Yeah, that crossbow was pretty terrible.

I still wonder why they gave such a technological weapon to an ancient god.

I'd actually be surprised if Fujin got a no. If there was any character who absolutely needed to be in MK10, it's Fujin.

... That weapon was awesome, don't know what you guys are sayin'.

Its usage was nice, but it didn't fit Fujin at all.

It would have been better for Sonya or Jax, imo.

I actually thought it fit him quite well.

That crossbow was terrible. It shot out a green bouncy ball of energy. Fujin is the God of Wind, so why in the hell is he using something so damn futuristic? It made no sense at all. Wish they would've gave him his Wind Staff like he originally had in Armageddon before they gave him a generic sword.

But thankfully that crossbow isn't coming back. Gone are the days of gimmick weapons.

I don't know where you got the idea that the crossbow is futuristic.

First of all, crossbows are an ancient weapon from the middle ages.

Second, the energy is obviously magic, not a tech laser beam. It's almost the same thing as Nightwolf's bow and nobody complains about that. Perhaps if the whole crossbow were green energy and not just the arrows, it'd come across better.

Third, all of Fujin's other moves actually suck pretty hard. He's just a Kung Lao clone with a little Ermac thrown in. The crossbow is the only thing he ever did that had personality, especially because the bouncing shots off the roof and floor mechanic made it unique.
If he had it as a projectile special move in MK10, I might actually like PLAYING as the character, not just like him for story reasons.

Yes the crossbow is a very old weapon. If it shot arrows it wouldn't have looked so stupid. And the whole trajectory of the energy it shoots out is completely unnatural to how a crossbow works. It looks wonky.

Fujin's moves will definitely be more refined with MK10. Fujin still had some decent moves of his own. Like the Cyclone Spin where it would knock the opponent away. Or the projectile where he would throw mini tornadoes at the opponent and it leaved them open for a juggle. Then there's that Flying Knee move, even though Kahn had it first it worked well for Fujin.

I just feel that for a God of Wind, it didn't fit him very well.

It really didn't, and to be honest, Nightwolf bow and arrow is entirely different from that crossbow.

Nightwolf's weapons are formed out of the energy granted to him by his amcestors. His weapons are connected to him, both in story and gameplay.

I must ask, to anyone willing to answer, how in the hell is that crossbow connected to Fujin?

You don't know that. They could give him his crossbow as a move or they could introduce us the weapon system again. One never knows. So no, it has a 50/50 chance of coming back, just like the character.



I'll actually tell you why I personally liked the crossbow. The reason why I actually liked that weapon because it was different. It was a hell of a lot different than majority of the weapons that each character had. Some had interesting gimmicks such as Raiden's hammer that slammed people into the camera, Liu's sword that easily gave you "MAXIMUM DAMAGE," or that Tanya's boomerang was a boomerang... But Fujin's crossbow had two different ways to blast at an enemy. It was a nifty little way to have some more fun with a character who just wowed us with some wind slams and a flying kick.



Well, I could easily ask the same question to Raiden and his hammer when he could have had his staff, or how Sonya had a pinwheel instead of a gun, Jax wields a giant spiked club, like that character really needed a weapon. Does his crossbow really need an explanation as to why he had it when there were other characters that possessed a weapon that really made no freaking sense?

I never thought you'd be the one to try and defend Fujin's crossbow. The only move that had any personality? Really? From the God of Wind? Granted that his wind moves weren't realized well but...that pretty much sums up A LOT of the gameplay of MK4 in general. When they reinterpret Fujin's moveset I'd rather Paulo and the team focus on making his wind moves more memorable and distinct, not trying to make a crossbow relevant.

Besides, Fujin is another Shinto inspired Japanese god character right? Japanese didn't really use crossbows widespread or for that long so he might as well be wielding a Scottish claymore.

You're right. It didn't make a whole lot of sense which is why they scrapped weapons/fighting stances with MK9. Characters that had more signature weapons saw them incorporated into specials and attack strings but largely, the goofy weapons were discarded.

I think Raiden has a hammer because Thor was one of his past identities, like how Nightwolf calls him Haokah.
See...the gods in Mortal Kombat are Shinto in name only and always have been. They belong to the whole Earth, there's no logical reason to limit them to Japanese weapons. Also, the Chinese had crossbows and Raiden and Fujin seem to spend more time in China than anywhere else. Fujin in particular has spent the majority of human history living in a temple full of monks in the Himalayas, which is in Tibet. Y'know, guarding Shinnok's amulet?

Anyway, a crossbow is a ranged weapon, you can only attack from a distance with it. A distance weapon makes more sense for a character whose element is wind than ANY melee weapon does.

The "Wind Staff" was a tree branch. That's not even a real kind of weapon. It's not even a club, it would be if you snapped all the little wobbly branches off, but they were still attached! Whipping people with tree branches isn't fighting, it's playing, like an 8 year old. And obviously I agree that a giant Final Fantasy sword doesn't fit a fighter of the Air element. I've been over and over how much I hate that in MK9 they covered Smoke in heavy armor in his costumes because it doesn't fit his concept/powers, that's more of the same thing.

Not that anyone needs a weapon anymore, you're technically right about that...but consider that without a projectile that straight up blasts you in the face and does damage...Fujin's long distance moves are all, y'know, made of wind...and wind doesn't really hurt. Or look cool. It's even less impressive than Rain's silly water hose from the hands move. Fujin's ranged moves are entirely stuns and grapples. I'm not sure that's a fun playstyle for a character to have. Like I said, I've always hated playing as Fujin, which really bothers me because I like the character, or at least want to. And I have a feeling he's not going to be fun or attack in visually interesting ways in MK10 either but I desperately want him to be because I wish I could enjoy more about the character than just his story.

Again I reference MK9 Smoke: he's no fun to play as for me, for the reason everybody spams the same two moves with him over and over: because he's made almost entirely out of teleports and parries. Nothing else he has does any REAL damage, so you HAVE to just do the Teleport Punch and throw the cloud all the time...and the cloud sucks on its own, it's just a lame setup so you can jump in and attack or air throw. He has no GENUINE projectile, which is why in my own art I gave him a kusarigama, so he'd have something similar to but not the same as Scorpion's spear to strike from a distance with.

So I think giving Fujin the power to, let's call it "gather up his godly energy and release it in bursts" at people by creating a long range weapon that shoots bolts of green energy similar to Nightwolf's bow adds something that's both more effective and more visually appealing to the character than his gusts and tiny tornadoes.

EDIT: After rereading your edits I have no idea why you're just assuming Fujin is going to suck or why you think the God of Wind should have less wind powers because wind powers are boring to you. Look at Sub-Zero and how he uses his ice moves. They've ALWAYS traditionally been more about setting up combos and controlling space than just doing direct damage. It's normal to gravitate to a playstyle preference but it's foolish to expect that all characters need to emulate that preference. That's shitty game design.

Yeeeaaahhh...I literally just complained about those things.

Rain's bubble looks cool but the hose is weaksauce. In fact, it looks a little less impressive than it did in Armageddon because the spray graphically looks less like a thick stream from a firehose and more like a spray from a showerhead.



Because I wasn't impressed with everybody in 9?

Your whole argument here kind of assumes everybody was as happy with the game as you were. You can't make that assumption.



Strategic benefits don't outweigh repetitiveness. I don't care how you win with a character nearly as much as I care how enjoyable he is to both play and to watch other people play as.

Playing effectively as Smoke encourages spamming. That's not fun.



Her whip attacks are technically a projectile.

And you can SEE a whip. You can SEE her sexy gymnast flips and bends and her scratching with her claws.

Wind is a nearly invisible, visually unimpressive powerset. Fujin's like the only guy in all of Mortal Kombat whose moves don't glow or explode.

...Except the crossbow.



Because he did in all previous appearances and 9 did a good job with most characters...but not everybody?



I didn't say "less" wind powers.

I want wind powers PLUS the crossbow.

Like I want all of Smoke's moves to stay PLUS for him to have a stabby thing on a chain. Especially since they've decided not to give Scorpion any of the ropedart whipping and spinning he had in Shaolin Monks because some idiot at NRS seems to think Scorpion is all about swords, when he never had those before (Well...I guess they were decoration on his back in MKDA, but bleh.) Smoke could be doing that instead. But no, now no one has cool rope-spinning and a fairly obvious opportunity has been missed.



You have "no idea" how "boring" could could equate to "going to suck" for a person? You can't make the connection there?



Here's the thing about that: I don't like Sheeva or Baraka's playstyle, but I don't come on here and say I wish they had different moves.

But spamming is not a playstyle, it's a design flaw. It means the character doesn't have enough useful tools so players are stuck using the same one or two over and over again. That's why I complain about Smoke. (Although, the same thing can happen when a character has a lot of good moves but one is clearly better or cheaper than the rest, like Scorpion players with the TP punch...but that's not Smoke's problem.)

Sub-Zero's moves aren't all damage, but he has a wide assortment of good attacks, the freeze and slide are not the only useful things he can do. With Sub-Zero, you have more options than you have with Smoke. (Though I would make the argument that Sub's not nearly as fun to play in 9 as he has been in previous games, but that's more about his regular attacks and combos, not his specials. It really bothers me that Cyber-Sub's crazy spinkick-based fighting style is so satisfying to use since I hate the character concept so much. I wish the real Kuai Liang fought that way...)

There's also a visual element to it. Sub-Zero makes a big glowing blast of blue energy and ice crystals in pretty much everything he does. Wind, like I said, is nearly invisible. There's a reason Kenshi's telekinesis always produces a blue special effect. In screenshots and footage of early builds of Deadly Alliance, you can see they tried it with no effects added, he just stuck his hand out and the opponent would be pushed away by nothing, like what TK "would look like in the real world" you might say. The devs must have decided it didn't look right that way, so they added the glow.

But it would be almost inappropriate to add a glow or explosive effect to Fujin's moves because then it wouldn't look like wind, it'd look like energy or something else. The best you can do with his stuff is some, like, tiny white lines/streaks in the air, maybe have some leaves and twigs blow around like Hsu Hao's clap did. And that's...well, not very satisfying. I mean, it can be...I actually really like Hsu Hao's Hulk Clap. But Hsu Hao ALSO shoots a big ol' laser out his chest. There's variety there. Fujin is ALL wind, all the time, so your VFX options are limited.

He needs something more to give him that almost subconscious "oomph" that makes a move look "cool" or impactful. In a weird way, you almost have to think like Michael Bay when you design special moves. People want the big, flashy stuff. That's what feels good. And the green energy arrows are the only thing that's done the trick so far. Your argument against them is predicated on the idea that they don't fit his character. I completely disagree. As I've already said, a character who fights with air having a ranged weapon that's guided and propelled by the air as an arrow is, is extremely appropriate to me.

I'm not going through each response. EDIT: Holy shit did you ninja edit the OP. Why do you do that?

1. You ninja edited the bit about hating Rain's attacks. That wasn't there when I first wrote my response. Regardless (and yeah the hose hand move sucks) my point though is that NRS iterated on Rains whole moveset/specials with some interesting design (which you at least partially agreed on) DESPITE Rain "just having water powers."

2. Catwoman's whip is so not a projectile. You're just flat-out wrong there. But fine, let's pretend I said Flash, or Doomsday, or Bane, etc. My point was that not having a projectile doesn't automatically mean the character in questions "is a bad character", or "is going to be boring." Character variety is what makes a game fun and balanced.

3. You want to talk about special moves in a video game without talking about strategy, balance, character types, etc. Fine, but then this is ultimately just a matter of aesthetic preference in you thinking wind powers "blow." (sorry I coudn't help myself). There's nothing really to debate then since ultimately it's a personal preference though that certainly doesn't do much to justify the return of the crossbow.

4. Have you not considered that MK10 will likely be on next-gen? Have you seen what particle effects look like on the Xbone and PS4. And you STILL don't think wind can be visually represented as interesting?

I have a feeling this is going to get stupid, but I'll bite anyway: How is the whip not a projectile? What mechanically makes it different from, say, Scorpion's spear?

Can you attack the whip and do damage to it as if it were a part of her body? Can you only be hurt by the whip if Catwoman is standing so close that she could've punched or kicked you instead?



We're not talking about a grappler or a speedster. If you wanted to ditch Jax's purple wave thingy, or make some big, beefy subboss like Goro have no projectiles, you'd have much less argument from me.

But we're talking about the God of Wind right now. That's a powerset that literally ONLY applies to attacking from long range. Fujin shouldn't be a "no projectiles" guy, he should be a zoner. He should be almost ALL Projectiles. Some body-propulsion would make sense too...but the point I'm trying to impress here is the guy's moves are all about things being carried by the air. He carries himself on the air. He carries his opponent on the air. If he stands far away, shoots an arrow, and it's carried on the air, that continues the theme, it doesn't go against it.



Glowing sparks and explosions look good in 1080p? Yes, I could never have seen that coming...

Wind still doesn't glow or explode. I dunno if there's some game you've played where the dust and breezes made a big impression on you, but maybe you've got screenshots to show me what's so special about it?

Oh man, I really didn't want to go down this path as the conversation isn't about stupid fighting game semantics. The easiest way to explain it is because the whip doesn't leave her hand where Scorpion's spear does. Projectiles are zoning tools but not all zoning tools are projectiles if that makes sense.
So yeah, while Catwoman's whip can zone a fixed mid-range, it's a footsie/poke/punish tool and not a projectile. Another example (if you know Street Fighter) is Dhalsim's Yoga Fire (the fireball /projectile) versus his Yoga Flame (mid-range fire breath). A MK9 example is Sektor's Missle = projectile, Flamethrower = poke/footsie.



See I think the opposite. Who better to be a rushdown character than the God of Wind, an element commonly associated with speed/agility? Again though we're just ultimately arguing personal preference with you asserting that your opinion is somehow irrefutable fact. You're just wanting Fujin to be more visually interesting to you and somehow the answer to that is incorporating a crossbow energy projectile. I still maintain that Fujin can be just as visually interesting and fun to play despite him sucking balls in previous games AND without needing a crossbow projectile.



I was referring more to particle effects. What if Fujin chucked background debris with wind? What if his cyclone attacks looked less ridiculous? What if his wind funnel specials had badass thunderclap sound effects?



I mean I get it, the holy trinity of "super power effects that aren't easily portrayed" are Psychic/Sonic/Air. Air is almost always lumped together with storm so it's more visually interesting. I still think you're selling Air powers short though by acting like you've never seen air powers portrayed in a visually interesting way. EDIT: Here, first thing to come to mind was the spell High Maelstrom in Dragon's Dogma. Link here - at the 5:44 marker..

Hammers, as well as other blugent items, are symbolic to many thunder gods, which explains why Raiden also had one.

Anyhoo, in the case of Fujin, I asked the question because someone said th crossbow was like Nightwolf's bow and arrow, which I felt was all kinds of wrong. I am aware the odd weapons in MK4, but my talk was only about separating Nightwolf and Fujin.

And to be honest, I felt the pinwheel suited Sonya quite well.

Okay, before the conversation splurs into a giant mess, I think it's time to move on since well... It's a 9-0 for yes to return.











Next on our list is Goro

As of right now, his fate is up in the air due to where we last saw him, which was the Belltower and got frozen by Sub-Zero. However, I don't feel that he should return. I feel that we should have some other kind of a sub-boss with this game, despite that Goro WAS the sub-boss during the fourth, I just don't see him returning to be that spot again. It's a no for me.

It doesn't leave his hand, It's on the end of a rope that he's holding. In the newer games they even animate it reeling back in instead of just flying offscreen when it misses.

I get what you're trying to say that a whip doesn't fit the real world definition of a projectile, like a bullet or missile propelled away. But it does fit the fighting game definition, the whip behaves identically to a fireball. It moves horizontally and has no hurtbox, I'm not aware of any FGC terminology that makes a distinction between mid-range ones and fullscreen ones.

A zoning tool that I wouldn't call a projectile would be, like, a ground pound or Quan Chi's energy columns, Nightwolf's lightning, that sort of thing, because they attack vertically. Hell, Noob's shadow-clones are a projectile, and they look like a full-sized person running into you.



I don't really think of speed when I think of wind attacks, I think of telekinesis-type stuff. Pushing yourself at the enemy seems kind of tactically dumb when you could be standing back where it's safe and throwing the enemy around instead.

Besides, Raiden already uses the power of flying really fast for a rushdown attack. The most important thing when redesigning Fujin's moves should be making him not copy anybody because in previous games, copying other people's moves has been ALL he did. The ONLY thing I'm comfortable with him sharing with anyone else is if he were to fly the same way Sindel does. But I would hope he'd actually be able to punch and kick and do air combos while he's up there, because Sindel's moves while flying have always been limited to nearly nothing, which makes the whole idea of her being able to fly wasted potential.



I dunno, the hit-sparks on Jago's Endokuken in KI are pretty and all, but the whole "next gen" is kind of a point of contention for me. I'm not entirely convinced it was the right time to end the PS3/360 era, nothing next gen I've seen looks all that different from the current gen. This is the first time in gaming history that there hasn't been a massive technological leap with the new consoles like there was from 8 bits to 16 to 32, y'know? It's not like when we saw Mario in 3D for the first time and there's Final Fantasy VII going "Hey look, we can do FMVs now!" Or even how we went from everyone being kinda blocky and blurry on the PS2 to "Hey, this texture is so detailed I can read the writing on the blade of this dude's sword" with the PS3/360.

This next gen is just more of the same as the last gen, graphics have started to plateau and now shit just gets a little more polished, like "hey look, we have a bit of code that makes Lara Croft's ponytail drape over her shoulder more realistically!" And good luck pushing the envelope beyond that sort of thing because Triple-A games now take as long and cost as much to make as Hollywood blockbusters, so if you put out a flop, you could bankrupt your dev studio with one title.

I feel like the best we can hope for from the new consoles is better draw-distances and less framerate dropping. And maybe, if we're really, really good boys and girls for Christmas, Santa will bring us a version of the Unreal Engine that loads textures when it's actually supposed to instead of them slowly popping in whenever they damn well feel like it, so that the next time I play a game like the Mass Effects, the first few seconds of every new scene won't look like shit.



Sound effects? Man, the last MK that had good sound effects was 3. I won't be holding my breath.

I dunno, maybe they'll make the wind look cool, I have seen wind and tornado spells look interesting in various kinds of sword-and-sorcery games before, it's just that NRS tends to drop the ball in the imaginative-use-of-VFX department pretty often. Hell, after all these years, they're STILL taking the lazy way out on Johnny, Nightwolf, and Kahn having streaks instead of afterimages in their moves. Why even call it the "Shadow Kick" if it's not going to have fucking shadows, y'know? It's not even a limitation of 3D, Cage had actual shadows in MK4! A Sareena move had shadows in Armageddon! What's the deal there?

But when I think of Fujin, I don't really think of tornadoes and stolen Kung Lao foot dives like maybe other people do. When I played him in MK4, even though weapons were useless in MK4 because if you ever even tried, the AI would go into crazy "must hit it out of your hand IMMEDIATELY" mode, I still used Fujin's as much as I could when I played as him ANYWAY, because he was the only guy in the game whose weapon wasn't really a weapon. He was the one character who stood out in a game where everyone played largely the same, by virtue of the fact that he had a projectile item instead of a melee thing. And it could ricochet up and down diagonally, which no other projectile in ANY of the games behaves like. (they had kind of a bouncy ball in Armageddon, but that was just a goofy looking low-fireball, it didn't have the fullscreen unpredictability.)

Plus he used it in his Fatality. No one else had a finisher with a weapon in it, unless their weapon was a signature part of the character, like Raiden's quarterstaff, Shao Kahn's hammer, Kabal's hookswords, Kitana's fans and Mileena's sais, that sort of thing.

So when I think "Fujin", I think of the crossbow. To me, it's part of his core character. I look back on the Armageddon version as "that's not Fujin", the same way MKD Tanya doesn't feel like Tanya to me because she doesn't have purple fire or her snap-your-neck-with-her-crotch move, or how MKDA Jax didn't have any Gotcha Grabs.

(Okay to be fair, I also say "that's not Fujin" to the MKA version because I think his appearance was too changed and Hotaru looked more like Fujin than Fujin did. As a character designer myself, for me that just doesn't make sense to do. But I digress...)
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Here's the big thing about it for me, and this answers Riyakou's question about what makes it "connected" to him the way Nightwolf's bow makes sense for his powers, too:
If the whole crossbow, arrow and all, were just wood and metal, I'd probably agree that it doesn't fit him and should be scrapped. But the bolt is green energy. That means it's not natural, he's conjuring it magically. I don't know why it was bright green persay, what they intended it to mean when they designed him in MK4, but I know what it suggests to me, that Fujin can do more with his powers than just blow people around, and I like to see powers used creatively.
What I would suggest is that perhaps all of Fujin's wind moves should have a faint glow of color, like how that tornado in the video you posted had a blue aura around it. And the signature color of Fujin's moves would be a pale blueish-green, like his pants. And Fujin should, in MK10, make the WHOLE crossbow out of this glowing blue-green wind energy instead of pulling out a wooden one, to show that he's like pressurizing the air to make it feel solid or something like that, and THAT's what he's shooting the opponent with. I think it would be a cool way to show that windcan do more than just push or pull or spin you.
Either that or it could be given a history as an enchanted mystical weapon that he acquired somewhere, and could be made significant that way, similar to Raiden's lightning rod staff or Shinnok's Amulet or the Dragon Medallion. That would add dimension to Fujin's character by fleshing out parts of his backstory that would otherwise be a lot of empty space. I mean, the dude has existed for hundreds of thousands of years and never had any interesting adventures? That seems unlikely.
In fact...Raiden has the staff, Kahn (formerly an Outworld god before he became emperor) has the Wrath Hammer, Taven and Daegon (half-gods, I know, but one of whom was meant to end up replacing Argus as Edenia's god) have the Drakeswords, Shinnok apparently likes to carry his amulet on the end of a sort of trident (which does fit his being ruler of Hell/"The Devil")...maybe every god should have a signature item, as a symbol of status/office? That's not uncommon in Mythology. Many Norse Gods had their own weapon, not just Thor. Odin's Spear is particularly famous. Of the Greek's Zeus's lightning supposedly came from javelins and Poseidon was always pictured with a trident. I believe staves and shepard's crooks are particularly common among the Egyptians.

I say Yes to Goro. Isn't there like a whole Shokan army still alive????

No to Goro, I'd rather have a different sub boss.

If Goro returns, I'd rather see him non-playable nor as a sub-boss.

Turn him good for good this time and have him as a cameo.

I'd be excited to see Goro embrace the form of Drathon, but I would rather have it wait until MKXI and Onaga. So no – save something for future too.NPC: totally, fully fleshed out fighter: no.