Yes, unless it serves no further intention or purpose it should not be mentioned.

Flashing out a character does not mean it HAS to be, or somehow becomes BETTER by being expanded upon.

Overdevelopment can be also a detractor.

I've never heard the term "overdevelopment" before, and I'm an english/writing student not unlike yourself, so...kinda thinkin' you just made that up to be argumentative.

I mean, you gotta pace it, don't want to throw all the exposition about an entire life story out there at once and overwhelm or bore the reader, and there's sometimes reasons to keep a character's backstory a mystery, but eventually the mystery has to be revealed or the character becomes a one-dimensional gimmick, like how if Noob Saibot hadn't been revealed as Classic Sub-Zero, he'd have gone down in history as an even more pointless character than Baraka.

I wasn't being that literal.

Every standard outfit for females in MK9 made them look like strippers. Sindel truly must be a magician to keep those triangles of cloth over her giant breasts. The worst offender is Skarlett, which was the least imaginative outfit design for any character in the game. A fighting game outfit can be both sexy and classy, not blatantly trashy. But, boners sell videogames, so the trend is not likely to change. It is mostly refreshing to see D'Vorah modestly dressed, but they just had to throw-in hooker heels for a female that is half insect, which makes zero sense. Sure, Goro wears a tiny speedo/loin cloth... but does he have a giant crotch bulge like every female has on her chest? Newp. Just how it going to be in an industry dominated by horny heterosexual males in both development and customer base.

Why not make some sexified male characters like below to make the boner market bigger? No pun intended. There are tons of gay male gamers.

The entire point of this thread is that social liberalism and political correctness are ruining everything. Like I said earlier, everyone needs to quit being a bitch. Get a backbone. Have some dignity. (Note: these statements are not directed at any individual on here, just today's society in general.) Equality is good. No reason to not have it, but everyone needs to quit getting offended by everything. So something has "God" on it, get over it, move on, it's probably had "God" on it for a long time. Instead of being a bitch and try to have it removed, why don't you disregard it? Go on with your day, is it really hurting you? Same thing with the debate we're having here, if NRS wants to create a gay character, they will create one. The female characters look like they do in 2011 because it was a bunch of dudes who made this game. Let's say a bunch of gay guys made a similar game. They would have a bunch of buff dudes in revealing outfits. If anyone of you on here say you wouldn't do that, then you're lying lol. After reviewing the pictures above, I figured out why video games don't have guys in costumes like that. Because they look ridiculous. There is a couple or a few that are alright, but for the most part, they look like Xandir from Drawn Together.

Um, have you SEEN the women of MK? You don't think they look ridiculous?

They didn't until MK9.

Obviously this thread has gotten a bit heated, and I don't think I can say anything that hasn't already been said.

That said, what would everything think about a character like Dynasty Warrior's Zang He being added? While it was never explicitly stated that he was gay, he had a more feminine design, and a more elegant and flamboyant personality.
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120523012815/dynastywarriors/images/4/4d/Zhang_He_Concept_Artwork_(DW3).png

I could see them doing something like this with Rain or a new male Edenian. Edenia seems to have a very warm climate, plus he's a water user, so it would make sense to have the males bearing a little more skin, like the females. I wouldn't want to see anything like the OP suggested, but a design like Zang He would suit a male Edenain.

To a degree, but they all looked like that in MKD and even MKDA. The ladies in MKDA weren't that revealing though. Other video games have females in the same or even more revealing than MK9 so I don't see it as anything.

Perhaps as an alt for Rain. I don't see his primary ever lacking the trademarks of a ninja.

As for a new guy...thing is, I think the whole reason they killed off all the important Edenians and left the realm merged with Outworld in MK9 is because they don't see Edenia as relevant and viable piece of plot anymore, at least for the time being, or want its absence to be one of the things that makes this universe radically different from the old one.

So I wouldn't expect to see new Edenians show up.

Add some bat wings on there and you could have a male vampire, though. It's certainly not uncommon for a vamp in pop culture to have feminine or flamboyant traits.

How about this..We'll get a character with a costume that has some fanservice for the ladies and gentlemen. But he'll have to be tough in his fighting style and personality. Maybe he could be a descendant of someone too but unique in his own right. Hang on I've got it.

...No? Too much?

Ok ok I'll try to be serious. It's actually been kind of frustrating to express my opinion on this subject because I can't find the right words to express my opinion. Now I'm probably jumping in where I shouldn't and I'll just ramble on like I always do but oh well here goes:

Gay Chararacter: Nah. A character that was written just to be a gay character ends up being flat and boring. And the reveal where "He had a male partner all along" thing is getting tiresome as well (looking at you Walking Dead S2 and Last of Us) No offense to NRS and it's writers but I have no faith in them coming up with a good gay character. So don't even try because it's tough to pull off successfully.

Male Fanservice: Are You kidding me? Shao Kahn, Kano, Jax, Reiko, Johnny Cage YMMV but Goro, Kintaro and Torr..wait a minute why does that sound familiar? Ugh, for fuck's sake I'm repeating myself now.

A little sexiness is fine but too much is well..It's too much.
There was absolutely no subtlety in how the sexualization was presented in MK9 just BAM! tits in your face. I don't want that, I don't want bulges in my face...Wait no that didn't come out right lemme try that again..I don't want the male equivalent to whatever the fuck was going on with Sonya Blade. It ends up being just as silly.

Now you can say "Well it doesn't have to be so blatant it can be subtle" And I will point you right back to Kano, who seems to love showing off his chest every game, and say "We already have that"

The sad thing is, you probably believe that.

Que?



Sonya with her increasing knockers and shrinking top, starting with Deadly Alliance.

Not to mention, we almost got this gem in 2008.

I hate the reasoning of "Well the women in MK9 we're oversexualized, why not the males?" This is some real stupid shit. Nobody asked for the females to look that way. Many people didn't even like it, I found Sonya's costume straight up fucking silly. And Mileena's 2nd Alt? Seriously?

How about we avoid oversexualization altogether? Instead of this insanely idiotic "Well the females look trashy, so why shouldn't the guys?" shit.

Li Mei's Deception outfit and Sonya's normal-ass undershirt and jacket are well within the only limit that ACTUALLY matters to the art of costume design: the characters' storylines and personalities.

Unlike Kitana dressing like a belly dancer (and I'd like to remind everyone that during story mode, the villains force her to wear her even more revealing alternate while she's a captive for no given reason, and yet she continues to wear it for the rest of the game, again no reason given.) or Sonya wearing the halloween costume/stripper version of a flak vest unbuttoned with nothing underneath.

Also, it's not like the unused concept matters since it was, y'know, not used...but if you were here in '08 then you ought to recall that I was one of the leading voices against Vincent Proce's reboot concepts (Although he did have some small ideas here and there like on Raiden and Scorpion that I found inspiring in my own art. "American soldier fights pantless", however, was certainly not one of them).

I don't give a crap what anyone says, that concept art will always be dope.

Having talent as a painter doesn't make your ideas good.

Well.... I think his ideas are great. Opinions are fun aren't they?

That is the gist of it. Think purple prose but with factoids about things.

Fantasy, especially bad fantasy does this all the time. World building is one thing, but purposeless meandering about unnecessary information does not make a world alive.

Literary examples: Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy - while it is also due to the time and stylistic requirements it is filled with tangents that are loosely connected to the overall plot. If you transcribe those into a modern fantasy, those would be redundant.


mzsteries are fine, not revealing stuff is not a sign of writer's incompetence. Hell, the whole subject of leaving interpretations up to the reader is an art of it's own. Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall. There is no suggestion wether Doug Quaid is still inside the VR or has successfully escaped it as an action hero. Spoonfeeding and holding the hand the reader is something I hate.

It's getting really annoying Razor that you keep asking for us to show you evidence of something, and then we do - and you completely ignore that and start arguing about something else. A simple "Sorry, I was mistaken" would be very mature.

We are apparently one of those 'stop having fun' guys.


Except all this edbating is essentially pointless. Nothing will change.

Awful concept, but no denying it's great artwork.

What are you referring to specifically?

If it's about the costumes, that's a matter of opinion, "evidence" or being "mistaken" don't apply.

I flat-out do not agree that there was ever anything wrong with any of the costume designs the women in the games wore until MK9. Showing skin does not automatically "look ridiculous".

You ever done costume design before? I have. In a fantasy setting, the most important thing is whether or not the outfit tells you something about the character, like I said, the only thing that matters is story/personality. A good costume shows you who they are, what they're about. A bad one clashes or sends an untrue message about them that confuses or misleads the audience. "In the real world you can't fight in high heels" or "armor with molded boobs is easier to stab in the sternum" or "I have a political opinion about fictional characters showing off cleavage and thighs" have nothing to fucking do with it unless the character theirself has a prudish personality or her story is about trying to blend in beside male soldiers like Mulan or Eowen in LotR.

I can tell you WHY Li Mei wears a dragon wings-shaped bikini, from HER side of the fourth wall, as if she were a real person who thought about that outfit when she put it on. I can tell you why Sonya came to MK1 dressed for an aerobics class. I could not tell you why Sonya came to MK9 in nothing but a "sexy soldier" vest she bought at Spirit of Halloween. That's the difference.

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None of these are overly sexualized and ridiculous for combat? EDIT: It figures, the MK Wiki's pics have stopped working in the middle of me posting this.