We don't need same old shit only packaged differently.

If I was nrs I'll employ some platinum blondes because they're more creative. People should keep being fired, hector was the start...

And yet, he says he did. Your interpretation is in conflict with the actual words coming out of his mouth.



It's not assuming if a character says it on-screen, dude.

Quan Chi outright admits that he manipulated Scorpion into fighting Kuai Liang because HE, Quan Chi, wanted Kuai Liang out of the way.



Well that's not what happened, so I'm sorry that it bothers you.

On top of the actual evidence, you're saying that a retcon happened in MK4, but MK4 was a TOBIAS game. Tobias never retconned himself (you might argue that making Raiden protector of Earthrealm is a retcon, but his MK1 ending was never canon, so it's not. Adding info isn't a retcon, only erasing and replacing info is). Retcons in Mortal Kombat don't start occurring until Deadly Alliance, when the writers changed because Tobias left Midway.

Here's even more evidence: During Armageddon, promotional materials were released detailing the complete backstory of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, written in the first person similar to the bios in Deception, that confirmed the vow was still canon. Here's an excerpt from Scorpion's:

Where is Sub-Zero?:
"I have entered Shao Kahn's tournament seeking to destroy Sub-Zero... but something happened. I have witnessed Sub-Zero spare his opponent's life. This can not be the same Lin Kuei who ruthlessly murdered me so many years ago. My shame for exacting my revenge compels me to watch over this new Sub-Zero in hopes he does not follow the path of his older brother."

A tangled web we weave:
"I have escaped damnation. However, I have been approached by Shao Kahn to aide in the destruction of the Chosen Warriors from Earthrealm. When I discovered Sub-Zero was among these warriors, I defied my agreement with Shao Kahn. Even if it means giving up my new freedom, I gladly return to the depths of Hell to keep my vow."

Revelations:
"Sub-Zero was not the killer I have made him out to be. I have been deceived by the sorcerer Quan Chi. In his attempt to cast me to the Netherrealm, I was able to pull him with me."

---

Look, if the idea of Scorpion's motivation changing back and forth really bothers you, here's how it always made sense to me:

Before MK9 shoved Quan Chi into all kinds of events he was never originally a part of, there was no real indication before MK4 that he and Scorpion talked all that much. He just gave Scorpion the power to come back from the dead until his mission was fulfilled, because due to the events of Mythologies, they both shared an enemy: Bi-Han.

And that mission was "Avenge myself, my family, and my clan." And once that mission was finished, Scorpion's "soul would rest", meaning he'd lose his spectre powers and become a regular member of the afterlife like everyone else.

After MK1, Scorpion THOUGHT he had fulfilled that mission. So when he rose again in MK2, he was confused why, because Bi-Han was dead. So he heard about the new Sub-Zero and assumed Bi-Han had somehow survived or come back and needed to be put down again before Scorpion could rest in peace.

He gets to the tournament, finds out it's not Bi-Han after all, and asks himself "but wait, if I have my revenge, why am I not resting?" And the answer he came up with was "Maybe the real way to rest is to make up for my sins. Then I'll go to Heaven instead of being a Hellspawn." So he protects Sub-Zero for a couple games.

And Quan Chi never contradicts this idea because HE WASN'T THERE. He wasn't present during MK2 and his only involvement in MK3 was helping resurrect Sindel. He had no contact with or interest in Scorpion at that time because he'd already got what he wanted from him, which was Bi-Han as an undead slave. Kuai Liang wasn't a threat to him at the time so he didn't care.

Then comes MK4. Now, Kuai Liang IS a threat to Quan Chi, because he and Shinnok are the ones attacking the realms, and Kuai's brother told him all the secrets of the Brotherhood that he'd learned during Mythologies. So Quan Chi confronts Scorpion and goes "You've had it wrong all this time. The reason you're not resting in peace is because Bi-Han killed you...but Kuai Liang is the one who killed your clan, to get your revenge, you have to get him." And Scorpion fell for it because after all, he still wasn't resting in peace, his mission was unclear to him, he was just assuming atonement was what he needed to do...but if anyone would know better, it's the guy who gave him the powers in the first place, right?

And then he finds out Quan's been tricking him all along, he killed the Shirai Ryu, and killing HIM will fulfill the mission and let Scorpion rest in peace. (Which is why, in Deception, Scorpion's powers change and he becomes Champion of the Elder Gods instead of a spectre. Because Quan Chi DIED in that game, which would have ended Scorpion's spectre mission and removed him from the game, so the devs had to give him a new role rather than lose him as a character.)

It makes perfect sense that way, and there's very little assuming because like I said, most of this is ACTUALLY SAID in canon endings, I'm just extrapolating for you so you'll understand how and why it happened in the order that it did. I don't see why this order of events is a problem for you.

I wouldn't mind seeing unlockables, more than just two though for the next game.

Absolutely.

6-8 would be an ideal number. That way it's not too many but not too little either.

I like hidden/unlockable characters, but I prefer there to only be somewhere between 1 and 3 of them, like in the first few games. I think that makes them more special.

MK9 had two unlockable characters and there was nothing special about them. I think it's the way characters are unlocked that makes them special. Cyber Sub and Quan Chi took very little effort to unlock, so it didn't feel rewarding to unlock them.

I think if they do go back to the unlocking characters route, that people should have to buy them in the Krypt. Or you beat Arcade Mode and unlock them like that.

Well yeah, the problem with Cyber-Sub and Quan Chi was that neither one is much of a secret. I mean, Cyber-Sub was supposed to be a surprise, sure, but he's more like an alt-costume for a character that's already in the game, that just happens to have his own moves. That's lame. And friggin' Quan appears throughout all of story mode, from the very first scene. He's no secret at all.

Hidden characters should hide. And yeah, be at least tricky to unlock. I'm not saying "beat the boss with a double flawless without using low kick" or "enter a 12 part Kombat Kode" hard...but I don't want to just automatically get them after doing something I was already GOING to do the moment I played the game for the first time, i.e. beating Story Mode.

Fujin, Hotaru, Shujinko, Reiko & Li Mei deserve to be revamped like Kenshi.

As for the rest.

It looks like
MK4:
Kai
Tanya
MKDA:
Bo'Rai Cho
Nitara
Drahmin
MKD:
Dairou
Ashrah
Havik

I would rather see a lot more than that.

Let's say MK10 has 30 playable characters. Let us start off with 12 or 14, and we can unlock the rest as we play.

Remember Deadly Alliance? Full roster size: 23, hidden & unlockable characters: 11. The challenge of getting all of them (even Mokap & Blaze the hidden guys) was a huge achievement and a lot of fun to boot. Since then the amount of unlockables has reduced each tijme and it feels less challenging.

Man, I remember back when I was a kid and I used to play Tekken 3 all the time.

Unlocking each and every character with my siblings and uncle was so much fun, especially since I knew very little about Tekken at the time. I was about six or seven years old then.

My biggest gripe with Mortal Kombat Armageddon was not being able to unlock all of those characters.

I'd be willing to go for unlocking 1/3 of the roster. Let's say MK10 has 30 characters, unlocking 10 would be pretty cool. But unlocking half of the roster? That's a bit much by today's standards.

That's because today's gamers are lazy as hell. lol

No one wants to unlock or earn anything, except for "achievements." A fighting game has more potential to lose replay value than any other genre, so unlocking characters gives fighting games a greater purpose than merely duking it out over and over again.

I for one very much enjoy unlocking characters, and the more you have to unlock the more fun the game is. To say, I can understand having far too many characters to unlock, however I personally prefer to unlock a large portion of characters. Here's my chart:

Total------------Unlockable
20----------------8-12

25----------------10-15

30----------------12-18

35----------------15-20

40----------------20-25

>40----------------50%

I just think that making everybody unlockable makes the real hidden characters not special anymore.

Blaze and Mokap in MKDA kinda sucked of their own accord because one was a joke and neither had weapons or finishers, sure, but they sucked even more for the fact that they weren't special, they were just "the last two you get".

Deception doesn't even HAVE anybody who's secret. Once again, Dark Raiden and Zombie Liu Kang were intended to be a surprise, but at the end of the day, they're not the "super-unlockables" they were hyped up to be, they were just "the last two you get" again.

And Armageddon doesn't have any secret characters either.
It's like Syndrome's evil plot in The Incredibles: "When everyone is special, then no one will be."

I never really understood the point of having "hidden unlockables."

I mean, it's a fighting game, not an RPG. I only see it to be a good idea when the hidden character is already known and notable, such as Noob Saibot in Mortal Kombat 4. That was actually a nice surprise.

As for Mokap and Blaze, even if MKDA started out with all 21 characters, those two would have still sucked, because they were poorly made. Unlocking characters has nothing to do with it.

These are pretty high. I like unlocking characters as much as the next guy but you should have more starting characters than unlockable characters.

I like unlocking characters.

But you know what I like more? Secret fights. Have a character that isn't playable, and just have them be in the game as a secret fight.

Those I miss. Granted that we had it in the latest game, still... I miss having the secret fights by doing something special in the fights.

It's about knowing how to sell a character to the audience, to make them interested and attach to someone new who they otherwise might not give a shit about.

The spectacle of being "secret" is the only reason in the world that Reptile, Smoke, or Jade has ever been considered cool. On solely their own merits: moves, storyline, and costume design, all three of those characters are wastefully unimpressive in every game they're in, but the simple act of giving them debuts that made them different from the rest of the cast, the popping up out of nowhere before a fight to say something, peeking out from behind trees, being represented by a Question Mark on the arcade ladder, requiring the "Ultimate Kombat Kode" or to win 50 fights in a row or what have you...these things made them stand out despite their shortcomings and seem mysterious and special, these are what gave them a fanbase none of the three would have otherwise.

But nobody became a fan of Ashrah or Hsu Hao or Hotaru because they and 20 other dudes had to be unlocked in the Krypt for 500 red koins or whatever. There's no mystique there, nothing is special about it. What's the point? The more there are to unlock, the more unlocking characters becomes busywork instead of an act of discovery or unique experience.

Only Reptile fits that bill, having been the first in gamimg history.

Jade is a fan favorite, and has been for years. While Smoke isn't necessarily a popular character, I've never heard complaints about him.

Mystique is not what leads to a good character. A good character is what leads to a good character. Kenshi and Quan Chi weren't secrets of any kind, and they are the two most recognizable characters from the post-MK3 era. Ashrah, Hsu Hao, and Hotaru were terribly made. No amount of mystery was going to change that.

And considering she's a palette swap with no actual storyline or personality and low-tier moves in most games, why do you suppose that is?

Because she was introduced in a memorable, impactful way.



I don't know what advice to respond to that with other than maybe "read more"? Being a moves clone in most games, whether or not he should be a robot, his Deception costume, his feminine hairstyle, any of this ringing a bell? Smoke is one of the characters in the series people complain about the most.
But I never said they aren't popular, what I said is that they're bad, which is a different thing.
Smoke is a POPULAR character, despite all there is to complain about...and the reason for that is because the way MK2 and MK3 revealed him made him stand out, but his actual merits are few. If he hadn't been made special, then many of his fans would never have latched on to him because there's almost nothing to him to latch onto. He almost never has his own moves or story or even a consistent design.
Even in MK9, their lack of personality or story of their own makes it no coincidence that his and Jade's chapters in Story Mode are the only two in the game that are entirely filler, nothing the two of them do ever actually moves the plot forward, those 8 fights could have been left on the cutting room floor.



Because they're genuinely good, like Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Raiden, Kitana, and so on.

Being a secret can make a bad character interesting who otherwise would not be.

Jade is actually one of the most defining characters of the MK storyline, due to her close friendship with Kitana and once devotion to Shao Kahn.

Her major importance to the storyline is actually the main reason I like her. Also, you speak of her as a palette swap as if many of the characters in MK aren't palette swaps.



Scorpion was good for all of two games, now he's just well known.

Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, and Raiden are virtually default due to their longevity in the series, much like Scorpion. They aren't special because they're well-rounded characters; they're special because they've been around the longest (Sub-Zero only in essence). Kitana is the only one of those four I can actually give to you. She, like most of the characters introduced in MK2, was actually well made, and she happens to be a palette swap.



Those complaints are done in favor of his development, not in opposition to his inclusion.

An opposing complain would ultimately lead to questioning his appearance in a game, which so far has not happened.


In the end, none of your statements seem at all convincing as to why hidden unlockables are good or necessary, especially considering the majority of characters you referenced weren't even hidden unlockables, but non-playable secret fighters. Your statements seem more biased by personal opinion than anything.

Honestly, the more sensible thing would be if the character isn't well developed, either make the character better or scrap him/her. Making them an hidden unlockable or secret fighter will never change them from being horrible characters. They actually have to become better.


If you wish to reply, by all means do so. But afterwards, we should really get back on topic about progessing the storyline.

If Jade is important to the MK story, then why isn't she in MK vs DCU, the game where the roster was specifically picked to be the ten "most iconic characters" in the franchise?

Why has she NEVER appeared in ANY of the Mortal Kombat shows or movies, except Annihilation where she was a villain who had nothing to do with Kitana? She's not in Conquest or Legacy or Defenders of the Realm, while Kitana is a major character in all three and lesser characters like Ermac, Stryker, Rain, and Kenshi have appeared.

Gee, maybe it's because the story of Mortal Kombat can be told without her, without anything important being missing.

All her relationships to Kitana and Shao Kahn make her is a lesser supporting cast member. Important characters are important because their stories are about THEMSELVES. Jade's story is always about Kitana. And their connection doesn't even work both ways, because while Jade's story needs Kitana...Kitana's story doesn't need Jade, there's no moment anywhere in the games where Kitana's story would change if Jade wasn't there.

Even in MK9, Jade's whole chapter is about rescuing Kitana from the dungeon...and at the end of it, she fails to do anything and Liu Kang ends up being the one who rescues Kitana. If Jade hadn't been there, even if the scene where Jade tells Raiden and Liu that Kitana's been locked up hadn't happened...Liu still would have found out on his own when they went back to the arena to continue the tournament and saw her chained up. Jade literally did nothing that affected anything.

Jade makes no difference to anything anywhere. You could delete her from the Mortal Kombat universe and there would be NO butterfly effect.

That's actually kinda impressive, to have a character be so unimportant and ineffectual that they've been in FIVE games (six if you count Shaolin Monks, where she shows up for one fight, never talks, dies, and Kitana is mad about it for like ten seconds and then forgets all about her) and yet left NO mark on the world around them. She's had the same amount of impact on her universe as Mokap, Meat, and Male Chameleon!



I'm not going to argue how deep the main characters are with you, because even if I were to agree with your opinion of Scorpion and Sub-Zero, which I very much don't, it's beside the point and going down that road will only take us off-track.

What does matter is Smoke and Jade have been in more than enough games to be fleshed out and BECOME as deep as whoever you're "willing to give me" like Kitana is, but the developers have repeatedly failed to make them so.



That's not the purpose of complaining at all, you are missing the point...which you seem to do a lot when we argue. Even I too am arguing that Smoke and Jade need to be improved, not gone. I wouldn't really want them deleted, just fleshed out better and made to matter more.

The POINT that you're missing is that with Smoke and Jade, in spite of their many, many faults, they've had fans since MK2, when neither even had a bio or moves of their own. And the main reason they got so popular back then when there was nothing to them was because they were MYSTERIOUS and SPECIAL, because they were HIDDEN CHARACTERS.

The POINT of this entire argument is that Hidden Characters are seen to be special and cool by audiences precisely BECAUSE they are hidden, even if they have no story or moves or even kinda suck. (And maybe you're not a member of the audience who feels that way, and you don't think hidden characters are special, but just for once could you maybe try to imagine how PEOPLE OTHER THAN YOURSELF feel about something, please? I know you sometimes have a problem with open-mindedness, what with that "Zoe Saldana isn't allowed to call herself black" thing you pulled the one time...but ask around if you like, I PROMISE you that you're in the minority on this one.)

Hell, even in the modern era, where the practice of having hidden characters has mostly died, it still sorta happened with Cyber-Sub-Zero. Sure, a lot of people still hate the idea of him, but he was also accepted immediately by a lot of people who liked the shocking surprise, and he grew on others over time, even though for the most part he's a Cyrax clone.

And being special and different from the rest of the roster helped the popularity of the DLC characters as well. Skarlet got hugely popular out of nowhere despite having no dialogue in a game where everybody else is voiced, almost no story, and moves that're an awful lot like Mileena's. And Kenshi and Rain have been accepted for the first time by some people that didn't like them before...why? Because having to pay separate for them gives them advertisement and ATTENTION that separates them from the rest of the cast. It makes them SPECIAL, much like being a hidden character you have to unlock by special means does.

Whereas you might own MK9 for years without ever playing as Kano or Sheeva or Baraka, you HAVE to try Skarlet or Kenshi or Rain at least once if you bought them, otherwise having them would feel like a waste of money.

And that's what it's all about, it's about means of advertising for individual characters. Call it salesmanship or showmanship, it's about finding any means that makes a character SEPARATE from the rest of the roster, draws attention to them, and makes them more interesting.

That's what being hidden can do for a character. But the more characters you make unlockable in one game, the less special it becomes. You rob everybody who's unlockable of the ability to stand out and seem unique, they blend back into a crowd of characters that are just like them. Being hidden/unlockable needs to be rare to be worthwhile.