Not long after that was said Boon backtracked to saying "slightly fewer characters than Deception," Deception had 9, IIRC, and we're at 8. The only characters reminiscent of anyone else are Cassie and Jacqui (potentially), and they will surely play differently enough to justify their place, even if they aren't as exciting as the others, imo.

I heard we were going to have more new characters then Deadly Alliance which i believed gave us 11 new characters. But that doesn't seem to be true. But also, new doesn't mean "Brand new, no relations what so ever" new means we've never meant this person or they've never been playable.

but you cant say the fist time you saw cassie, she wasnt the most obligatory mix of johnny and sonya. and then down the road, you get both johnny and sonya. and to top that, jax somehow wheel chairs his way into the roster, and we get his daughter too.

sorry, but the story mode has completely jacked up the final roster, while you watch all these NPC characters you want to play with in story mode not make the cut.

NRS has gone back to the roots with this installment, which is a good thing, but has tainted it with the next of kin roster flooding.

I agree with other users in the belief that the game has changed a lot from what they originally planned, it suffered lots of modifications along the way and tough cuts had to be made in order to ensure sells. I think the apparently unbalanced and safe roster is the direct product of that process.

Well they have to explain it somehow, right? This game seems kind of like a "passing of the torch", transitional game to bring in new characters and fans , but keep the essence and feel of the franchise. Would you really want all kinds of new characters, with none, or very few known characters and no explanation as to where and how these characters came to be and what their connection to MK and it's characters and lore is? That would be pretty idiotic to do. They might as well just create an entirely different game and franchise if they did that.

Yes.

When you have 25 spots, 5 to 6 characters can make the difference between just a few and more than enough, this game I believe falls in the latter. Way too many MK1-2 characters for a game that just came after MK9. Passing the torch is barely an acceptable excuse since it only applies to like 3 characters, and is based solely on the possibility those klassic characters wont appear anymore which is extremely unlikely.

I agree

Well ever since the announcement fans have been drooling on Boon's twitter with "plz will my favorite character return" messages, no wonder they decided to play safe.

I think the dead characters should have at least been replaced with 3D Era favorites. Boot 4 was something Tanya could wear, but at least it's Kitana. My favorite MK female, but she could have just sat out. Same with Kung Lao for Fujin and whoever (Tremor?) for Jax.

Fans for 3 years was begging for their favorite characters that was killed off by Sindel to be brought back for MKX so I'm not surprised its the same fighters from before

Not having some of the dead people return as revenants would make the Church Massacre scene and Quan Chi getting their souls utterly pointless. When I saw Cassie I did think she was going to play as a mix of Johnny and Sonya, however now I know that they play totally different. We haven't seen how Jacqui plays, but if I had to guess it would involve her gauntlets and kickboxing. Totally different from Jax's mechanical arms super strength. They both count as new original characters. As far as most new characters, I do believe Boon backtracked like others have said after realizing it wasn't technically correct. Still no one in this series looks like a reskin character like Jarek, Kira, etc. so it;s still up there in new characters.

Agree agree agree

If you're talking to the fans here, I'd assume that we all know the characters that come from the main installments, so these 'very few known characters' wouldn't be that irrelevant.

If you're defending the casual fans, I'm sure these same people didn't even know who Stryker, Kabal, Ermac, Rain, and Noob Saibot were and most likely considered them new characters anyway, at least from their perspective. They probably grouped Skarlet as one of these characters they simply didn't recognize anyway, when she was the only one who actually made her debut in MK9.

We literally had people on this very forum mad at why certain characters were present before their debut in MK9(Nightwolf, Sektor & Cyrax in the MK1 tournament when they first appeared in MK3, Quan Chi in....the game period), not to mention the whole game(Jade and Smoke didn't have much to offer even with a whole chapter each).

Besides, seems to me that people are taking new characters such as Cassie and Kotal Kahn pretty well(possibly even better than these so called classic characters that everyone knows and loves) and there's already a lot of dick riding towards Erron Black who we've only seen a couple of cartoon paintings(no offense to the comic book illustrators) and like 2 gameplay screenshots of.

It's not like we would've been able to predict characters such as Mileena and Scorpion to be pivotal points within MKX's storyline back when it was first announced anyway.

I think the first piece of printed media said the most new characters since MK1 so I think they're pretty good.

The problem is fans tend to take things said early in the promotion cycle as absolute gospel. Somehow it got to the point where people thought more than half the roster would be new characters even though we heard as early as E3 that long time fans would be very happy with the returning roster of characters.

Story and consequently roster are some of the first things chosen. The characters we're looking at might have been worked on a little later in development but they were always going to be in the game. Gotta get that voice acting in, you know?

It's not NRS 's fault if Johnny Cage or Sonya or Jax are more of a cash cow than Reiko, Tanya and Hotaru.

MKX has to sell as more copies as possibile.
Tekken keeps on adding new characters while keeping the old ones.
Street Fighter did the same so far.
Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive too.

Ps: what is the point of Tremor in MKX? C' mon I'd pick Kobra over him any day without the shadow of a doubt.

Mhm. MK, off the top of my head, is the only fighting game franchise that has such a drastically changing roster from one game to the next. That needs to stop imo. Apparently these new characters were designed to stick around for awhile so hopefully that happens and the roster can be a little more static.

Why would you take away one of the few distinc features of MK just so it can be like other fighting games? static rosters are awfully boring, expecting the same crap every game and the same sacred-cows permanently screwed into the roster, it kills any sense of suspense and anticipation, fans will get more conceited and expect their favourites every game which in turn will make it even harder to introduce new characters or make changes to the previous roster, chances of a decent story will drop significantly as well. I honestly hope that never happens.

If they are such cash cows, why not use them as dlc? Also street fighter lost characters. If q is not in the next game ooooooo but I apreciate street fighter for adding on characters with there ultra editions but mk will probably not do that. Tremor can control the earth. Something mk does not have. Kobra is a regular fire ball shooting fighter. Something mk already has. Also to oracle some things do get cut.

That's not true though. Soul Calibur has (had tbh) one of the best stories in fighting games and they just changed their roster. Most games manage to find new things for their characters to do instead of just getting rid of them. And honestly roster predictions/reveals have become one of my least favorite aspects of the promotion cycle. It's waiting on baited breath to see if your fav is in instead of knowing they're in and having the excitement come from what they'll look and play like and what they'll be doing.

For the very same reason why Sub-Zero and Scorpion are in the main roster since the beginning : because they have to sell the retail game before worrying about DLCs.

And having Jax and the Cage couple as DLCs would be pointless because people want to play as them in story mode.

First subzero and scorpion are the face of mk not jax. Second speak for yourself cus every place I go doesn't want jax and if they released Johnny as being the first dlc and lets just say with story people would of jumped on it. People will still buy the game if there fave is dlc. All they care about is that they are in.

Was it really necessary to create so many new characters anyway, when more 3D era characters could have been more prominent, satisfying the need to appease the die-hards, and introduce more roster variation to the casuals (some of whom would have taken them as 'new' anyway).

Don't get me wrong, We got Shinnok, and i'm glad about that, but there are literally tons of others that had only 2 game appearances too (and that's only because MKA included all of them).

Speaking of MKA, does no-one remember Jarek? MK4 - Kano rip-off. MKA - individual. They did the best they could with him at the time. Now the things they could do to improve him (and his ilk) are phenomenal. Jarek had the potential to be this game's Stryker, but it's looking incredibly unlikely he'll ever be seen again. Unless NRS are saving all those 3D-ers for MK11 (?!)

Not mad about it at all. I think its a good balance of old and new.