I mean Mortal Kombat's storyline was always cheesy as hell and it should be enjoyed for what it is. And while the story was darker and more mature as the story progressed, the first three games, the games this last game retold, were pretty much B-movie fair. "Evil villain wants to conquer Earth, stop him with kung fu." Not exactly high class, so I think this last game did a damn fine job considering.

Yes Raiden's message was vague and there were few plot holes but sometimes you have to suspend disbelief and let yourself get immersed in the experience. For example Die Hard is one of my favorite movies of all time but I know there are massive amounts of stupidity with the characters. The FBI and regular police are all idiots who would never behave the way they would logically but it doesn't matter. I think the story is fun and you just have to accept that there are going to be a few "whatever" moments and enjoy the ride.

My issue with being so critical of the story is that its just an action flick. And sure you can make arguments that MK has more potential story wise, and I'll agree with you 100%, but that is not what NRS was going for in this last game. It was going back to its roots. The series was never meant to go past Armageddon, hence the title. I feel that Boon and crew thought that Midway was done so they created a story that would kill everybody and bring the story to a close. So when they went to make a new Mortal Kombat game they had to do something and instead of just throwing the last twenty year's worth of games away they did the time travel aspect to keep the story going. No the best plot but it works to help reestablish everything. I'd expect the next game to have a better story then this one, but it doesn't mean I don't enjoy this last one. Johnny was hilarious, the voice acting was great, and I felt that they nailed all of the character's personality wise.

And I still believe that this game's story is the story of the first three with minor changes to it.
MK 1- Liu Kang wins tournament and saves Earth.
MK 10- Liu Kang wins tournament and saves Earth. Other characters were added to bulk up the roster, had no change on the outcome or story.
MK 2- The heroes must travel to Outworld after the massacre of the Shaolin and Sonya's kidnapping and fight in a tournament. Kitana helps them. They win and Liu Kang beats Shao Khan within an inch of his life.
MK 10- The heroes must travel to Outworld after the massacre of the Shaolin and Sonya's kidnapping and fight in a tournament. Kitana helps them. They win and Liu Kang beats Shao Khan within an inch of his life. Kung Lao dies, Kitana never thought that Mileena was her sister. Those last two really had no effect in terms of the whole story.
MK 3- Shao Khan invades Earth, he is beaten, and everybody is happy.
MK 3- Shao Khan invades Earth, he is beaten, and everybody is dead. the only major change story wise and the best part of the story in my opinion. They took a huge risk killing everybody, and yes the deaths could have been more dramatic they were still necessary in order to illustrate how badly Raiden messed up. He didn't behave logically and the writers knew that, and I feel intended. He ended up making the situation just as bad or worse than his vision.

The heroes becoming slaves in the Netherrealm helped set up the threat that the Netherrealm would play in the next game. I feel this games story had to accomplish in three aspects.

1. Continue the original timeline's story, which had hit a dead end.

2 Stay true enough to the original three stories and still make enough changes to keep it fresh.

3. Open up the possibilities of new story lines for future games.

I feel that this story succeeded in those three aspects and most importantly allowed way for a new things to happen in the sequel. Bottom line this game's story was never meant to be high class art. It was intended to go back to the hokey action movie plots of the original trilogy. Overanalyzing this story makes no sense to me because I feel that it was just meant to be a fun ride.

@McHotcakes

i would tend to agree and wish to add the fact that because many fans complained about the Armageddon story. Saying that it should have been different, better. I personally think that the young characters/stories deserved more than the Armageddon and i would dare to think that by restarting the whole thing, NRS showed that they agree.

Or the inevitably avoided answer of NOT wanting to go back to the old stories.
It might not be a questiob of ability, but a question of choice.

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To McHotcakes: You're focusing too much on the actual events within the story, which is a condensed retelling of the stories of the first three MK games. Yes, there are largely similarities in a broad sense, but if you look at the story for what it is, you can see the large difference. Even though the story of this game takes place in the MK1-MK3 timeline, the story itself is about Raiden sending a message back to his younger self to change the events of history, only for him to miserably fail due to his own incompetence.

Although the series started off as something of a spoof of Street Fighter, it became something more, and it can still become something so much more as shown by Kevin Tancharoen's work. When NRS wanted to take MK back to its roots, I seriously doubt they intended that to mean making the story cheesy. My understanding is that Ed Boon wanted to have a dark, serious, gritty MK game, and that seems to be what he was trying to go for in this game with the character deaths and whatnot.

About being critical of the story, I get what you're saying. It's about action. We're talking about the story of a fighting game series, and it can't be taken too seriously. You might think the story is "fun" and that we should just go along for the ride despite a few "WTF?" moments (few is an understatement), but none of that excuses poor storytelling. If you're going to do a pretty serious story and go at least somewhat in-depth with it, make it solid and coherent, even in the realm of magic, monsters, etc.

While you expect the story of the next game to be better (which it might since the story of this game sank pretty damn low), it's best to keep expectations low given the current track record. Trying to do a reboot story while connecting it to the stories of the past games in a pseudo time travel plot was and still is a huge mistake.

When it comes to the characters' personalities, I disagree with you when you said that you felt ALL of their personalities were nailed. I think that Johnny Cage's personality was well done for the most part, but he's a character that's very easy to pull off anyway. I do like a good number of character portrayals, such as Jade's, Stryker's, and Nightwolf's.

However, when we get to characters like Mileena, Raiden, and even Quan Chi, we have some problems. Mileena, aside from her gameplay, is an absolute trainwreck right now. What makes me even more pissed off about her was that I felt she was going on the right track with her MK: Deception and MK: Armageddon stories. But now, she's been practially FUBARed. For Raiden, well, he's a fucking idiot now, and I was liking the whole Dark Raiden arc of his story. So much for that. Then we have Quan Chi, whose problems stem from him being so fucking ubiquitous, lacking the subtlety that his character is about. Also, while his voice acting is pretty well done, I feel that he lacks a creepiness about him that was captured in MK: Conquest and MK: Legacy.

To wrap up what you were saying at the end, of course it wasn't meant to be high-class art. It's this whole "Oh, you guys are expecting too much. It's not meant to be a novel or Shakespeare or high-class art." mentality in arguing with people like me that pisses me off, because it stems from having the wrong ideas about us. People like me just want good, solid, coherent stories from this series, because their stories have great potential. The fact that this is a story for a video game series and a fighting series at that is no excuse for poor storytelling.

It seems as if there's an ongoing dilemma within the story and character aspects of the MK series. If you're going to have a somewhat in-depth mythology yet have all of these cheesy elements in defiance of what could have been a dark, serious story, why not make the stories, characters, and overall ambiance almost completely and blatantly cheesy?

Of course, MK has pretty much always had some cheesy elements somewhere in the games, but I'm talking about going all-out cheesy instead of trying to have some darkness and seriousness and failing in the process. I'm thinking along the lines of doing the stories of the MK games in a fashion similar to that of the Naked Gun movies. That way, we can know not to take the story seriously at all and then we can go along for the ride since there won't be a sense of darkness and seriousness that the series tried pulling off before.

To Chrome: If that's the case, then the NRS story writers should have simply made the story of this game a full reboot in which there's no connection to the previous timeline. That actually could have been easier for them instead of having this quasi time travel nonsense.

It's funny; reading this reminds me of the second Super Mario Bros. It seems like people were PO'd when they found out that game was just Mario's dream.

But I think people would rejoice if they found out that the MK9 story was just a dream. Or at leas a lot of fans would.

Meh. I love some of the characters that died in MK9 but don't really welcome the dream option only to have them brought back. It should remain and then you see some later characters and try and find a better/decent way to bring the others back.

I mean Liu Kang came back immediately in MKD, as a zombie i know but i don't really care how my favs would be brought back.

a bad dream? more like a nightmare. its obvious that NRS wants to go another direction with the story, so far it looks like crap. as usual they like to try new things with every new MK they release. its like they don't have faith in their previous work or that they think it needs to evolve into a new direction. i wish they sticked to what they made in the first place and just added elements to it instead of replacing it. there is not much we can do besides waiting for the next updates of the next MK. the least we can hope is that Vogel/NRS has noticed how bad the story has been received by the fans and that they know what they did wrong and somehow fix this in the future.