Yea... just remembered that one, and you're not going to like it, tgrant.

If it's about his Konquest story, I already know. The_Truth told me a few pages back. I'm not happy about it as they make Raiden look like a dumbass and he isn't. His entire storyline has just gone to shit with that and that stupid ending he has. It's like it's not even Raiden in the game anymore.

Yeah, I'm like the real Raiden would no way ever did what he did.

The biggest confusion for me in Konquest is Reptile. What is Reptile doing at the Red Dragon Cave??? You beat him, and that's it.

I would've loved it if Taven had found out Shinnok lied to him and beat the crap out of him. And I think Taven should've fought Quan Chi also. I felt the last dungeon was rushed. It's like Taven follows the bad guys and they just disappeared out of nowhere.

There's just so a tad few more disappointing things about this game and not just storlyine, but other things.

Rushed is the thing...lol

Click

Get writing.

This storyline is sooooooooooo far wrong and gone. I dont even know where to begin so take you sharpie out and draw a big black x on the cover of your game, or take it back OR Get an illegal x-box rent the x-box version then burn it on to said illegal x-box. Then delete it for something cool a month l8r.

the mk story has never been good.

Maybe to you, but then again, you're among the very small minority. The MK storyline may have its occasional contradictions, but it's a lot better than the standard "Let's get together and fight for a fucking trophy" storyline that most fighting games are based on. Hell, even in the first game, where it WAS based around a tournament, at least the tournament was about more than just the glory of being the strongest fighter. Oh, sure, character story emphasis is growing with other games like Tekken and Street Fighter, but MK broke that mold a long time ago. The characters were incredibly deep and faceted long before Tekken was even made, and Street Fighter didn't even start to delve deeper with their characters until MK was a huge commodity. Despite its retcons over the years, it's held an epic multi-game storyarc that was, on the whole, cohesive and interesting. Everything fit in the grand scheme of things and flowed from one game to the next with a minimum of fuss; all you had to do was look at the game immediately preceeding whichever game you're playing, storywise, to see how things got from there to here. There were strong connections and hints between the storylines that helped the transaction flow easier, and for the most part, you could follow the story without much confusion.

That is, until Armageddon broke that chain. How Deception lead up to Armageddon is never described or even hinted at. In fact, if you look at the two games side-by-side and compared their stories, they could be considered mutually exclusive, aside from a few VERY vague hints at what transpired between the two games. We don't know how the events of Deception ended, or how it lead up to Armageddon. Armageddon also makes hardly any refrences to ANY past game, and in fact retcons a lot of stuff there. Here's just a few examples:



At least, up till Armageddon, the MK storyline tried to keep the stories in check, and form it into a cohesive whole that made sense. Sure, it took a few retcons to accomplish, but for the most part, they took what was established and extended that. Armageddon pretty much ignored every single bit of canon from every game up to and including Deception, and spun its own web that not only makes no sense when compared to the rest of what is known about the characters and their past and current states, but also can't even keep its story straight within itself; there's a ton of discrepencies between the character endings and Konquest Mode that further fucks the story up and makes it an incoherent mess. It even retcons itself, so that whatever the characters did in Konquest mode is rendered moot and pointless in light of their endings.

So, in other words, up until MKA, the MK series had a very rich and detailed storyline that one with any sort of imagination could appreciate and maybe even enjoy. MKA, however, is just a convoluted and arbitrary mess of conflicting and non sequitur information that, as some people on here have stated before, really needs to be considered non-canon. Trying to make sense of it all and fit it into the events of Deception is like trying to pound a star-shaped peg into a triangle-shaped hole; you'll go mad if you try to force it, and the story will break spectacularly once you do. Story may not mean much to you, scorpio, but it does to me and a ton of other fans on here, and frankly, this isn't story; this is gobbledygook that needs to be forgotten and buried underneath a rock.

A game to be successful needs three key elements: gameplay, graphics, storyline.

The first batch of canon MK games - MK 1 to 3 - had innovative graphics (pretty much the only game successfully using digitized graphics), great storyline, good gameplay (2D fighters were not very technical back in those days and MK's engine did its purpose well).

MK4 had - believe it or not - innovative graphics for its days but slightly weaker storyline due to less appealing characters, but still had the old 2D gameplay feel that made it somewhat different from other 3D fighters of the time. It was, despite some MK fans hating it, a very acceptable game.

MK:DA was the revolution. New-gen graphics (even though we had seen better by that time. In reality, better than what Soul Calibur did on the Dreamcast is something that is arguably yet to be achieved), very well thought out storyline that brought back classic characters and removed the less appealing ones from MK4, and a revolutionary style-based fighting engine (though not quite good for competitive play, being absolutely unbalanced). It was a very good game.

MK:D was cashing in on what had already been done in MK:DA, just expanding it with more content. That's not necessarily a bad thing - MK2 and MK3 followed that pattern - and a few small attempts were made to correct the lack of balance. The storyline continued on MK:DA's coherently, making it seem well written and interesting. It was undoubtly a good addition to the series.

Then came MK:A. Graphics-wise is just rehashing the models from MK:DA and MK:D which are very outdated by Q4 2006's standards. Gameplay-wise very little was made to improve on the brokenness of the previous games, but the addition of boss characters as playable was clearly a step in the wrong direction in what balancing is concerned, since the bosses weren't apparently tweaked enough to make the game balanced. So, as these two elements lagged behind, the storyline had to be strong to make it an acceptable addition to the series.

First ray of hope was having all characters in the game. Undoubtly from a MK fan's perspective this was somewhat of a holy grail because such a compilation had been requested at pretty much every Fight Night. Then Ed Boon did his usual very well done in marketing terms interviews, stating that the story was going to connect all the dots and leave no questions unanswered. All seemed pretty good. And then the first endings were revealed at the GC... and they were absolutely dreadful. Then the intro was released showing apparently no connection with MK:D's storyline whatesover... which was horrendous and an insult to whoever took their times to write MK:DA and MK:D's storyline (if I was John Vogel I would have felt insulted and just quit Midway). More so, the game seems to have no storyline except the usual "king of the hill" storyline that has been done in fighting games since 1980. To add to that, they decided to completely cut all remaining personality the characters still had: no specific fatalities, no classic special moves.

Now, how can a game that has no gameplay, no graphics and no storyline can even be considered as acceptable? It's not that "story doesn't matter", it's just that "it does matter when the rest is no more than passable", and this time the story is clearly passable as well.

MK:A is just a sad collection of what formerly were models representing MK characters, and if the Wii version doesn't offer a proper storyline (with character bios) and give back the characters their personality, this generation of MK has ended in a very sad note, completely pissing on the grave of whatever legacy it (succesfully) tried to estabilish with the past games.

PS: This is somewhat of a long text so sorry for the people that don't have patience to read it and sorry for the inevitable spelling mistakes.

Precisely. Anyone who has played games for enough time knows that a good story can compell a player to muddle through mediocre graphics and gameplay, just to see how it ends. If the story can't grip you in its interest, then it doesn't matter how good the gamplay or graphics are, people simply will not play it for long; they'll lose interest and move on to something that WILL captivate them. Mortal Kombat knew this fact to be true, and built its reputation not just on its outlandish gore and fatalities, but on its storyline; the old saying, I believe, is "come for the Fatalities, stay for the plot". That consistancy stayed with MK up until Armageddon, the black sheep second cousin twice removed of the series, where - like the aforementioned cousin - it seems to have cut off nearly all ties to its brethren, and what little ties it still has are garbled almost beyond recognition. Hence why people are crying out for it to be ignored as canon: it is so detached from established canon, that there's no way to try and fit it in.

um people, the returning charecters dont have storylines. the mk storyline is fucked that there is no need to explain a characters sudden resurection. It seems like you guys would be happier with just 20 characters with bios instead of 60+ without. just be happy that you get to play as every character in the whole series.

they made over 120 character models (including alts) and all you can do is bitch about a lack of story? come on people! it is the midway equivalent of super smash bros, which was a great game with no story! so just enjoy the game and stop pissing and moaning

Another "Shut up and deal" moaner who doesn't seem to get the point we're trying to make.

Super Smash Bros. was intentionally made without a plot, without storyline, without any reason for the characters to be fighting. Mortal Kombat, on the other hand, was NOT; In each and every game made for the series, it had a micro- and macro-story to it, the micro one being fairly self-contained, while the macro one being the overall universe. In other words, unlike SSB, Mortal Kombat is driven and defined by its storyline. The more proper comparison for this game would be to MK Trilogy, but even with Trilogy, all of the returning characters had a bio that fit in with the MK3 and overall storyline, save for Goro, Kintaro, and the 'classic' versions of Jax, Kano, Raiden, and Kung Lao.

The MK storyline is so rich and deep and intertwined, that the lack of even one playable character's bio to explain the whys and wherefores of their appearance in that game's storyline would throw the story off-balance. It's like, if your school alumni got together for a reunion every year, catching up with the times and talking about what they plan to do in the future, and then one reunion, everyone shows up, but instead of talking about where they've been or what they've been doing, they all get into a huge brawl for no apparent reason, and then wander away to do their own thing like nothing happened. without that backstory to tell you their motivations for coming to the reunion and attacking everyone, everything gets thrown into chaos, and you can't stop it, because you don't know what started it, in the first place. With the returning characters, it would be like if a friend that you've lost contact with years back suddenly showed up at your house and shot you in the face without a word. You don't know why they've returned or why they want you dead, so you can't really do anything about it except lay there dying and wondering why.

With a series so story-heavy as Mortal Kombat, you simply cannot omit things like bios or past storyline, bring everyone back regardless if they're supposed to be dead or not, and say "These guys are back, and they want to kill this big guy up there. Have at it". Without any backstory telling us HOW and WHY they've returned, and what happened between Deception and Armageddon to make the characters go after the big guy on the pyramid, we can't follow the microstory of the game and, therefore, the overall gameplay experience is lessened, because we can't connect with the characters like we have in the past. We can't grow to love or hate a character simply on how he looks or plays, if there's no story to get us motivated to play him. And the fact that Armageddon contradicts its own story further detaches the player's connection with the characters, and destracts them from the other aspects of the game. Simply put, if we don't know what's going on with a character, why should we even play as him? The only way a lack of bios will work in a fighting game, is if the game series is not at least partially reliant on a storyline to attrat attention and interest with it; SSB isn't reliant on a story, so the lack of character bios works for it, but MK does rely on a storyline, so a lack of bios not only doesn't work with it, but actually impedes it from being as good as it should be.

Up until a couple weeks ago, I was somewhat excited, because I had been waiting for it to come out. Last Tuesday, before I got my hands on the game, I started seeing threads with titles hinting to me that there were no biographies. This worried me having in mind the endings from the German gaming convention. I had watched two of them, but because of the horrible audio and video quality (note: I do appreciate what they did for us, however), I couldn't stand to watch any more. Not only that, but I was one of the people who wanted to believe that it was just a place holder; They were so stupid, how could I not want to believe they weren't real?

I am extremely picky when it comes to my entertainment. This includes, but is not limited to music, video games, and movies. I'm not as open minded as I could be, but it saves me money in the end from my experience. Tuesday of last week, I decided to rent MK Armageddon. I have italicized the word "rent" for a reason: I have not rented a game before I try to buy it in years. If you don't see what happened there, I'll tell you: The stark reality was beginning to set in that I, as an MK fan, was about to experience a major let down.

The first thing I did was go to Arcade Mode when I got home so I could look at the huge selection of characters. I realized by this time that there were infact no biographies in this game explaining what had happened, so rather than being awe-struck by the sheer number of characters I was looking at... I felt numb. In MK Deception, certain characters grew on me because of their personalities. I never cared for Ermac before, but his personality and story given to him in that game made me really like him. Hell, I played as him just for that, because I didn't really even like the way he played. You could say the same thing about Sub-Zero, as well.

I got through arcade mode. I was disappointed by the overly short ladder with no other options. I thought they could have at least done it MK3/MK4 style and given us a choice. Was that really so much to ask for? But then I got to Blaze. I was disappointed in how easily he was defeated. I suppose looking at all the games since MK3, I shouldn't have expected anything more. I will say, I certainly wasn't surprised. However, I was fortunate enough to beat the game with Rain first, and Rain's ending to me made some sort of sense, but without the artistic aspect of these endings that has always come with some sort of visual aid, it seemed hollow and empty.

Shit. I have been extremely fucking disappointed.

So, I checked out Konquest mode. I honestly had fun the entire way through it. The character encounters were disappointing, just random douche bags getting in your way. I was hoping with the lack of bios that there would be some sort of explanation for all of this bullcrap. Oh hey, its Rain! ... wtf is this shit about? Moving on. While the result of defeating Konquest mode is ridulously disappointing, I have to say the climb through Shao Khan's fortress was fun and I enjoyed it. Maybe it was the homeage to the classic MK games and knowing how many battles and stories revolved around this place, who knows? Even the idiotic alliance made didn't seem too bad... and then Raiden struck. This had to be the lowest point I had faced in Armageddon.


I'm rambling at this point, to be honest, with no sense of direction for this rant. In short I'm saying that while I was in absolute denial at first trying my best to ignore all of the pessimism on this board, I found out the hard way that the the pessimism is merely people being realistic. Usually I'm one of the realistic people, but I love gaming and two games got me started: Sonic the Hedgehog and MK 2.

Hell, I've seriously thought about writing my own story for MK Armageddon, but I know I'd accidentally screw up somewhere in writing it with forgetting about certain things in MK history or other things like that.

Well, it's been over a week since I got Armageddon. I've seen the endings, played Konquest, and taken time to gather my thoughts. So here we go....

I knew from the start when they first announced Armageddon the odds of a solid, coherant story were slim. When the announced it would contain every character...yay, more resurrections. Then they announced this would be the grand finale game to tie up all loose ends. While granted, a lot of storylines have gone on too long and needed ending...there were a lot of others that had only just started and deserved proper pacing.
Having come to know Midway's brand of quality and the extent of their storytelling capablilities, I knew that even at best, we'd be lucky to get anything but a total clusterfuck.

Despite my doubts, I retained hope that somehow, some way, they'd hit something close to the grand epic Armageddon should be.
While a lot of people complained about the re-use of MK:DA and MK:D character models, not enough arenas, kata endings, and some other things...I always figured if it meant better gameplay and a better story, it'd be worth it. I made frequent posts about the storyline and my idealized expectations...even though in the back of my mind, realistically, I knew not to get my hopes very high up.
(Anyone recall my "Bare Minimum" thread a while back?)

Those hopes very quickly diminished when some of the endings were leaked and the intro was released. The horrific quality of the endings coupled with the implication in the intro that the story was little more than a glorified game of "King of the Mountain" all but confirmed my feeling that Armageddon's storyline was an incoming trainwreck.
But even then, I still retained hope that through the bios and Konqust we'd find there was much more to the story than that.

And now finally, Armageddon is here...

WOW...those are some God awful endings. I mean, what hasn't already been said about them, really? The ones that aren't completely ludicrous or nonsensical are extremely boring and predictable. Random "twists" thrown about simply for the sake of there being "twists." Obviously very little to almost no thought put into any of them.

Like why does Kitana save the world with an "all female fighting squad?" Is this meant to reveal some new layer to her character? Is this what they have in mind for her in the future games? No. It's the same reason they have Sonya save the world with eye beams and Tanya conquers everything with an army of dragons.
They had the character do the simplist and most obvious thing...and threw a "twist" in in a vague attempt at individualizing them. Like they pulled a character's name from one hat...then pulled a twist from another hat to go with that character.

And the ones that aren't boring or blatantly obvious more-or-less assassinate the character in question. Scorpion and Noob Saibot's endings are the best examples of this.
Kira and Shinnok's also don't make them look any better. Kira went from a strong, discilpined, ruthless cut-throat to a soft-hearted pushover who randomly decides to show Kobra mercy? And Shinnok.....just wow.

The only ending that made me somewhat happy was Sareena's. And only because it pretty much confirms she's a good guy...which is one of the things I really wanted. The ice powers thing was stupid...but I am happy she's a good guy.
So I got that going for me.

But hey...they're just endings right? It's the bios that really matter.
Oh, wait....

I have a mixed reaction to the lack of bios. On the one hand...yes, it does indeed suck that there apparently is no real storyline driving the characters and the situation. But at the same time, I found myself thinking "no news can be good news."

For instance, as Armageddon was coming, I was very adamant about Kitana being the one to destroy Shao Kahn. That she shouldn't waste time on Mileena and that Kahn's destruction was the proper way to end her storyline. Obviously, there's nothing to say she is after Kahn or will destroy him. But is there anything saying she isn't or won't? All the endings are obviously bullshit...so piss on that.

So to be honest, any...if not all...speculation on what should and might happen in Armageddon and after is still valid. The MK8 storyline I posted in Future Discussion forum is still feasible speculation....because apparently there's nothing in Armageddon to contradict it.

So yeah, it does suck that there are no bios and therefore, not real storyline. But hey...considering how bad the story could've been....maybe we're better off for the time being.

So with no bios, I turn to Konquest...

One thing I liked about Konquest was Taven...unlike Shujinko...was actually likable. That much, I think they succeeded in. The basic story was good too, and I also liked Daegon and his tie to the Red Dragon. I thought that was well done.

The problem I have with Konquest...which was a problem(one of them) I had with the last one. And that's they don't try to fit Taven and his story in Mortal Kombat. They make the Mortal Kombat story fit around Taven. And as a result, random things happen, characters and fights are thrown about for no reason which only makes them look foolish and just a lot of stupid goofy things end up happening. And a lot of it is done only for the sake of it being there.

Prime example: why does Taven fight Fujin?
Since waking up, Taven has been attacked by the Red Dragon. Naturally, he wants to find out why and plans to storm the Red Dragon HQ. Then Fujin appears and tells him not to bother and to go to Edenia for some reason. Of course, Taven insists on finding out why this clan keeps trying to kill him and how does Fujin respond?
Fighting.

And that's just one example. Why do you fight Reptile at all? Wouldn't Sub-Zero ASK who Taven was before attacking him? And the worst would have to be Raiden and Scorpion.
I'm for Raiden going "dark" provided though it's done right. And that's not doing it right. Raiden losing his patience and being quicker to anger does not equal "loses all his common sense and logic."
And Scorpion. This was Scorpion's logic in attacking Taven: "You are supposed to save the realms....therefore if I kill you, that will be bad for the Elder Gods." WHAT? Going back to what I said about how I liked Taven's portrayal: I loved that his reaction to Scorpion was essentially "Dude, that doesn't make a lot sense."

Going into Konquest, I was kind of interested in seeing what Kitana's reaction to Taven would be since he's tied to Edenia's storyline. But now I'm glad she wasn't...because had she shown up in Konquest, they probably would've had her attack Taven for some random reason and only get her ass kicked. So in retrospect...I'm happy Kitana was absent from Konquest.

When things like that are forced upon you so bad, I tend to take it's canonicity (or a word like that) with a grain of salt. But unfortunately, the lack of any other form of storyline makes that difficult. And Konquest does very little to suggest the story was anything more than a big race up the pyramid.

And as I'd said since the intro was released...that's a really shit way to end the current storylines. Tossing aside all the story-arcs and bending the storyline around it (like Kahn, Tsung, Quan Chi, & Onaga teaming up which pissed me off to no end) really is a fucked up way to close out the story. And it feels like a real insult to the many fans who actually do...or did...care about the storyline and characters. Seeing all the progress and intricate storylines that had grown all get suddenly tossed out the window for a bullshit pyramid race.

Storyline isn't THE most important thing...gameplay is...but it is far more important that a lot of other things. Like I said, if taking some things out meant better gameplay and better story I was for it. We got better gameplay...but what did we get instead of storyline? Motor Kombat? Mini-games are a nice addition and all....but I would rather have had a solid storyline than Motor Kombat, sorry. People like to say if you want a story, watch a movie......well, if you want a racing game, buy a fucking racing game.

But is this the end of Mortal Kombat's storyline? Has the story been destroyed and tarnished past the breaking point? I think not. As I said...there's no bios to say what's happening or not happening and the endings are almost all ludicrous and will more than likely be non-canon.
So it really depends on MK8 and what they confirm happened or didn't happen.

For the time being, I'm enjoying playing Armageddon and intrepreting how the storyline went down in my mind...and I'll wait and see if Armageddon really was the jump-the-shark game for the storyline when news of MK8 starts rolling in.

I agree a lot with what you said. You know, if you think about all those things you said about the Konquest encounters with various kombatants, particularly Scorpion and Raiden, you almost have to believe that Midway did it jokingly and as a slap in the face to the fans. I mean, after all this time, how could they come up with some of the stuff they've done and keep a straight face? I would dare say they've done what they've done on purpose and they find it amusing, and considering what jackasses they've shown they can be, I wouldn't put it past them. I'm not saying theres any sort of conspiracy against those of us who love the storyline, but after how carefully they prodded us and laid out the story for Deception... this is just absolutely wrong.

Unfortunately, as much as I would like to support not buying this game and kicking Midway in the wallet, I'm still considering buying it for my XBox if anything just for online play. I wasn't impressed with Motor Kombat at all, but I still like the idea of showing my KAF off online, and I have to say I've become quite skilled with Rain.

Am I the only one who liked evil Raiden?

I'm not suprised at the lack of story; with all those fighters there just wasn't a lot of room left on the disk. So hopefully they will wait in till the next game to continue the story.

Actually I thought it was a nice change, and not all that surprising. What I didn't like was that in MKA's Konquest they portrayed him as something he has never been: A complete idiot.

Design-wise I never liked the way Raiden looked when they translated him into 3D in Deadly Alliance. In Deception, however, they did the dark look very well, but unfortunately completely failed when it came to giving it any sort of depth.

I like Dark Raiden's look, except for one thing. Why are his goddamn eyes red? What the fuck does the color red have to do with lightning? It's like they just wanted to put a giant sign on his chest that reads "HAY GUYZ, I R TEH EVIL NOW LOL!!!" Totally shoddy move from the character artists.

It was hinted at times that Kahn actually cared for, in some very, very small way, both Sindel and Kitana. Furthermore, it was said in MKD Konquest that he was once "like Raiden" in temperment before, presumably, the One Being got into his head and he became a conqueror.

Shang and Quan have no such moments of kindhearted emotion. In fact, if Baraka's MK Gold ending is anything to go by, Quan Chi's doesn't care if he's the only creature alive in the entire universe, so long as he's the most powerful.


But SHao Kahn has one thing that Quan chi and shang tsung dont....taunts! that alone makes shao kahn more evil than the qc+shang

Thanks god they gave shao kahn his taunts in MK:A

Dark raiden is cool too. I just wish they explained why he turned evil a bit more...and i wish they had officially..concluded his 'dark raiden' story arc...Liu kang's ending seems likely. And Hmm..was it me or was there a storyline between smoke and subzero that disappeared? i really htought they would address that in smoke's ending but no..instead he absorbed edenia for some reason.

Wow. I haven't touched this game in five days. Not a good sign.

About Dark Raiden, I kinda like the notion that he has grown cynical about the good of Mortals, and is only concerned with his job. That is completely fine.

What I don't like is how much of a dolt he is. In Konquest, he more or less says "I'm going to help an evil alliance of Shao Kahn, Shang Tsung, Onaga, and Quan Chi get ultimate power because Kahn said that he wouldn't take over Earthrealm and he'd be my best friend forever if I beat the tar out of Taven.".

One doesn't have to be a master of critical thinking to see the problems with Raiden's choice here.

I agree with all of you (who complain about the storyline) in many levels. But, I must say that not playing the game due to storyline problems isn't very logical either. It's still a fun game nonetheless, although it does have its (very) downpoints. I am not a fanboy of the game and I even feel that this game was rushed and there were many things left out. I remember reading that bios may be released on the internet eventually, the source that I read this, I don't recall; but I do know that I have enjoyed this game and still am enjoying it, although the many lacking parts of it. =\

First off i had MKA since it came out and i had to say storyline= sucked and they made Raiden (2nd faviorite character) a compete moron with no feelings for anyone including that if anyone else defeats Blaze they choose the fate of eveyone else and a complete ass Don't get me wrong i love Raiden but they gave him the shit end of the stick for which side he's on! Another thing i was mad about Scorpion still never gets his revenge on Quan Chi All in all it is a good game but the konquest sucked along with storyline

I'm sure it's already being said, but the game would be liked 100x more if Boon hadn't said so much shit about how it would make a huge revolution in the storyline.

Wow. I was going to start a thread about how pissed I've been at the MK storylines and here I find an 11 page thread stickied no less. TGrant, Crow and MANY others have pointed out alot of my problems with the storyline in MK:A. But my main gripe isn't even with the endings. Although they are garbage and any 7 year old with a magic marker and a piece of construction paper could have made these endings, my problem is with the game's plot as a whole.

What is the point of MK Armageddon?

All I've read everywhere basically amounts to:

MK Characters are so bad ass and powerful that the world is coming to an end. An Elder God and a sorceress saw that this would happen and they had their sons Taven and Daegon go on a quest. Eventually, they will fight the guy that was on fire in the background of the Pit II. All of the other combatants are in the same place at the same time and they fight until they see a giant pyramaid. What are pyramaids good for? Why, climbing of course! So they will go up to the top of the pyramaid and fight a guy made out of fire to decide who is the bad-assest of them all.

What the mother F$!#ing hell is that!?!?

And then of course we come to the endings, which are, as we all know absolutely rediculous.

This series began as a bit of a nod to "Enter the Dragon," one of the best martial arts movies ever. MK1 had mystery, intrigue, shocking violence, hidden secrets and a realism that made jaws drop back in the day. The plot was detailed and it made sense.

How did we go from MK1 to where we are now? Holes in practically every character's plotline, characters resurrected by apparently nothing, holes in the OVERALL plotline (I'm sorry, but when you have major holes in the main storyline, that's just unacceptable. The One Being, the Kamidogou etc etc). MK has fallen far from what it once was. And to think I used to hate the idea of Shao Khan, cyber ninjas and the invasion of Earth by another realm. That stuff is Shakespeare compared to what MKA has done to the series.

I'm glad that this is the last game in this chapter, because the MK team has killed off every character figuratively before they even had the chance to do it literally. Maybe they just realized before MKA that they so completely screwed up the plot, that they so completely ruined every character for long time fans of the series, that the only thing they could do was scrap everything and start over.

I'll say this much. I've been a fan of MK since the beginning, and to watch what Vogel has done to what was once a shining example to all that fighting games COULD have interesting and engaging storylines has been disgraceful. They're wiping the slate clean. Fine, good riddance to Hsu Hao, Havik and every other character that has been butchered by Vogel's mental vomit. But if they wipe the slate clean, only to come back with another game that's "new" but seems to have had it's characters, bios, endings and overall storyline written by an overly eager labradoodle (that's a part labrador retreiver and part poodle) with a pens strapped to his paws then that's it. I'm out. My all time favorite game series since I was 11 years old will not get a single, solitary penny out of me from that point on.

The MK team HAS to learn that it's fanbase wants quality first, not quantity. I don't need 800 characters if they all have crappy storylines and no real endings and they all basically fight the same. I don't need minigames like motor kombat and test your whatever if there are no fun single or multiplayer fighting modes (no survival mode? That should be standard in EVERY fighting game! How about a tournament mode offline!?). And I don't need 800 characters with create a fatality and game artwork and konquest mode and koins and chess kombat and online mode and crappy storylines and yada yada yada if the actual fighting SUCKS!

Make a good fighting game first. Build an engine that didn't come from the 2D era where all of the basic moves just served as boring parts of a strung together combo. Then build fun and interesting characters that have regular moves that we actually WANT to use. Pressing down and be should simply make Nitara kick at someone's feet. Part of what makes MK and it's characters interesting is the story.

Make a plot that 1) makes sense.

2) has twists, mystery, intrigue, shocking moments, climaxes, and *gasp* resolutions ALL within ONE game. It can be done! You can leave parts to be figured out or carried over into the next game but this stupid "what if fighter x wins" ending crap needs to end NOW. Have a character die at the hands of another character to end their storyline. Have a character miss the end battle for some reason (they got poisoned, knocked out, drawn away from the main fighting area by another character etc). There are millions of ways to handle storylines that don't involve "after Kenshi defeated Blaze, he regained his sight. But his senses became too powerful and he had to go and live in a cave." WHAT THE... You get the idea.

Not every character has to play through the same ladder and beat the final boss. Only one character should do that. Maybe other characters can make it to the boss and be shamed by their loss? Or maybe they die through trickery or deception or they simply aren't strong enough? The possibilities are endless if you simply tell Vogel to take a Creative Writing class or he's fired.

Either way, it's just depressing to see how far MK has fallen in terms of quality. While part of me believes that the fighting system would almost be tolerable if the stories were still cool and captivating, I have a feeling that we'll never really know for sure. Seriously Boon. Get some new writing talent. Maybe some of the people that worked on the Legacy of Kain series are available. Sure the plots of those games were complex and perhaps overly convoluted, but the stories were always great and they always made sense if you made an effort to piece everything together. If the next MK is going to be truly new, then make this the moment where you decide to stop cheating MK fans and really give us something to enjoy.