiden because of course he would be. They discuss that they must gather warriors from each of their timelines to do battle against Titan Tsung’s one timeline… because he’s that dangerous?

THEN… STUPIDILY… Titan Tsung shows up with an army of parallel expies and delivers a monolog so long, I’m frustrated by the fact that none of the keepers or Garrus decided to shut him up while he was talking. I swear if I hear him say “timeline” one more time, I’m going to eviscerate my copy of MKX. So they all do some more fighting, Titan Tsung tries to destroy Liu Kang’s hourglass to destroy his timeline, Megan Fox again shows why she is a terrible actress, and the day is saved as everyone defeats Titan Tsung and sends him packing. Afterwards, they all proceed to the final chapter aptly titled… “ARMAEDDON!” Get it!? Because there’s a fucking pyramid they have to scale!

This chapter is unique in that you get to choose your own preferred character for this bout in which you fight several opponents at once. Honestly, that refreshing compared to the nonsense of being stuck with a certain character/s for 4 bouts straight. But while that’s cool in and of itself, this final chapter is one of the most boring and rushed chapters in the entire series because it IS nothing but fights against characters that come from different multiverses. Because again… WB wanted to chase a trend.

Multiverses in media have been on the rise since the runaway success of Spider-Fan 3. While it started with Into the Spiderverse, it was Spider-Fan 3 that actually popularized the concept. If we’re being honest, Fox did it first with X-Men Days of Future Past even though that would require the lot of these philistinian assholes to acknowledge that X-Men did it first, thus giving Fox more credit than they’d wish to admit. The MCU gained a LOT of headway from this, and started using multiverses as a way of pushing the MCU into franchises that are licensed to other companies (IE Venom, Morbius, a passing mention in Spiderverse 2, etc.) In reality, however, it wasn’t the concept of a multiverse that attracted people to the theaters. It was the return of their favorite actors returning to reprise their roles. Having Toby Miguire and Andrew Garfield (ESPECIALLY Andrew) return to don their Spider costume for one last web sling was a dream come true for many people. Me not included because even I’m too petty to watch it out of paranoia that Feige would find some way to put their inferior fanboy on top of the other GOATs of Spider-Man, but nevertheless, they had a winner. And so of course they would try again with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness with Patrick Stewart reprising his role of Professor Charles Xavier. Of course… that didn’t pan out well at all. They also have a multiverse in Loki, but… that didn’t pan out well at all. Spiderverse 2 repeats the process, and literally exceeds all expectations. While the cameos and easter eggs were awesome, it was the writing and story that held everyone’s attention. People didn’t care that Spectacular Spiderman was in the movie after the first viewing. He was just a cameo. I’m pissed that the MTV Spiderman didn’t show up, or Spiderman Unlimited. Or 90s cartoon Spiderman. But there’s Prowler played by Pansexual Calrision.

The reason being is that the Multiverse itself is just a plot device, one that people don’t really care about. They will care to the extent that they get to see their favorite versions of characters making guest appearances, with the creators acknowledging that those versions of characters still exist and aren’t removed from canon just because they make a reboot, but as a concept on it’s own? It has to be done well for people to actually care. EEAAO was a well written and entertaining movie because they utilized the Multiverse in a fun and bizarre way that was metaphorical for the conflict between a mother and her family drama, notably her daughter who, because teen angst, wants to destroy the world. Oh and because she’s lesbian, probably the only reason it got an award (JUST SAYIN!).

When WB and DC Comics handles it, it comes with a lot of backlash. The recent Flash movie should’ve given people pause because that was a multiverse film as well. Now… DC had the right idea of bringing back Michael Keaton to reprise his role as Batman. But… why not also bring in the actors from the Arrowverse? Like AV Flash, or AV Supergirl? Or Superman Returns #3 from Scott Pilgrim? (I don’t know his name). There’s a LOT of missed opportunities in that film, instead opting for a goth version of Supergirl. Why just one version of Batman? Why not… well I know why Val Kilmer and George Cloony wouldn’t be back, everyone hates them, but Christian Bale is still partially relevant. Why not Joker from… “Joker”? Why not Twilight Batman? Why not Halle Berry Catwo-…hahahahahahaha.

Yes I know the response is that “because all DC movies suck and no one likes them” but that is aside the point. Everyone hates Marc Webb’s Spiderman movies, but WANTED Andrew to return, there isn’t a real excuse here other than WB not wanting to go through the trouble of finding older actors to return for their roles. So all you really have is a crazy multiverse movie that isn’t all that good. Even the 2000s Ninja Turtles Cartoon got this right! People don’t just gravitate toward Multiverses because they exist, they often do so for the fanservice. To see different versions of characters they’ve seen throughout the years all being brought together either to fight each other, hang out, or fight as a unified force against a great evil.

WB… doesn’t know what the fuck to do with such a concept, however. Because they sure as shit failed with Mortal Kombat.

A “Kombatverse” should’ve had characters from previous games (The Midway Timeline), the movies, and even the 90s cartoon in order to drive home this multiverse shit. How cool would it have been to have DOTR Liu Kang fight against MKL Liu Kang? Or Ahhniliation Sonya vs 2021 Sonya? Or Shredder version of Sub-Zero vs MKvDC Jax? Or something! And all of these suggestions are possible because they’ve made DLC costumes for the 90s movie characters WITH THE ACTORS TO REPRISE THEIR ROLES! They got Jean Claud Van Damm to be a version fo Johnny Cage as a reference to his original concept! It is not difficult to make MK12 the biggest fanservicy game yet with all the different versions of MK Canon that exists!

Instead… you have…. a ghetto arcade run where you fight characters like “SCORP LAO”!!! HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK!!!!

WHAT… IN THE GRANDEST…. OF ALL HELLS… WERE THEY THINKING!?

Instead of these awesome ideas, they instead use the final chapter as an excuse to create fusion characters such as Stung Lao or Thunder Liu Kang, or lady Reptile who should’ve been named Khameleon, Tarkatan Kitana, etc. All this just to be an advertisement for cosmetic items, I would assume. I would KILL to have Jade’s costume from Deception being an actual character in the game, same model and all, as well as MKX Sareena coming back to kill the ugly Sareena that Liu Kang made. But no, the only assholes from the NRS timeline that’s allowed to exist are Liu Kang himself, Dark Raiden (WITH THE SAME MODEL FROM 11, NO LESS!) and bitchy Sindel! Wasted opportunity doesn’t even begin to describe how utterly wasted this entire chapter is, being devoted to made up monkey shit and an actual Ninja Mime because these fossils won’t let that meme die even if they were paid more. You have a potentially fun idea being wasted by unimaginative hackjobs who only saw the prospect of making a random multiverse that ruins what could’ve been a potentially good story in favor of chasing a fucking trend!

But that all started… at the beginning of the game! You see, Shang Tsung was built in the very beginning to hate his crap sack lifestyle so much that he was spurned to rebel against his destiny! He wanted to break free from mediocrity, something that is relatable to all. Liu Kang admits that he made Shang’s life shit on purpose to keep him from being a threat! Just think if Liu Kang actually felt some tinge of remorse or responsibility for Shang Tsung going the route he did as a result of Kang’s own design!? Sub-Zero betraying him and joining Shang’s forces out of frustration for Kang’s rule!? Liu Kang could’ve been brought to a point where he’d reflect on his own decision making, and see that he was no better than Kronika for trying to dictate the lives of others to where they had every incentive to rebel against their destiny.

Instead… everything that happened… was the result of someone else messing with his design! Titan Tsung just decides to fuck with Liu Kang out of spite, and THAT’S why everything happens! Who needs ACTUAL character development!? Who needs ACTUAL depth!? Who needs ACTUAL contemplation on the implications of the plot and a theme centered on the price of free will!? A man who becomes a God and having the Hubris to think he knew better of how to twist fate in a manner that peace could somehow be achieved!? No! None of that happens, instead it’s all the mechinations of some dickhead who exists OUTSIDE of his timeline, making his timeline shit for… shits and giggles!

All the potential of a fascinating story and narrative… destroyed by the trend of Multiverses! FUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

So… Your chosen character fights alongside Liu Kang, reaching the top and beating up a new deadly alliance of Titan Tsung and Titan Cheap. You… BEAT those 2 idiots, Liu Kang simply dusts them off, and sends your character back into his timeline… and things go back to normal. Honestly, this final battle was so anti-climatic, I feel the need to rush through just to describe.

So we cut to Johnny Cage using all the footage he captured on his phone for the sake of a new movie, and shows it off to the recon crew of Kenshi, Lao, and Raiden… and none of them seem to care that their lives were decided by Liu Kang who is just casually sitting next to them without a care in the world. He then leaves with a sense of renewed purpose and happiness, and we cut back to the pyramid where Havik is teased as the next villain… for some reason.

*sighs*

There’s a lot that can be said for squandered potential that many people would still probably excuse because it’s a fighting game (who cares about story) but I think it speaks volumes that even with good ideas, the writers still find a way to cock this up. These MK titles always start off good (cept MK11, that shit was terrible from start to finish), and then halfway through, it starts to slowly suck. I’d sooner attribute this to the games constantly focusing on characters that I personally don’t care about or find compelling, but I think it’s because the writers are trying to do too much all at once. With MK9, the story was more focused on the tournaments and fighting Shao Khan. Subplots existed, but they were short and sweet. Plus, because they were already essentially retelling stories that already existed, they had a natural basis to frame their stories around, and didn’t have to try too hard to come up with interesting plots. Some slight deviations here and there, and you have a pretty good story through and through. But Injustice was mostly an original story, and that worked out just fine as well. Although, parallel universe plots with evil dopplegangers are pretty easy to do, and you’d have to be pretty damn incompetent to mess those up, so again, pretty easy stuff.

But it’s when they try to do something original that the wheels start to fall off, and you get the impression that they don’t know what they’re doing. MKX’s plot feels forced and contrived with too many portions of the story devoted to flashbacks and backstories to fill in the blanks of what should have been a pretty short and faster paced story, utilizing characters for one note chapters before they dissappear for the rest of the story (Jax especially), and of course focusing on brand new characters that do not give you any reason to like them (except Takeda. He was the best one out of the bunch). It’s because their story mode structure worked best within the confines of a tournament structure. Going from one character to the next worked better in 9 because it didn’t really matter who you were playing as. Every character was working towards the same goal of competing in a tournament, and naturally, you’d expect a tournament to have a large swath of characters involved. There’s plenty of drama that could be written that could reasonably raise tensions should characters with halfway compelling conflicts come face to face with each other in those tournaments. But even then, MK9 had the same problem of not knowing what to do with the characters when those tournaments weren’t at play. MK1’s portion was perfect in every way, but the cracks don’t start showing until MK2 because most of the chapters don’t take place in actual tournament matches. I get the feeling it’s because it would feel too redundant after going through a tournament arc previously. But as a result, you just have an arc dedicated to characters running around the island doing random things that, for all intents and purposes, simply isn’t interesting. MK2’s portion just felt bloated in many ways, though it was still entertaining for most. Then NRS just… gave up in the MK3 portion and everything feels rushed and bloated at the same time. Again, it started off fine with Stryker, ironically enough, but as soon as you get to Kabal and Cyber Sub-Zero, it becomes slow and tedious. Then with Nightwolf and Raiden, everything happens much faster than what you can reasonably process.

And this is a problem that has persisted in every game since MK9. I believe the problem is simple. The story mode is one whole encompassing story that involves every character in existence, and that makes the games feel bloated.

I can draw comparisons to the more recent Samurai Warriors 5 where you had 2 full encompassing story paths where on a per chapter basis, you focus on certain characters as the story demands. Because of this, if you wanted to get invested in a particular character’s development, you’d have to wade through several chapters that deal with the main character before you get the chance. If you cared about Ieyasu or the guy from the Amago clan, you have to complete certain chapters involving Nobunaga or Mitsuhide first. This drags the game on longer than necessary and makes the game feel longer as a result. Like you’re being strung along for a ride that you don’t really care for. Compared to earlier Samurai Warriors titles where you focused on single characters or smaller factions to see how their stories develop over the course of time. You get to see the story unfold purely from their perspective, and if you wanted to see the motivations of the people they fight against, you can thus switch to another character’s story mode and see the story unfold from their own perspective, and thus get a much bigger picture of everything that unfolds.

I could also make the same case for fighting games. Dead or Alive 5 and 6 both have over-arching stories, but I would give the honor to 6 (almost) for giving you the option to experience character stories on their own while the main story is dedicated to the busty ninjas and the revival of Raido. I don’t have to play through all of Hitomi’s chapters or Zack’s or that bitch Kokoro’s in order to progress through the story, I have the choice of playing their chapters if I so choose. Thus, if I wanted to see the story unfold from their perspective, I have the freedom to do so. This is not true of Mortal Kombat and Injustice. Every aspect of their stories are all crammed into one single narrative, and it bogs down the experience to a pitiful crawl. If I don’t care about the Lin Kuei and their inner turmoil, I shouldn’t be… well… “forced” to sit through an entire chapter dedicated to what is essentially a brotherly spat between 2 ninjas. The MK Ninjas have never been compelling characters in any regard because their stories never really evolved outside of revenge or beef with other ninjas or internal conflicts with select members of their clans. But I have to go through their bullshit story just to progress and see what happens with Shang Tsung. What if I had the option of not seeing the story from their perspective? If I only played through a chapter dedicated to Liu Kang or Kung Lao, see the stories from their perspectives, and we suddenly get the news from Scorpion that says “Shang Tsung is building a dragon army, and my brother has betrayed us all!” Then I’d be like “wait what!? Why!?” THEN… I have an incentive to play through the Lin Kuei story to see exactly what went down! That’s what makes playing through the Warriors games more rewarding than usual. Being incentivised to see the stories unfold from the perspectives of other characters by way of their interactions with the characters you currently choose to play. If you’re playing a character who barks about truth, justice, and honor, you’d be led to believe that they are truly heroic and all about justice. But if you encounter a character who says that your character’s words are empty, hollow, and complete lies, AND that character is playable, well you might be curious to see where they are coming from. So you play their story and gain some insight as to what has happened to them and led them to where they are now.

MK11 especially could’ve benefitted from this method of story telling rather than shove everything into a single narrative since by the end of the game, everyone is involved in the final battle anyway. What if I was just playing Liu Kang, going through the Shaolin Temples, then to Outworld to rescue Jade and Kitana, and then traveled with Raiden to find Scorpion out of nowhere when Raiden kept talking about how Scorpion became a good guy? Incentive to play the ninjas to find out what happened to cause Raiden to go crazy.

Of course, again, this requires the game’s narrative and it’s characters to be compelling in the first place. And no method of story telling will actually fix this issue. This, again, could be just a “me” issue and not an objective overview of MK’s characters as the most popular characters in the franchise are those that I really don’t care about (Cage, Scorpion, Mileena, Baraka), and the unfortunate aspect of capitalism denotes that the more popular characters get more attention, but it’s worse here because the popularity of MK characters has less to do with their “character” and more to do with their superficialities. Johnny Cage is funny hench “interesting”. Scorpion is a badass hell ninja hench “interesting”. Baraka is a monster with armblades hench “interesting”. Mileena has a sexy body that contrasts with her hideous face hench “interesting”. They don’t actually have interesting stories that make them compelling characters, they just have surface level features that make them so. This is problematic because then the people in charge force them to be more important than they should be, and oftentimes, their level of importance just feels contrived and insincere as a result. The entire time I was watching this story, I couldn’t for the life of me find out why Sindel made Mileena her heir to the throne while shoving Kitana into the background when Mileena has already demonstrated that she’s a tad irresponsible and has no sense of duty (she’s called on this multiple times) while Kitana shows an understanding of decorum and emotional restraint. Mileena seems like a wild card who would sooner bring ruin to her kingdom than be someone who is responsible and emotionally stable enough to rule without issue. It’s because MK fans don’t like Kitana but they LOVE Mileena. They complained about her not being in MK11 to the point of death threats. Thus Mileena gets an unwarranted amount of importance in the plot. If you want a better example of this, you can look to the MCU and see how Iron Man was made to be in the right in Captain America’s own fucking movie as a direct result of his popularity. Framing the story around the popularity of certain characters is, in my honest opinion, TERRIBLE writing as you constrain your own ability to write a compelling and “believable” narrative just to capitalize on said popularity. I don’t care how much people love Johnny Cage, he should never have been given the power to beat Shinnok. The guy who’s jobbed harder than anyone in MK9 suddenly has the same level of power as the chosen champion of Mortal Kombat. Mind you, Raiden had to wage a massive war just to beat Shinnok, but the power of love enables him and his fucking daughter to kick his ass with little to no trouble IN HIS FINAL FORM, fuck you MKX. You could’ve been interesting had you not pulled this ruinous nonsense!

Stan Lee had stated years ago in response to questions of whether he believes certain characters should be able to take each other in a fight, and he stated that who would win in a fight is left to writer, and that vs debates are stupid and a waste of time. While his sentiment was probably so because he was annoyed the question, I don’t think he’s in the right with his statement as it could be license to just “do whatever the writer wants regardless of established lore”. A good writer builds upon established details in the series history in order to make a more compelling narrative as the series goes on. Details being the rules of the lore. If those rules say that a wand’s power in Harry Potter is dictated by the owner of the wand, it needs to be shown in universe in order to be believable and not break one’s immersion, not to say that Harry should be able to beat Voldemort just because someone used magic to knock it out of someone’s hands (I still don’t even know how that fucking works). Not to say that you can’t break your own rules if you can make it work for your story. Maybe to show how much more powerful a villain is when that villain breaks the rules of established lore to create tension and drama, and vice versa for the heroes. A lot of Dragonball fans get riled up over this because these rules are never concrete in Dragonball. I will take this to the grave, but despite all the criticisms people of DBZ and try to put every other anime on top of it because of how the filler works, no one can say the very final battles in DBZ itself were no short of epic. The reason being is because the characters don’t rely on power levels to win their battles. THey rely on tactics and key utilization of certain techniques to win. The villains are clearly overpowered and the Z fighters are always outmatched, but with a little bit of teamwork, they often come out on top. Gohan vs Vegeta required Goku to give Krillin his energy to use the Spirit Bomb, and Krillin throws it, but misses! But Gohan, by the grace of god, manages to reflect it back at Vegeta and defeat him! Frieza… ok yeah, that was bullshit Dues Ex. Perfect Cell, Gohan is injured and has to use a Kameha wave to kill him. The other fighters often have to divert Cell’s attention to cause him to lose focus and give Gohan the edge in this tug of war. Eventually, it was Vegeta who unexpectedly helped the most, and gave Gohan the win in the end. Kid Buu, again. Goku uses a giant spirit bomb, so he needed the other fighters to distract Kid Buu long enough for him to get that power, and required Hercule to encourage everyone in the galaxy to lend their powers, and a final wish from the Dragon Balls in order for Goku to push the Spirit Bomb into Kid Buu and vaporize him. These are believable instances of victories over their opponents because very little if any bullshit deus ex powerups are used, unlike YuYu Hakusho where Yusuke has the power of love and friendship, or is taken over by a demon just to win all of his fights, yet I’m supposed to believe that, because it has less filler, that it also has better writing. For a time, Dragon Ball actually did have good writing that didn’t devolve into bullshit deus ex (so often) that it didn’t break my immersion. Many of their battles grew into acts of desperation as they had to find ways to defeat opponents that were far beyond their capabilities.

Imagine if Mortal Kombat had that same level of dedication instead of devolving into bullshit, out of nowhere powerups that just gave them the edge in battle. At least with Raiden being empowered by the Elder Gods, there was SOME established lore there, but when the fuck was Shadow energy established to be God crushing power!? Where the fuck did Raiden learn how to perform a fusion and give Liu Kang a new level of power!? These elements make no sense in context and only seem to appear out of thin air when the writers need a “believable” means of the heroes winning in the end. And it’s always done in response to critical reception of a previous title.

Far be it from me to criticize writers for giving the fans what they want, and MK12 certainly delivers on crowd pleasing elements, but it often comes at the expense of sensible writing. Quan Cheap who has often outwitted the main characters is established as a key core of his character, and while that makes people angry, he wouldn’t be Quan Cheap without that aspect, so having him humiliated and killed in MKX, while satisfying in some regards, again feels contrived and insincere. Having Johnny Cage suddenly being the hero when he was just a jobber who couldn’t hold his own against Ermac or Sindel feels contrived and insincere. Having Liu Kang be the hero once again at the tail end of the story with inexplicable god powers feels contrived and insincere. It’s like the entirety of Sonic Frontiers’s storyline, it feels fake and unrewarding with inexplicable plot details being pulled out of thin air just to have things happen when the writer’s need them to. And if shit within the story can change on a whim due to the writer’s own personal desires, or out of fear of irrational backlash from clinically insane fans, then how in the hell is someone supposed to be invested in the story!? You become desensitized to everything that happens within, and thus whatever you have is diminished. You don’t care what happens in the story, you don’t care what happens to the characters, you don’t care at all.

So we come back to square one. Mortal Kombat is all about fatalities and gorey spectacle. Nothing else matters.

This is the problem with modern day writing. The writers want to write whatever they so choose without regard to the fans or audience because writing is just a job to them. There is no passion, there is no care. There is just a checklist to follow. I get the feeling that writers don’t have a whole lot of respect for franchises that came out of the 90s because they can’t see what made them so special outside of surface level values, thus they don’t see the need to put in any effort in their stories. Mortal Kombat was popular because of fatalities, and that’s where most of the effort is going to go to. The storymode was popularized by Mortal Kombat, but it’s not the selling point OF Mortal Kombat if you catch my drift. So why spend any time trying to make it good? Again, MK12 is a step up from the last 2 trash heeps in terms of story, but it still has many of the same problems that keep it from being as good as they could be. They want to do character driven narratives in a single all encompassing story with no regard given to how long that actually makes the stories, yet they still retain each chapter being dedicated to single characters which is irrational, even when those characters aren’t really the focus of said chapters. Kenshi had more character development OUTSIDE of his own chapter! What the hell!?

And now it’s a goddamn multiverse.

Whatever influences MK9 brought to the table, it’s clear that it’s run it’s course and that fighting games need to be more mindful of how their storymodes are done if they’re going to continue following MK’s example. Otherwise they run the risk of being birdman just because some internet pundants claim MK9 styled storymodes are automatically important to fighting games just because MK9 was a smash hit.

RPG builds feel like false choice. (Elden Ring…. again, Armored Core 6)

Finally got over my Elden Ring addiction.

I had started up a New Game + and found it incredibly boring as I was just wiping my ass clean of every single boss that gave me trouble with Rock Sling alone. The Blasphemous Blade does it all!

It’s pretty sad how much more effective a single weapon is to the point that everything else seems like a risk to use. You have a greatsword that gives you both melee and ranged options, and said ranged option HEALS you for a portion of the damage you deal. It’s not nearly as strong as the Rock Sling, but the benefit surely outweighed the con.

But at the same time, it made the game a pure breeze, and I literally found myself bored and frustrated at the same time. The bosses that really gave me trouble… were literally nothing after I swapped out for a Faith Build/Blasphemous Blade whore build. Rykard, washed clean. Fire Giant. Nothing. Malenia, even easier than last time. Godskin Duo, even easier than last time. Malekith… ok well he was still a bitch, but I’ll take 2 tries over 4 with 3 double KOs. Radagon and Cosmic Whale…. nothing! It blew my mind just how easy the game became!

So I went and did a 3rd run, thinking it would be much harder than NG+. But… nothing! I literally got bored as I got to the Farum Azula! At that point, the boredom was too great, so… the addiction is gone! Maybe I should’ve went pure Melee this time, but perhaps this is for the best. It’s honestly pretty sad how one or 2 options can make the entire game a snooze fest, but that is the unfortunate result of a game where most of the options are… as I learned the hard way, not actually viable. Seems I was too quick in praising that aspect of Elden Ring.

Mind you, it’s still really damn good. I’m just tired of running through the same map, running into quests that I can’t complete because I decided to kill one NPC that locked out the rest of the quest somehow, or finding quests that just aren’t finished, finding locations for items that haven’t been patched in, yadda yadda. The further I got into the game, the less polish it had. Around the time I wrote that post shitting on Soulslikes, I was around the Altus Region which was pretty far into the game, so I didn’t discover the shitshow that was everything post Leyndell, and I was pretty fucked off with half the good staves not being in the game, so my options as a mage were severely restricted to the Carian Regal Staff, and that had severely diminishing returns once I got to the mountains. The amount of Sorceries I desperately collected to find an alternative to Rock Sling kept dissappointing me as the damage was just not there, or the enemies all started packing magic resistances so my efforts were meaningless. Soon as I rocked Faith with the Blasphemous Blade, I have had no issues. The Incantations are just as weak if not weaker than Sorceries, but the buffs certainly do their jobs.

And after a while, I’m reminded of why I hate RPGs. Modern RPGs no longer operate on the logic of “if a newer weapon comes along, it’s automatically better than the one I’m using”. Now everything is centered on a “build”. The character you are customizing has to be optimal for the weapon to matter. In Elden, I can’t just pick up a Greatsword and expect it to be better than say the Moonveil (The best Melee INT weapon in the game, so they say), my stats and equipment have to scale with said Greatsword to make it more effective. The problem with this is that developers… for some reason, don’t make a whole lot of options viable. Like I said before, I was trying to make a Pure Sorcery/Magic build work, but I got stuck using Rock Sling for the entire game because everything else simply did not work. It became clear that being a one trick pony in Elden Ring was just not an option, even though the viability of the Rock Sling… made me a one trick pony anyway. In a way, it kinda felt like the game wants to push you into using every option the game has to offer, which would be fine if the game wasn’t a fucking RPG where you have to grind. As it is a Soulslike, you have to distribute points to individual stats on a per level basis, and that becomes nigh impossible since it takes waaaaaay too long to get enough runes to level up. So if I focused on a pure INT build, I shouldn’t be presented with a million spells that are practically worthless. It says a lot that they had to buff Sorceries in later patches, more so than nerfing bosses. It gives the impression that the game isn’t balanced, and that speaks volumes when you can watch videos and see people using the same exact builds for everything in the game. Either it’s pure STR, Bleed Builds, or spamming Rock Sling like I said. People are going to focus on damage first and foremost because most people will feel pressured to finish these fights as fast as possible simply because if the fight drags on longer, they’re likely to die anyway. They feel this way because too many bosses later on are just wild as fuck when it comes to speed and their own damage. At that point, it feels like an endurance match where you have to be strictly meticulous with dodging because every single enemy and boss has a cheap delay in their attacks to catch you off-guard once you’ve finished rolling, which is complete bullshit, but is extra bullshit since the controls seemed to have a delayed input in certain cases. So for most people, they’re gonna want to cheese these damn things because after spending hours upon hours of making a build that doesn’t work, and even trying out other builds that don’t work, they’re going to feel pressured into just finding a cheap exploit to deal with it all. That’s why everyone is rocking Mimic+10s and Comet Azurs or Greatswords or Rock Slings. No one dares to use the bow and arrow, I guess.

But I think there was a lack of viable options is because developers do not think about all the options they have given the player. They only think of designing certain aspects of the game without taking this into account. They want certain aspects of the game to be experienced a certain way, and thus they neglect the entire idea of character builds. Thus you have boss battles that feel more gimmicky and in some cases requires a completely different play style from the one you’re using in order for it to be effective. The reason the Rykard fight was such a shitshow was because I was expected to use the Spear more so than my optimized build that I had been using for hours at that point. I harp on Rykard so much because that fight, to me at least, was completely inconsiderate of what the player had been doing up until that point, where it’s expected that you would’ve focused somewhat on melee proficiency throughout the journey. Since I’ve respec’d and switched to Faith with a little more added strength, I literally destroyed Rykard in subsequent NGs without breaking a sweat. The Spear did far more damage than it ever did in the first playthrough because my STR was actually adequate for once, and I was honestly pissed beyond belief. First off, the game is supposed to be harder on NG+, yet I’m destroying the game far more easily with an STR/FTH build than I ever would have if I continued using Pure INT with Rock Sling. You cannot neglect Melee at all in this game, and that to me is a severe restriction on your build customization. Not to mention specing into STR actually increases your defenses as well as your physical attack power, so they’re honestly telling you how you’re supposed to be allocating your runes.

Again, this isn’t the first time this was an issue. I had mentioned Borderlands 2 and the impracticality of Zer0’s Sniper build, and how focusing on crit damage at the expense of anything else has diminishing returns as you get into UMVH and the DLCs where crits are nigh impossible to pull off. As you progress through BL2, you start realizing that elemental damage is far more important than raw damage, and is why Maya is so broken as a character because she automatically deals elemental damage with her natural skills. The other characters get a raw deal and have to constantly scour Pandora for elemental weapons or the Unkempt Herald in order to keep pace with one character. It should also go without saying that BL2s enemies and bosses were horrifically imbalanced when it first came out that having regular guns was never going to cut it, and having access to Red Letter weapons or legendaries was the only viable means of doing significant damage to enemies. And again, character build has to be optimized for the weapons to work, so even relying strictly on the guns is a crap shot if you are not optimized for them.

Back in those days, I was reading on forums about where I was going wrong with Zer0 when I had gotten to Dragon’s Keep, and all the answers kept pointing to “incompetent allocation of skill points”. The fact that this is even considered a legitimate critique of player skill is evidence of why the world needs to burn. The players will not automatically know what to expect as they progress through the game, so suggesting that they are at fault for not allocating their skill points properly is presumptive at best. Why should the player be punished for building their characters in a certain way when they cannot expect the game to throw curveballs their way? What is the point of customization if certain builds are “wrong” or “nonviable”? It’s like picking a starter Pokemon and being ripped apart because it sucks for most gym leaders.

There’s nothing wrong with certain builds making the game easier or harder, but when you’re having to spend hours building up a character for a lengthy game, there needs to be some lines drawn.

So I’ll let you guys in on a little vice I committed recently. I actually… bought AC6 at full price. Kicking myself in the nuts, but I’m at the point of not caring. Never played Armored Core in my life, and while this game has it’s fair share of complete horse shit (the entirety of Chapter 1 is just difficulty based on restrictions of decent weapons and parts, enemies constantly leading their shots to make the game “hard”), the idea of having the “wrong” build for certain bosses is… I suppose much more acceptable here because you’re not spending hours upon hours building up a certain character just for it to fail over and over again (I mean technically you are, but there’s a major difference). If you die (which will happen often), you are at least given the option to switch out your parts at certain checkpoints and try again later. OR… you know, quit the whole fucking mission just to grind money and buy better parts JUST to get around one boss (fuck the final mission of chapter 1 btw). Again, not a big deal (YET, I want to say “yet” because I’m only on Chapter 3 now, and I don’t know if it’ll get worse from here, but so far it’s leagues better than the shitshow that was Chapter 1) because you have much more leeway in trying out different builds here. Elden Ring, not so much. First, you have to find larvel tears which requires you to find certain enemies that can morph into bosses, that’s about 18 per playthrough, and you have to beat Rennala which is still tedious, just to get the option to respec. That’s hours of work gone into experimenting with a build that you have no experience in, and essentially you are “relearning” the game for lack of a better term, but not before going on a goddamn fetch quest. This idea of having to respec because “your build is wrong” is horrible logic that is only rational to people who do not expect from developers. A balanced game would take every meticulous detail of possible character builds into account. And before people go on the tired talking point of “no such thing as a balanced game”, that’s not the point. If you have a game where people can even suggest that certain builds are simply not viable for entire portions of the game, there is a problem with the game that people are unwilling to acknowledge because they are addicted to the Club House of Exceptionalism. Respecs are a crutch. A band-aid solution for an imbalanced RPG.

Course, the other possibility is that the games are… intentionally imbalanced against certain builds in some vague attempt to create replay value by having it where the player will continue playing the game more if it means they find the means to getting a different build for certain bosses, and that is something I do infact believe they would pull. And that would also be disrespectful of the player’s time and work.

Now there’s been this debate going on about the inviability of certain builds and customization options where players (thankfully) say loudly and proudly that they shouldn’t be forced to use certain builds in order to progress, and even THAT argument is getting pushback. There was one video, I can’t remember from who, that was talking about how certain compromises have to be made in order for the game to be challenging, and the players should be willing to compromise as well in order for the game to remain interesting. Like certain bosses (Rykard) needing a certain gimmick to win. This argument is… hilarious because, again, it doesn’t take into account what the player goes through in order to have certain builds. Elden Ring… is fucking long. It is not fucking easy. The game gives you options and ideas for builds. Customization is compromised by the limitations of weight and scarcity of runes. The player has to think about several different stats to allocate points onto as a result. They’re already making compromises by potentially reducing their attack options in favor of specializing or over-specializing in certain areas (Do I want STR or DEX? Do I want INT or FTH? Do I want a combination of both?) Leveling and stat allocation by it’s very nature compromises the player’s options by forcing them to decide what stats are better suited for their playstyle. So telling them that they have to make even more compromises for certain bosses that disregards their builds is complete bullshit, and anyone who argues otherwise is arguing on the basis of aspirational selfishness. Because a LOT of gamers want to be game developers, but hate the idea of themselves having to compromise their vision and intended game design for the sake of gamer satisfaction, and instead demands that the player do more of the compromising on THEIR behalf. Probably the same mentality that perverted the minds of developers that were pissed off over Baulder Gate 3’s success among other things. The developer is never wrong unless it makes the gamers happy, what the fuck is wrong with this industry!? And internet gamers!?

You know, I think I just discovered why games are less fun these days. It’s because damn near every game has to have RPG mechanics in them via Upgrade systems. Skill trees, perks, all this bullshit that doesn’t make the game better, they just make them “easier”. But it compromises replay value by making it where the player is disincentivised from starting the game over from scratch. Having upgrades makes the game “easier” or “more fun”, so being reduced nothing for a new game is discouraging. Not every game needs to be an RPG or have RPG mechanics just to be good, but developers can’t think beyond computer rpgs on how to make a game fun anymore. And because modern RPGs are an even bigger pain in the ass to play, so too must the upgrade systems for everything that’s not an rpg. Mostly because most perks/upgrades aren’t worth half a tit most of the time.