Yes to Frost.

Hell Yes to Frost. She was the most requested female character to be DLC in mk9. If they don't put Frost in initial roster list in MK10, then she'll guaranteed be DLC or expect some backlash.

Actually, no, that would be Tanya.

I've always felt that her concept, while interesting at first glance, was ultimately poor in taste, in the end being nothing more than a female Sub-Zero.

Also, her story is bare, at best. She appears as an ally to the good guys, but ends up being a villain with a generic cause: replacing the leader of her clan. Her story moves so quickly, you can get the gist of it just by reading the lower end of the second half of her MKDA bio. Even worse, in her ending, she seemingly meets her doom. So, not only does she secretly move through the usual "I'm pretending to be your friend but I'm really planning to overtake you" routine, she fails at it miserably.



A very good example of how a concept like that could be handled well, in my opinion at least, is Quan Chi. Quan Chi appeared as an ally to Shinnok, but all the while was scheming out his own plan. However, he is entirely his own being, not having been derived from any other character in the series, and since he's already a villain, he has no room for any quick, melodramatic shifts in alignment.

Also, in his ending in MK4, his struggle and intentions are well explained. He felt he had been done horribly wrong by Shinnok after doing all he could to not only get Shinnok out of the Netherrealm, but to his former divinity. After all that had happened, his only reward was not being killed (or as Shinnok put it, the gift of [his] existence).

That struggle justified Quan Chi's keeping of Shinnok's amulet before he even revealed to have had it. So, when he did reveal it, it was done in a "Ha! Take that, bitch!" fashion.



Another good example is Tanya. Her concept is unique, for while nothing in her bio ever actually stated that she was an ally to the Forces of Light, it was set up to make it seem as if she was. From the very beginning, she was against the good guys, but played the part of a victim-turned-hero very well.

Also, like Quan Chi, she is her own being, not being derived from any other character, save for her kissing fatality, which is similar in quality to Kitana's. Also, she bore no real shift in alignment, for her assisting the Forces of Light was part of a greater scheme from a superior source, rather than a personal endeavor.




Since they have already proved that the pseudo-ally concept can be successfully done in Mortal Kombat, it is quite upsetting that Frost ended being the way she is. This same action was done to Li Mei in Mortal Kombat Deception, which I found appalling, especially considering her highly good nature in Deadly Alliance.

To be fair, with the "she's just a female Sub-Zero" thing, as I pointed out, the core concept of Frost literally would not work if she had any powers other than Cryomancy.

Like I said, she was created to tell a specific story, the story of Sub-Zero looking for a squire to pass his mantle onto. You can't train someone to be the next "Sub-Zero" if they don't have cold powers.

Personally, I like the idea. I'm totally into heroes who have sidekicks and pass on their mantle to them, like Barry Allen and Wally West, or how Dick Grayson was a way more interesting Batman than Bruce normally is, for that brief period where Bruce was "dead". I also like the idea of it tragically going wrong, of their charge turning bad because they weren't ready for the challenge of being a teacher or maybe the student was too far gone before they even got there. To continue the Batman reference, she's not Dick Grayson, she's Jason Todd.

I think people would have bought into it a lot more readily though if Frost's moves had been original instead of literally taking all the ones Sub-Zero had used in previous games and didn't have anymore like the puddle and slide. That's obviously something they can rectify in the future as we've seen by how NRS handled Killer Frost in Injustice.

Also, I felt Deception was when Li Mei got interesting. "I'm an innocent young person defending my home village from bad guys" is pretty one-dimensional. I mean really, her only two personality traits are "good person" and "naive". She's basically female Liu Kang, except Liu had a bit more than that going on in his first couple appearances.

Considering she is derived from an existing character, I think it would have been better to flesh her out more to make Frost her own person, rather than a clone.

It probably would have been better had she wore a costume that wasn't so similar to Sub-Zero's. In fact, it would have been great if her costume wasn't even blue. That would have made her ice powers more significant, to me at least.



This was my biggest problem with her.

Not only did she look like Sub-Zero, she had the exact same moves as Sub-Zero. It seemed like Frost had no originality.



I felt her innocent defender role was significant, considering how very rare it is for characters truly pure of heart to appear in MK.

Much like Bo' Rai Cho, Li Mei had no demons, no inner evil of any kind. Until Deception. I was like, "Seriously? Can anyone stay good in this game?"

I would love for Li Mei to succeed Kitana as the leading heroine, while Kitana succeeds her mother as Queen of Edenia. These are the kinds of transitions I seek.

What color would you suggest? Having an ice and cold theme pretty much limits you to either blue or white.

Personally, I like her design because she looks like a female ninja but doesn't look anything like Kitana/Mileena/Jade. The presence of pants and traditionally male elements like a hard, sculpted mask and a V-mantle is significant IMO.

And I know I'm in the minority on this for some reason, but I particularly love her gelled up spiky blue hair. It suggests personality, she's punk rock, rebellious, anti-establishment, and potentially hardened/tough and anti-feminine. Some tattoos and facial-piercings to go with it wouldn't hurt for her future return, IMO.



That's kind of an absurd thing to say.

For all intents and purposes, all of the core Team Raiden members are "pure of heart". Sonya's the closest to having "demons" and even then it's a bit of a stretch since the Kano grudge has become barely a blip on her mostly world-saving radar.

The problem with Li Mei is she's not just pure of heart, she's pure of heart and that's her ONLY personality trait. She's TOO pure, to the point where she has no character. You say you want her to replace Kitana, but the reason Kitana is the lead female character is because Kitana has a lot of detail and dimensions and complications to her character. She didn't start out a good person, she had a life full of conflict where her personality radically changed and developed over time. The same thing is why Sub-Zero became the most popular male character in the franchise.

At least when Liu was introduced in MK1 as the purest, goodest, most naive and trusting guy, he was ALSO a Monk, a calm, meditative, philosophical man-of-religious-faith, and was established as determined to defy Shang Tsung's corrupt rules by never killing anyone.

And in his second appearance, he had to CHANGE some, by dealing with the responsibility that since he didn't kill Shang, Shang came back and slaughtered all his friends and family. And adaptations added the fact that the MK champ doesn't age, so he's gotta deal with watching his friends grow old like the Highlander, which plays into him gaining a romance angle with a chick who also doesn't appear to age.
What does Li Mei, before the mummy moment, have to define her BESIDES "She's young, naive, innocent, and the goodest good person"?
Unless the mummy twist was Vogel's plan all along, I honestly don't think they put a lot of thought into Li Mei's character at first, when they designed her for MKDA. You can kinda tell from the concept art in the Krypt and that "modelling card" joke picture that they just wanted some "young, sexy Asian girl" eye candy and her whole design is based around that. She's built out of two very bare bones concepts, a "hip, club-dancing modern girl" (which was obviously abandoned when they decided to make her an Outworld villager instead, though it still influenced her costume design) and a "student-character from a Hong Kong kung fu movie" archetype.
The "ha ha, shouldn't have trusted the bad guys, they put her soul in a mummy" tragic ending is the only part of her that's creative, and the "the mummy merged with me, I'm fighting the desire to serve Onaga and losing" Deception story was a smart continuation of that because it gave her more facets and an internal conflict.

In defense, she didn't have the SAME moves as Sub-Zero other than the Ice Puddle. Her slide and her ground freeze differ, so to be fair, she did NOT have the same moves.

Sub-Zero's slide stops when his foot hits his opponent. Frost drives her entire self to trip her opponent.

Sub-Zero doesn't freeze the entire stage with a ground freeze, Frost does.

The only original move that was given to her was her teleport punch... even though a LOT of characters had a teleport move in Armageddon. But I'm not here to debate that since I did just ask out of curiosity and wasn't looking to further debate.

I will agree that I too personally did not enjoy the villain story. Since she has been a concept since MK2 (Her biography card says that she was supposed to be in the second game, but countless of threats prevented them from adding her in for those who never noticed), they could have done so much with her. But instead, they give her this weak "I'm just gonna turn on you with a motive that's hardly worth mentioning," and that's that. She then returns becoming more delirious and well... stupid, because she thought Sub-Zero was trying to kill her. What? Really?

No, if she is to return, she better have a revamped story that doesn't involve any of this stupid, "I'm secretly evil." There's been one character that played that so well and that was Tanya. (In my opinion).

Nope, it was Frost.

http://boards.themortalkombat.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=5&t;=1021

I made a chart and was spreading it like virus on other mk forums. Frost doubled up on Tanya.

I don't think Frost's "evil"ness was ever a secret or that she had no motivation for being so.

Her motivation was being, basically, a young person who doesn't want to be treated like a kid by all the old people who think they know better.

Her Bio and Konquest Mode referred to her having plans of her own that differ from obeying Sub-Zero, and talked about Sub (and Sonya and maybe Raiden too) knowing she had a bad attitude and trying to teach her humility, but all she cared about was proving how great she was. Her turning on him was never a surprise or twist, really.

That's a perfectly valid personality, she's not some secret villain like Tanya, she's just a brat. A disobedient, rebellious teen (or 20-something, however old she is. Probably college age). All arrogance and ego and none of the wisdom gained from life-experience. I hope she still acts like that when next she appears because it gives her a lot more dimensions than being yet another nice good guy would, and makes a lot of sense for a young person to be that way.

I do agree that having her go crazy in Deception/Armageddon was dumb though. I think they just knew they wanted to bring her back but couldn't think of anything else to do with her except keep her status quo from the end of MKDA the same, instead of having something new happen with the character. I'd have liked to see her grow and change from how turning on Sub backfired on her, like either have her be sorry about it and taken back in by Sub-Zero and reform, having learned her lesson, or have her meet and be further corrupted by one of Sub's enemies like Sektor or Noob Saibot and struggle with the idea of whether or not she's too far gone to be forgiven, something like that.

I'm particularly disappointed we never got to see any conflict between her and Sareena since Sareena joined the Lin Kuei shortly after Frost turned on Sub, and Sareena's whole thing according to her Armageddon bio was being so thankful to Sub for taking her in that she secretly followed him around and tried to protect him from stuff.

This doesn't appear to take voting on Twitter, the only place Ed Boon was polling, into account.

I'd also like to know what "other forums" were being polled, because Frost never won any here on MKO.

I KNOW she wasn't secretly evil, I just wrote that. In the eyes of Sub-Zero, she was. To the fans, not one bit.

I don't think he saw her that way, I think he just saw her as troubled and in need of help even after all she did, which is why in Deception, he froze her again and kept her in the temple until her craziness could be cured.

Of course, the only reason the plot went the way it did with her being stuck in a giant block of ice two different times was because some dumb level designer put the Cryomancer Tomb in the Lin Kuei stage and Vogel had to write an explanation for how it got there. And the only reason she was written as having gone crazy was to give an excuse for her to fight Taven when she wakes up (though surely they could've come up with something a lot better than "she thought he was Sub-Zero", for fuck's sake...)

But still, forgiveness and generosity are consistent with Kuai Liang's character during MKDA thru Armageddon. Hell, in Armageddon he still thinks his brother Noob of all people can be saved! He's perhaps TOO forgiving and optimistic for his own good.

I loved Frost's character design and I think that if it wasn't so well done, she wouldn't have been as well received.

Yes to Frost of course, She's my Favorites Characters too

Yes. I would enjoy if Frost returned accompanied with a "female Smoke" in MKX. Good thread, Icebaby – maybe we could have a poll for Monster too.
I found him rather exciting.

Times up for Frost, 8-3 for a yes!











Now onto Fujin!

I want him to return based on the fact that he could be a crucial part of the story, seeing how this easily will be MK4's story. I could see him and Raiden possibly feuding with the way Raiden has handled certain situations and possibly fight against one another for protector of Earthrealm... That is if they decide to keep these guys both as allies and they can help one another out. The story could really go either way. It's a yes for me.

HELL YES for Fujin.

This is a character who should've been in every game after MK4. So much potential unrealized. I can't wait to see how he'd look and play. And that Flying Knee move would be the perfect combo ender. I can see it already.

Definitely YES.

I already liked Fujin, but now that Raiden is a total fuckup who genuinely needs to be replaced for everyone else's safety, him showing up is even more necessary.

Yes to Fujin.

YES to Fujin.

His wind moves can surely need fixing.

If he replaces Raiden, surely they're still friends but Fujin will struggle with Raiden becoming his enemy after putting Earthrealm in danger.

I second that! Fujin definitely needs to be in the next game, and he better not be portrayed as an idiot. His character should have been in MK: Deadly Alliance and MK: Deception since he did become Earth's protector god after the events of MK4.

To be fair...being protector of Earth is actually the reason he was not in MKDA.

The game takes place in Outworld. Fujin was protecting the home territory while Raiden took all the fighters to go after Quan and Shang BEFORE they could attack Earth.

He definitely should've been in Deception, though.

YES!

For fuck's sake, YES!

This guy should have become a frontrunner in the series a long time ago. Fujin better have a strong presence in MK10.

YES for Fujin as long as he leaves his crossbow at home.