...and others, I welcome you to a rant. heh...

Ok so, I think I'm finally able to pick up some consistency out of what each of the two main camps of Sonya fans want from her. I always try to listen and understand things so, site me if I stray too far away from the general idea of things here. I probably will.

Camp 1 [Queve, Leo, ect...] :

a.) The way I understand you guys' view, it panders more to the fantasy element that is absolutely present in Mortal Kombat. Sleek and sharp styling is key in order for Sonya to be characterized properly. It's also important for her to maintain her toughness in some prevalent way. She needs a strong pose, her muscles have to be toned and showing, she simply needs a utility belt rather than a specific type with specific items on it. Stuff like that doesn't really need to be emphasized, although when it is, it spices her up for you guys.... It's more important that it's simply present because it's supposed to be.

A good motivation for looking at Sonya this way is really to escape the reality of what actual real soldiers do, and are like. It plays to what our imagination tells us what a solider might be capable of under extreme situations like she is subjected to all the time in this game. We've all heard stories of the guy who did some incredible thing, and lived to tell about it and, I think Sonya represents that aspect of soldier-ism. It's just a constant feed for you guys. It's also something that, in this game, should be accentuated and massaged into the whole of her personality and design.

b.) Her association with the OIA takes precedence over her association with the SF, but they are both important aspects of her character.

This influences her design more than anything I think. Because it sounds more exciting, and therefor, her design should reflect how exciting it must be to work for the Outer-world Investigation Agency.

Her association to the OIA makes it more than plausible that she can have a square punch, bicycle kick, and a futuristic wrist projectile. It makes those abilities of hers reasonable, or common sense.

c.) Sex appeal has definitely always been there for Sonya, I don't think anyone can disagree. But I think you guys accept it more. Again, if Sonya's a futuristic soldier, we must be looking at, or taking lessons from stuff like Trinity from the Matrix, Aeon Flux, UltraViolet, and the like. Those sorts of designs take sexual liberties more seriously, and accept sexuality as a norm.

There's a shit-ton more specific stuff than that obviously, but I'm just trying to make sure I have a good grasp on the base concept of you guys' perspective. Let me know if I stray too far from it, given the stuff out there that allows me to understand the same thing in my own way.

Camp 2 [The_Truth, ThePredator151 ect...] :

a.) We essentially want the designers to take on a more practical approach to her design. We see her as more of a modern day soldier with simple hints that could lead one to believe she exists only slightly in the future (10, 20, maybe 30yrs into the future). We don't go as far in the future as you guys do, and therefor, believe she should look more like something we're familiar with as what a soldier factually looks like right now.

A good motivation for this perspective is having actual soldiers near and dear to us. That, or like The_Truth, we take pride in actually being active soldiers at some point. I think it's easy to understand that when you take pride in something, and have put real personal energy or effort into something, it bugs the hell out of you when a representation of what you love about that is ignored....or purposely bastardized.... or maybe not on purpose....it could just be out of innocent ignorance.

Even then, some of us may not have been soldiers, or been around soldiers but, we may have simply been subjected to some kind of uniformity, and hierarchy. I think Chrome might be, but I know Sub_Zero7th is a martial artist, for example. You can guess there had to be a leader, some students, and some kind of "way to properly dress for that activity" present. That could be a good part of where you're getting the idea that "things should be a certain way" from us.

For instance, if you're building a house, you use the instructions to tell you what the house should look like when it's done. So, to draw the parallel, if Sonya is defined as a soldier, she should look something like this or that right at the start, right? Well, only THEN, only once the base of that idea is accomplished should liberties be taken. Similar to how when you're building a house, you might want a funky window or door put in, you might want to add a "special" room onto the main structure, or you might want some funky colored cement for your drive-way. These are finishing touches that bolster up the character of the base idea the home was based on. It's a house....it could be a one level home, or it could've been a mansion when you started though.

Point is, we don't feel like they're getting the base design of her character, or design down very well first. They skip over that, and go right into tacking on "special" stuff. Which is surprising for us, considering they're all designers and programmers. Those jobs and all the stuff you have to learn in order to be able to produce quality game stuff requires that you build things up a certain way.

b.) Sonya's association with the United States Special Forces is a greater force for her personality and design for us. It's powerful enough to mean the same stuff as you guys imagine about the OIA if you can understand just a little bit of some of the bullsh....errm..... "extenuating circumstances" these people must go through in order to be accepted into that part of our armed forces.

These people go through hell. They go through ridiculous and unnecessary amounts of training. THEN as a precursor, you gotta consider that some of these folks have drowned, died or damn near died, gotten shot, stabbed, they've already taken out whole platoons by themselves, they have already been on missions where they had to sneak into a country, eliminate one guy?!?!!? having eaten only a half a slice of bread and two gulps of water! And get away with it.... over and over and over??!?!

If you can do that, I'm a believer...These folks really are "An Army of One". But then guess what? You get a group of these crazy mfers together and call it the "United States Special Forces". lol....omg. That definitely is a fabrication on my part, But THAT'S what Sonya is a leader of in MK. And there are stories, rumors, and myths out there to back up the appeal to the armed forces known as the US Special Forces.

So yea, we do kind of downplay the Outer-world Investigation Agency. It's like, OIA?....okay, sure. It's a game so, I can get with that." However, it still is an important part of her character and design. I think we simply consider the OIA, but it's not a driving force for her design.

Again, we start with the base idea that she's a soldier, and a freakin Special Forces soldier at that. Therefor, her design should reek of uniformity and hierarchy.....then take some "super soldier" cues and sexual liberties.

Her association to the OIA makes her abilities feasible that she can have a square punch, bicycle kick, and a futuristic wrist projectile. "She's a soldier, she needs weaponry, I suppose she could have gotten these things from being associated with the very fictional OIA". I'm pretty sure though, our perception, or rather, the exciting part about Sonya's military behavior isn't about the OIA for us. It's based more on what we know about the SF. We kind of subscribe to the notion that Sonya should actually be capable of almost everything she's doing in the game except for the "magical stuff". That's fantasy enough for us, and then we simply accept the other fantasy stuff just because "it's obviously just a video game.

c.) As for her sex appeal, it is strictly character specific. I think most of us who take issue with them designing her with sexuality in mind simply subscribe to an ideology that rejects objectifying women. It's just... a message we've been getting fed for a great part of our life-time now.

Women are equal, women are just a strong, women can do what men can do, dress like we do, shoot what we shoot...ect. OK. We believe it now. So then, why is this very powerful female figure being objectified? Boobs and everything else hanging all out everywhere...? No please, not for Sonya.

I think the page we're on reads a little something like: "Instead of her having sex appeal, she should merely appeal to the opposite sex". Mid-drift out is cool, that's been there since the beginning. So has the more fitting clothing. But her design should still not escape being taken seriously. Y'can't take a Lt seriously that has her boobs hanging all out everywhere. It's informal for a civilian, let alone an extremely high ranking military officer on duty.

The fact that she does have some hints of futuristic inference means little in that respect. 50 yrs from now, I think she'd still be required to cover up. In fact, I think with comfort-ability making its way into the modern females wardrobe in this last 10-20yrs or so, by 50yrs from now, she'd likely wear things that made her feel better about herself, and emphasized more of her intelligence rather than her sexuality. I'd give her that much as an off duty officer too. She's not trying to catch a date.... she's trying to kill the bad guys.

So again, we're looking at the base concept of a generally modeled soldier first for Sonya. Sex has nothing to do with getting shot. Which is actually another one of those ideological differences about soldier characters I think might be between our two camps. Soldiers do and wear stuff by necessity only.

So, Sonya would likely wear those type of pants because they're comfortable, and they allow her to move around easily in combat situations. Those pants also allow her to carry stuff that she needs on her waist easily. The belt will have stuff on it that she believes she may need, because she's needed it before. She's going to wear a shirt that is lightweight, but made of stuff that keeps her warm, and or cool depending on where she's going. The gloves are there to protect her hands from every kind of harm you can accidentally do to your hands. They also help grip the gun better, if she has that kind of complex about her....

The hair is in a ponytail because even though she might believe in looking like a traditional woman with hair, she realizes the importance of being able to see in 360degrees around herself at all times, and hair gets in the way of that sometimes (same sort of principal behind black guys having braids at its core, btw.). It's also a nod to being able to pull her weapon quickly, and shoot at something without moving her hair out of the way first. The bangs are there simply because her ponytail comes out of wack sometimes, but it's not enough of a distraction for her to feel like she has to do something about it at the moment. She's not going to keep fixing her ponytail. [actually, that'd be funny if she did that in-game between rounds]

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Now, given all that^^, I think there is a middle-ground for the NRS team to consider going forward about Sonya. That is, there are some base principals for Sonya that I think could yield a comfortable representation for every fan of Sonya. There's always compromises, but I think the important part is getting to a space where she looks respectable and exciting at the same time.

1.) Start with the base concept of a female soldier. They should always start with this question: "What does a female soldier look like right now..." and then go from there. They should also ask themselves what does a soldier look like x amount of years into the future as well. Considering part of Sonya's fanbase likes those qualities about her, I think it would be wise if they did this too.

Stop, and make the first sketch based off what that stuff tells us. You see? It's not even "Sonya" yet, it's just a female soldier who could exist however many years in the future.

2.) Look at Sonya's iconic qualities. I'm talking, what kind of shirt, pants, belt, hat, hair style....ect did she wear during how many games. Pick the constants, and improve upon them in subtle ways every game.

Stop again, and make some more mock -ups. Add some of these qualities to the first sketch. Now, it's a female soldier who has some of Sonya's iconic qualities.

3.) Consider her story element. This will give you her age, race, rank, and all kinds of other little tidbits that could alter her physical look, and some of her clothes. She could be a 40yr old Latin woman just starting in base camp of the Mexican army if they don't consider the story stuff.

Stop again, and make some more sketches. = Late 20's early 30's in age, white female (no evident tan), 5feet 9inches tall, 135-145lbs. No head gear, just a ponytail that if undone falls about 2-3inches below the shoulders. Lieutenant in the United States Special Forces (USSF), active duty. Also one of the leaders in the Outworld Investigation Agency (OIA), 35yrs after 2010.

ect ect ect...

4.) Look at her special stuff. What are her traditional special powers // abilities, and should she wear anything on her that makes those parts of her character more appealing?

Stop again and make a couple more sketches. She has the ring toss, that could translate to no apparent equipment. Meaning that the move is simply motivated by something like chi. OR, it could mean she has some little gun // laser thing on her arm somewhere. -- She has that square wave move... Is there something on her leg that makes her be able to do that, or not? Same thing for the bicycle kick.

5.) Ask the fans. We know what we want her to look like. So, when you ask a large group of people one question or about one subject, pick up on a consistent message. They could still go wrong even after something like this but, if they already have the base of Sonya's design down (or any character for that matter), altering little stuff about her shouldn't be that time consuming.

Put out a pretty good finalization of Sonya and let us pick her apart soon enough to where edits are realistically possible.

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Now, if we all look at how they've been doing things, we can probably see they're doing this very sort of thing. So, make no mistake, this post was not at all about "telling them what to do", and it really isn't about "telling them what we want".

It's more about understanding what 11 pages of bickering is all about over one character. Sonya isn't even really that important in the grand scheme of Mortal Kombat's history. She's not that heavy in the story element, and I don't ever think I've heard high level players mention her as top tier as far as gameplay goes. She's never been in anyones "video games' hottest chicks" list or anything like that either.

She's really just an icon, and she's my favorite female character, simply put.

/rant

I know, I meant it's not an excuse for NRS to have their characters leave their homes without clothes.

Very nice rant. I enjoyed reading that and you make many excellent points. ^^

I agree with people saying she needs a headband or something!!! She had it in MK1-MK3, then her cool baseball cap in MK4. A green headband with a thin black stripe would be cool!

But the vest, really needs improvement. Her chest SHOULD be covered with a shirt!! And the vest should be lighter in colour... BLACK IS SOOO BORING!!!

A green undershirt with a white stripe would look awesome! A higher ponytail would make her look better IMO as well. She IS beautiful in this model and I`m EXTREMELY happy she looks like a tough girl again.

Like I have mentioned before, If they want to revamp all the looks, that`s ok, as long as they seem befitting the characters! Then I HOPE the alt costumes are a bit closer to their original roots. What sucks about alt costumes is that they never get renders... and I want cool Sonya renders!! I just hope they REALLY go back and re-discover who Sonya is, so they can correct the overexposure and perhaps add more elements to her look (like it`s been mentioned before, radio and other interesting things on her belt).

PLEASE READ OUR COMMENTS NRS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We love the game because the connections we have to the characters!!!!!!! The fatalities are cool, but in the end, a good story with cool characters seals the deal! :)

Excellent post, Pred! You nailed the different views that we're trying to come across. Of course I know that Mortal Kombat is a video game series that has magical, mystical, fantasy elements. It's not set in a completely realistic world. Bottom line, it's fiction. What people like me want to get across is that I want to have that sense of credibility and believability with the way characters like Sonya are designed. Go for function and practicality before fashion.

What I suggested was hopefully a compromise between the two camps (so to speak) by having a primary costume that involves a casual look more suited for tournament fighting and an alternate costume that involves a more formal look such as her soldier outfit in the first MK movie.

One argument I have is that when some play the "MK is a video game series." card, it's not a good excuse to have characters dress in a ridiculous way. There's also the whole "it doesn't suit your fashion taste" argument, which is based upon a misunderstanding. This goes back to what I'm saying about wanting a sense of credibility and believability.

By the way, Chrome is also a martial artist, and he has a hell of a lot more experience and knowledge than me.

I really think this design goes too far into the playmate realm.

A white or green t-shirt under her current design would improve her look a lot.

She looks MUCH better than she did in MK v DCU when she looked like a bad drag queen or trannie, at least this time she looks very much like a true woman. I do wish they'd put something else on her though, she does look a bit slutty, then again what woman doesn't in a fighting game anymore? at least she's not dressed as a school girl which is really kinda freaky and sick (bad sick lol)

She definitelylooks pretty bad ass! Absolutely, my all time favorite video game character!

Queef can multi-quote all he wants lazyass dudebra

oh wow

And so it begins muhahahaha. But no you respect minion hes a valued member and always has something postive to say.

Well that was very rude. You should be ashamed of yourself.

Yea, I mean it isn't terribly difficult to take out the line breaks.

Man, these noobs really need to learn some respect.

Here we go again... Round two... Or is it three?

YES, that's pretty much it right there. Excellent summary.

What? No shirt? Tsk tsk tsk. I like those edits and for God's sake if they do give her a shirt make it a v-neck. She looked like a dork with a turtle neck. Turtle necks are for librarians!

Just be thankful that the MK team is American too, and not Japanese. Cause then, not only would the females be a little "skanky", but they'd be 10 years old with squeaky voices.

One of their major character artists during MKDA-thru-Armageddon was named Jennifer Hedrick. Pretty sure that's not a dude's name.

Not sure if she's still with the team, though. Concept artist seems to be the most short-term job in that crew, which is a damn shame since MK really NEEDS to develop a consistent artistic vision instead of trying a new art style, changing characters' facial features, forgetting traits, etc. every game.

Yeah, I'm sorry but I don't think it's a decent excuse to say, "Oh, well men created the artwork & character models, and men have no clear idea or depiction of women... therefore the women in MK are always either very slutty or very butch."

We have to consider the possibility that most game developers are men, therefore Tekken, SF, and most other Fighting Games all also have men working on the artwork and character modeling. If characters such as Nina & Christie (Tekken) and Chun-Li & Sakura (SF) are anything to go by then one shouldn't base poor modeling on sex, because most male designers get female characters right.

I don't have a lot to contribute to this thread. I saw Sonya on the front news page. I think she looks stellar. This is the best I've seen her.

I love it when supposed "Mortal Kombat fans" have such immense issues with exploitation in a Mortal Kombat game...


Sonya looks great. Shao Khan and Goro are practically naked and could be wearing nothing more than underwear like Seth in Street Fighter with everything showing but their (cover your eyes and skip the next word, kids) showing and as a male I couldn't care less. It's their game, not yours. Let them create their characters the way they choose to. Mortal Kombat is not the outlet to be fighting against sexism. It's Mortal Kombat. Everyone is equally getting chopped, sliced, mamed, burnt and decapitated.


You all have wonderful and beautiful future careers in the ESRB.

Well if you mean this on a good note Thanks. I try and remain positive on these forums. I'm not really on the Arguable side. I simply asked Queve a favor. I've known this guy for 5 years and am pretty sure He know's I wasn't being an ass. He is very Positive as well. I respect that. I Just wanted him to town down the MULTI-QUOTES. No harm in asking. Some of us don't have a Scroll Wheel lol.

At any rate. Looking at this image of Sonya has kinda grown on me. Though, I hope we see more of a Military-esque look applied to her Alternate. Now bring on Stryker!

That wasn't an excuse I was bringing up. I'm not making it the only reason why the female characters are the way they are, I was throwing out there that we should realize that the MK art department usually consists of more men then women. I really doubt that a woman designed Mileena's secondary costume for Deception. I hardly doubt that.

So, it wasn't an excuse, it was a factor to look at when everyone's having a hard tie coping with the fact that most characters are revealing a bit more flesh than they should be.



The last sentence I forgot to include the word "mostly" after the word "are" since I'm basically saying that word in the first sentence. Sorry for the mistake. I'll go fix that error right now.

Wow!! Such a big fuss over Miss Mortal Kombat's outfit.To me Sonya looks great in her new clothes. She's not naked, she just revealing cleavage. People are saying she needs a shirt, which it's ok too. But with a shirt,or without a shirt under the vest, Sonya looks badass!!