At the end of the day, the Mortal Kombat storyline lacks drama. Life and death, the two most signifigant aspects of mortal existence, have become seemingly irrelevant. That can work to a point - for example, leaving things vague for certain characters and whipping them out later on.
However, things tend to get out of hand... A perfect example is the opening sequence of Deception. Raiden is "defeated" by what appears to be a most lethal blast by Quan Chi and Shang Tsung. But behold, he just kind of stumbles back up after a minute or so, ready to battle the Dragon King. When he's consumed in his own blast, he "reforms" on Earth... Two comebacks in one night, Raiden!
It would make one wonder what Chi and Tsung were planning to do with him... Surely, if he was going to "wake up" in about eighty seconds, they would have finished him off... But then, would he just reform on Earth?!
Now, one way to improve the plot and create a more moving story would have been to destroy Raiden in the opening sequence. Completely unexpected (especially given the endings in Deadly Alliance), and it would certainly create a sense of urgency. Of course, Raiden may be too major a kombatant... In that case, maybe he shouldn't have been *defeated* atal!
In conclusion, I do see ways to enhance the storyline, but it's not something that keeps me awake at night.
Oh, and I do still like Deception's cinematic. Heehee.

The above user has said everthing I wanted to say. The raiden dilema is a major sticking point.

I agree that the gameplay needs to improve, but when it comes to your story ideas, there's where I disagree.

Raiden isn't really evil. He's...dark. He still protects Earthrealm. It's just that his patience for mortals has worn thin. With Zombie Liu Kang, well, I think that could've been something going on at the same time period but Liu Kang not returning in the story quite yet. As for the vampires, well, we've only seen Nitara and I happen to like the character. Your "Saturday morning cartoon" comment is amusing, but pointless considering that in the first 3 MKs, there have been characters like Goro, Kintaro, and Motaro as well as Sheeva so your logic there is flawed.

I don't agree about MK going back to the whole tournament thing. The Elder Gods only care about the realms still existing though you'd wonder why they didn't take action about Shao Kahn's tournament, especially with him losing to Liu Kang. A Mortal Kombat tournament is supposed to take place every generation. Maybe there could be a Mortal Kombat tournament much later on, but not in MK7 or anytime soon.

If MKs storyline just kept going in the whole tournament storyline, it would be just like Tekken and DOA's story.

I still care about the storyline because that was the first thing that got me interested in Mk. I do agree the mkteam didn’t do a good job with the story of MKD, it seemed like many things were tossed out of nowhere just to fill rooms with classic characters from the past.

But MKDA had an amazing storyline, it was perfect. I was really interested to know everything about the dragon king and I loved speculating what was going to happen in the next game, well, I was hugely disappointed...not only did all the heroes die, but they were also resurrected at the very same time...and the Dragon King...that interesting creature was just another boring cliché.

Mk1, Mk2, Mk3 had excellent storylines, perfect. Mk4 wasn’t as good but it was still great, the whole thing with the amulet is very important, weather we like it or not, Mk4s story is just as crucial for the plot as are the rest.

Now...Mortal Kombat SHAOLIN MONKS.......................O_O.................thast the ONLY game from the series that I HATE the storyline....it was completely violated and messed up. So far, that’s the only Mk game with an awful storyline.

Yes, the storyline for me is important, and I love it. I hope they make it good in Mk7...no more stupid instant resurrections and deaths please.

Of course I care about the story. It's all MK has left along with the good characters that are left. Unfortunately they're managing to over complicate things and drive the story into the mud given MKD's story. MKDA had a brilliant story and it was easily the best one since several games ago. MKD has some good bits and some not so interesting bits to it.

Shaolin Monks' story is the worst of all the MK's and it ought to hav ebeen much better than it was. It so had better not be canon. MK's story was fine as it was and to retcon to the drivel that was in Shaolin Monks would be one of the dumbest things you could possibly wish to do.

As for the main story, the tournament aspect and the saving of Earthrealm seems to have been thrown out of the window. MKD was somewhat Outworld focused along with the new realms mentioned in there. Earth needs to be in peril again. We need to see more Earth realm stages and characters. Life and death and the fate of Earth needs to hang in the balance once. Sure, the whole Kamidogou plot puts Earth at risk, but it puts every other realm in the MKverse at risk. It was supposed to be Mortal Kombat, not lets save the entire universe Kombat.

I agree with RussoRoss that MK lacks drama. Death is pointless as everyone finds some way to come back. Sowhy bother killing them? As for life, all existence is in danager now in MKD, so I suppose they've kind of put a bit of emphasis back to life and death there.

They need to fix things up, stop the retcons, make things follow on accordingly and chronologically and make the story much more exciting and give us back the Earthrealm focus. MK's story cannot die now, otherwise the series will truly go to crap.

Excellent

The amount of people who say this ressurecting malarkey is wrong is unbelivable. Midway should take notice and ask the users what they think should be done.

MKSM story line was so shit, Jade got killed by Lui Kang. Why wasnt she dead in MK:D if MKSM was based around MK II. Whats the point in making a game that doesnt follow the story, its just winds people up.

The story in general is what i got intrested into and why i started to play. As people have been saying we do need it concentrating on Earthrealms. I think the Orderrealm and Chaosrealm stories were boring. THey could have made them exciting, one invading the other (the obvious thing to do to add drama) but they dont, its just plain stupid. We need some excitement and depth put back in the story.

yea they need to focus on outworld and the earth realm alot more..mkd had to many crappy realms..or they can just make a new realm wit new foes n a new boss dat wants to take over the earth realm..like shao kahn wanted to do wit his outworld..

A new realm with a boss that wants to take over Earthrealm like Shao Kahn? Eh, to be flat out honest, I hate the idea, because Shao Kahn is still alive and I'm sure he's determined to still try to take over Earthrealm. Also, there are enough realms as it is. MKD focused a lot on Outworld.

They need to express the relationships of all of the characters and their stories should all intertwine to the same plot. The story to the first Mortal Kombat was flawless in my opinion because it had all the characters on the same page. Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, and Sonya had stuck together under the guidance of Raiden to fight in a corrupted tournament held by Shang Tsung. All the characters in that game had a place in the story and they had all interacted with each other.

The recent games don't show that to us. We have not one main story but six or seven stories that break down to form the plot. Some of the characters just don't fit in the game and we only have a hint of what they could do. It's very difficult to make a great story even greater because you have to include these new characters and have them be just as good and interesting as the classic characters.

I still play Mortal Kombat to follow the fate of the Earthrealm warriors, and to see what challenges they face next, so I most definatley care about the story of Mortal Kombat.

That is a very professional-like view on the MK plotline. The gap that you may feel is the basic element of famioliarity, when the characters are already known from a prequel. in that case, the writer assumes your knowledge over the character and avoids reintroductory to their actions and their likely consequences.

Speaking about consequences, that is what MK realy lacks, sve for MKDa when the allmighty DA finished everyone off.

I will finish reading all the posts another time, but i just thought that I would put in my 2 cents.

I care about the story for MK as much as I care about the story for a good Star Trek novel, aka A lot.

But how many time have we seen books that vary tremendously from book to book on general storyline? The same argument from movie to game or from game to game, so why should Mortal Kombat be any different???

I admit, that the story for Dark Alliance could have been a little better, i mean i really didn't like the zombied up Liu Kang, but I thought that the travelling from place to place to find people, learn their skills etc was pretty cool. I also like the koin system for unlockables, and i think that it was a shame that was taken out of shaolin monks.

On that particular note, did anyone ever manage to open ALL the koffins?

Back to storyline... The zombied lie kang was the biggest mistake, aside from that, i found the sotrylines enjoyable as standalones.

As many have stated brilliantly in more words than I will, MK's story is messed up because there are no consequences in anything. Life and death is so trivial in MK, its laughable. If MK really needs to spice things up and needs to kill characters, they should either kill characters that they don't want to bring back or kill characters that aren't selectable. I mean it isn't that hard to make up bystanders or close ones of the characters you can play to be killed. Want to piss off Kang? Slaughter all the monks, that simple and effective.

If everything eventually leads to ressurections, mysteriously coming back, etc. then what's the point? This is how most readers of the Marvel and DC universe felt in the 90s.

the mk team worked hard but i dont think they tried there dam best...i remember watchin the makin of mkda n seein a guy do the animation for a finisher over nite..that got me annoyed..the mk team needs work alot harder n push the system to its limit wit ...n make da best dam fighting game they can make..dats wat the ppl behind god of war did ..n shit they made the best ps2 adventure game i ever played

Well, they need to spend more time on the game, more so on the actual quality. However, if they were to have a storyline such as the one you suggested with there being another realm with a character who wants to take over Earth, then that's just going to be redundant and boring. I mean, that's just making another Shao Kahn basically. I find the stories in MKDA and MKD to be more fleshed out than the stories in the previous MK games. It's just that the continuity needs to be checked very carefully, but also some of the characters' stories should be worked on like Scorpion's.

There should still be more fleshing out of the characters' stories. I think that Vogel and the other storywriters post-Tobias time have done quite a few good things like with the Noob Saibot thing and killing off Liu Kang and having the Deadly Alliance and things of that sort. Sure, they did do their booboos like bringing back Liu Kang the next game and having Goro come back and making him an opportunistic asshole, but there is more depth to the overall story now. It just still needs some work to it.