If Chaosrealm and Havik didn't exist in the story, Darrius would be a pretty cool concept. The rebellious war hero in a realm of tyrannical order. Freedom incarnate. The thing is, Chaosrealm and Havik do exist, and the eternal conflict of Order versus chaos is just more compelling than the commonly seen rebel hero.

This essentially made Darrius useless, and frankly I think the whole Chaos versus Order conflict is much more compelling and offers less popular symbolism than the standard hero of the uprising.

Plus, majority vote, Havik is just "cooler".

I don't dislike Darrius. He is a cool concept. He was just rendered useless due to poor story planning.

I agree with Shad that Darrius is a way worse character than Hsu Hao. I actually like surface elements of Hsu's design, moves, and story, but you have to dig REAL deep to find a single redeeming thing about Darrius. I legit believe he is the worst character in the entire franchise.
Thing is, Darrius seems like the SEED of a good idea, buried under a character made entirely of shit.

His moves make no sense and have no theme, he plays like someone applied a randomizer to Kreate-A-Kombatant mode. So they'd all need to be COMPLETELY scrapped and started over from scratch...

Second, his story is that he's from Seido, leads a rebellion in Seido, only cares about Seido, and doesn't leave Seido.

Mortal Kombat games are generally about Earth vs. Outworld/Netherealm.

So...why would he be in a game?

If they had gone with the original concept of him as a Red Dragon to replace Mavado, you might be able to take him places. And you could have both, he could have been sent by the RDs to destabilize Orderrealm's government and make it easy for Daegon to conquer for some reason. (Which by the way would actually make WAY more sense, because WHY would Seidans revolt against the very nature of themselves and their realm? They should feel COMFORTABLE in a strict dictatorship. If the rebellion had been started by an outsider rather than a native, that would be more natural.)

Now...supposing that AFTER you completely erased everything about him except his name and costume design and started over from scratch...supposing that you for some reason felt doing this would be a better idea than forgetting about him and creating a new character entirely...

Well then, it seems to me like Darrius's biggest problem as a concept was the whole point of him was supposed to be his personality and the fact that he's like this combination of "badass" black guys or characters that talk and act "jive", like Morpheus, Blade, and every Samuel L. Jackson character, not to mention his Jim Kelly Enter the Dragon alt costume...and the problem is, he was in a game where he had no real lines and the voice acting was done by monotone amateurs, so...he never actually DOES talk or act jive anywhere in the game, thus completely robbing him of the ONE thing he was supposed to have.

So maybe he'd actually be awesome in a game in the MK9/MKX engine with all the intros, story mode, and mid-match talking. But that's after you completely remove his moves and bio and replace them all with something better.

I think his moveset has more sense than Hsu Hao's. I mean, Darrius IS from another realm, right? We don't know the abilities that people from Seido have, it could've easily been some shit he learned when training to be a Guardsman (I honestly don't remember if he was a normal citizen or a former Guard). But a normal human clapping and sending the opponent away? Unless it's related to his cybernetic implants it makes no sense at all.

The only shitty thing about his moveset is that he stole a move Cyrax had in MKDA.

But it's not like it was a good move anyway, it was too silly even for Mustard. I always figured the Khan Clap of Hsu Hao's was similar to how Jax can send out energy waves via his arms.

I'm going to agree with Darrius being the true worst.

Drahmin had a neat look.
Hsu Hao had those cool Sun-Moon blades.
Kobra and Kira had interesting backstories before being recruited by Kabal.
Dairou..despite having more potential as a rival to Kenshi still came out looking decent during Deception.
Taven and Daegon...The concept of introducing Greek/Roman style gods was refreshing even if they were bland characters otherwise.

I can't think of anything positive to say about Darrius. There was nothing I liked about him the moment I popped the game in and started playing Deception. He just sucks.

Hsu Hao's clap was the same kind of clap both Hulk and Superman can do in the comics, it's just using pure super-strength to make a gust or sonic boom. His other moves were a high-jumping stomp like Goro and Kintaro (again, a common super-strength move), his chest laser, and a buff that made him do more damage.

All of it made perfect sense for his character. His bionics give him super-strength.
I also liked that he had a "wrestling" fighting style, although the execution was poor...he had one suplex, one backbreaker, and the rest was punches and kicks, he should've had more grabs/throws...but I liked it because it helped illustrate how he's Jax's rival, because Jax fights like a wrassler too.

Well, that super-strength didn't help him out in his fight against Jax in MKDA, hasn't it? I suppose that those implants are the only reasonable explanation for his moves as you said.

Anyways, Darrius won't be in MKX The only MKD character I'm really rooting for is good ol' Havik.

Darrius and Kobra are 2 of the worst characters ever in MK. So, nope.

The only good move that Darrius had was Cyrax's spin kick, other than that he sucked.



All in all, Kobra was cool except for that he is a Ken "look-a-like". That is probably the only reason why people didn't adapt to him. With a new design, I'm sure that would change.

The whole point of Kobra is he's a tribute to the villain of Karate Kid. You can't give him a new look and still have that, might as well create a different character.
If anything, the way to make him a better character is to lean INTO the resemblance to Ken and give him ACTUAL Shoto moves. He wouldn't be boring if he really had the Hadoken, Shoryuken, and Hurricane Kick. At that point it becomes deliberate parody instead of a tame ripoff.

MK-Team could have had their own Dan Hibiki in MK with Kobra, but they half-assed everything about him so much, that in the end he is nearly the blandest character in the series. Which sort of an achievement, when you creating deliberate rip-off of popular character.

Darrius had potential, if he was introduced as Red Dragon agent. Instead, he had no connection to the main story whatsoever, rivaling Chameleon, Mokap and Meat in his uselessness. His costumes are good, but his moves and styles are totally bland. Well, it was the case with almost all new characters in MKD. But, whereas others had some background and themes to support them, Darrius had none. He came up as generic fighter...and that's it. There is nothing horribly wrong or bad about him, it's just he is so uninteresting almost in all his aspects. Not even "bad uninteresting", more like "bland uninteresting". And that's sort of kills any desire to see this character revived.

Much like with Hsu Hao, if MK-Team had ever decided to improve Darrius, they would have need to change so many things about him, that final result would barely resemble initial character. It's just more simple to create a new character, rather then retooling bad one. No expectations, no obligations, no links to his past incarnations and so on. Oh, and no angry fans chiming, that new version of the character had nothing to do with his original form.

And since Darrius...is not very popular, I doubt he will appear anywhere soon. Well, maybe he will deserve cameo in the comic books, but that's it.

Yes to everything the person above said

I honestly would love to see all of the 3D era characters get another shot but it's not likely for many of them I would say.

Darrius was a character that simply wasn't well put together. His gameplay was broken. His assortment of special moves didn't make much sense. His story wasn't really connected to the main story and had overall little significance. Having said all of that, I don't hate him. When first introduced, his appearance did strike me a bit odd as it didn't feel like it was consistent with the theme of the game.

I wouldn't mind seeing Darrius return if he was nicely revamped, but it's best that he were to be saved for a future MK game instead of MKX. I like Razor's idea of merging the original Red Dragon concept with the Seidan Resistance leader concept to have more depth to his story. Gameplay-wise, I can see him using gadgets and tricks to be a more strategical combatant.

Not sure if I'd want to see them merging of his background with the Seidan Resistence movement and the Red Dragon. To me, that just sounds like putting another anchor on a character weighed down by enough troubles.

I suppose that could be a twist reveal of his real intentions, but that seems to needlessly complicate him when the best step might just be to start off with the idea that he's a revolutionary that was exiled from another realm and just leave it at that.

Maybe he's a traveler now that was sent packing by his own movement because he was too much of an extremist. He has a definite gray area vibe to him that's nice to see in a world of good guys and evil henchmen and what not. Use that as his jumping off point and tie him in to a new, more relevant story.

To me, Darrius would've been much better off if he'd first appeared in a sequel after MKD but before Armageddon. Hotaru basically had two foils in MKD, which made sense as far as bumping the character count in that part of the story.

Of course, this really didn't do Darrius any favors, as he was marginalized by Havik being Hotaru's polar opposite in chaos vs order while Darrius was more freedom vs control. I'd rather see those two struggles play out separately. Not crammed in to one game.

If another game had come out without Havik, where Darrius and Hotaru are set up as bitter rivals, that might have worked better. I'm perfectly fine with a Resistence movement being in Seido, as I could see a scenario where some are born "different," though it'd be nice if that were explained.

All in all, I think that he has the foundation of an interesting character, even if you have to sift through the rubble of a mediocre outfit, horrible KAK style move list (totally agree with Razor on that), and ultimately give him a new direction.

That sounds like a lot to overcome, but I could see him being worth it in the right role.

I don't see him as weighed, since his story and rivalries barely mattered to the story and other characters. He can be rewritten from the ground up and nothing will be lost.

Connecting him to Red Dragon would have made more sense, than making him some revolutionary, who really doesn't have nothing to with main MKD story.

The same can be said about Darrius. Imo Kobra, Dairou and Darrius are equally as bad.

Oh sure, if that had been his original concept. Like maybe he comes off like this savior for the downtrodden people that grew up in this realm that were somehow different than the rest of the population that thrive on order, only to have it then be revealed that he was working for Daegon the whole time, perhaps to destabilize the government, put Daegon in control of a shadow government and gain control of all of their guardsmen, soldiers etc to use against Earthrealm or... Something like that? That could've been cool.

But if they were revamping him now? If they looked at his concept and his story and thought "what can we do to bring this guy back and really make people accept him and maybe even love him the way most love the trilogy era characters?" I can't imagine merging a story from Orderrealm and the Red Dragon does him any favors now, as neither plotline was particularly well received ten years ago when it was last relevant to begin with. That's all I meant by that.

Yes as long as they change his name to Havik and give him all of Havik's moves and ending :)

I think, if they were revaming him now, then the final result would have been quite far away from his initial version in any case. That's what I meant, when I said that some characters need so much rework, that it would be much simplier to create a new character alltogether.

About merging his OrderRealm and Red Dragon plots: I think it could have work. I thought about how MKD story could be rewritten to make more sense and that's what I have come up with:

Darrius is the sleeper agent in the OrderRealm who collects information about their technology and other realms. It's implied that Red Dragon has such spies in every realm. In the wake of Onaga, he is tasked to learn as much as possible about this new threat through his spy network of Seidan Guardsmen. In his ending he gathers small group of loyal fighters and makes a diversion to distract Tarkatans long enough so heroes could get to the throne room and defeat Onaga.

It's still doesn't make him very important, but at least that way he can be part of the main story, instead of having Mokap-tier importance.

If you are interesred, I can post some other ideas about my MKD rewrite.

I'm totally in favour of any and all characters returning – even the silly ones like Mokap. It's important not to take ourselves too seriously.


The gauntlets were pretty much the only unique thing about his fighting style, but I liked them a lot.
Seeing them return with him would only make sense.

If he returned with the chest cruncher (charging punch) and a reworked spinkicks move (a la capoeira style), that general fandom might warm up to him. In MKD the execution was lazy to say the least.

Frankly, I loved that fatality and thought it gave Darrius an air of whimsy.



WUT?

Most fans don't like HH because they see him as boring or uninspired, not because of his sexual orientation. In his introductory game he only had 2 specials. No one minds that he's Mavado's butt bitch (although not outright stated, it could be implied subtextually). He doesn't resemble one of the Village People more than he resembles a pig with wings, and your attempt at trolling/controversy is not appreciated. I personally have always liked HH (you can check my previous statements on other threads), and I'd love to see him return, but it really isn't likely since it looks like Kano stole his trademark cyber-heart.

Not unique. He wore gloves to fight like Baraka does naturally.



No it couldn't. Hsu Hao has no emotions, thus no reason to have a recreational sexual relationship with anyone, male or female.

I'd give him another shot. Liked the whole rebellion thing going on within Seido. But NRS treats those games like the apocalypse so I doubt it.

Quite frankly I would much rather have Dairou instead of Darrius in a future game.
He's got quite a bit of untapped depth in his storyline (which Darrius IMO really doesn't) that's obscured by all the whining about how bland and boring he is.

That's why we have Kamidogu in MKX...sure...


Deserved whining, I must add.

We know....