I completely agree.
I hope we will be able to pick what Variation we want to use before each fight in Story Mode, and that we are able to see what the opponent chooses as well so we can regulate out from the known data... so to speak. :P

This is one of the situations where the visual cues will come in handy, I think. That's probably the only non-immersion-breaking way that the opponent's variations can be given away before the match begins.

Good question. Never thought of that before. I hope we are able to change in between the ladder matches and story mode.

I've said this before, I'm sure the variations will have an impact on story mode and I like it that way.

Probably we will see cryoancer Sub-Zero when he finds out about his origins and Grandmaster when he takes control of the clan for example.

There could ba a part of the story where Torr is wandering around without Ferra so he uses his solo style during fights in that part of the story.

I hope they're used correctly with story mode. Being able to chose any of them before a fight equals to wasting potential. MK9 story mode made you play as characters you probably didn't know how to control and probably had to find a goto easy move to win fights in a cheap way, you can always do the same if you don't like the variation of that fight.

These are great points, such constraints being a part of the story wasn't something I had thought of. Still, I can think of two characters for whom a definite variation will be hard to explain in-universe: Scorpion and Raiden.

I hope the story picks a variation for us, and the variations have muc hto do with some storylines.

BUT I don't want the 4 battles each character thing like in MK2011, so I hope they don't do like like this:

1st D'vorah fight in storymode will be Swarm
2nd D'vorah fight in storymode after the Swarm-one will be Poisonous.
3rd D'vorah fight in storymode after Poisonous will be Brood.

What would be horrible, you can't tell a good story when you have that stupid system, it will be fucked up again, just because every character must have 3 or 4 fighters next to eachother, so creating the forced-stupid fights again like Jax vs Cage and Cage vs Sonya.. and most other fights in MK2011 storymode.

I don't think you'll be able to change variations between matches in arcade, I'd imagine NRS want to balance the variations and deter significant instances of counter picking.

But like some people have mentioned variations will probably play a role in the story. Some are probably insignificant (Raiden's for example) but others like Sub-Zero or even Scorpion are probably more reflective of when in the timeline we'll see what character.