You know it's not even that I'm all that upset with the story in and of itself. I suspected months ago when we started seeing teases of him with Red Eyes that Dark Raiden might return. I suspected months ago when we didn't see ANY Kitana footage or hints from story mode other than undead footage of her fighting an ADULT Cassie, that she might not return.

And everyone suspected long ago that an Evil Liu Kang was a candidate for a potential boss.

And as for character deaths, who gives two craps in MK, honestly? We all know death is not a limiting factor in this franchise.

None of that REALLY surprises or upsets me.

I think what's upsetting is comparison to what COULD have been.

Complaints have been made for months that the roster was completely safe and lacked any risk or effort to flesh out some of the lesser used characters from the MK4-MKA era. The only returning 3D characters are EXACTLY the ones you'd expect. The two that ALREADY returned in MK9 + Shinnok, the big bad.

The "secret" boss was the last fragment of hope any of us had that there might be a little more life given to those characters. I mean look at people's biggest hopes/rumors: Havik and Reiko.

I don't think anyone would have even objected to Shinnok being the big bad, had they just been up front about it and not filled us with false hope and teases. Let us KNOW we were getting a re-imagining of MK4, instead of teasing us with new direction, only to bring us right back to the same conclusion: Shinnok tried. Shinnok failed.

Even the cliffhanger isn't very new and different. We already had Dark Raiden in the old timeline. His motives don't seem different at all. We already had an evil undead Liu Kang, the difference here being now he has an arm-candy queen and he's in control of his own faculties and not Raiden's meat puppet (though the two still seem to be mostly on the same page with one another in the new timeline).

And what makes the sting of it all worse is the comic book plot does all the things we WISH the game plot did. It gave both the big and small characters something to do. It fleshed out villains who weren't headliners from old games. It has Red Dragon, Black Dragon, Lin Kuei, Shirai Ryu, Mileena's Outworld, Kotals Outworld, Special Forces, Raiden's Team ALL incorporated and ALL being fleshed out, in a universe that's just more expansive and interesting than the story being told in the game.

As I said earlier, the game starts in MK4, Pauses it, Lets the goodguys have kids, then unpauses MK4 and lets the kids finish Shinnok off instead of the old guys.

And for a game that basically re-writes the MK4-MKA years, it guts 90% of the elements many of us enjoyed from those games, or relegates them to comic backstory (which is why we like the comic better). The only things they keep are Shinnok's rise and fall, Quan Chi being a dick, Kenshi being the only guy they give a damn about... and a half dozen character cameos, none of which are playable.

If the game plot were completely unchanged, but they just told us up front Shinnok was the baddie, and those half dozen cameos were actually playable and not just cameos, I don't think anyone would be half as pissed about the plot itself.

It's the plot combined with the far too safe disregard for the 3D era, I think.

The ending cutscene:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v;=AzN8psWUKjM

Wow this sound really disappointing, really short and lacking to say the least, so there a characters that play a relevant role in the story that aren't playable and other ones who don't even have chapters and barely appear who are indeed playable. This only cements the idea that some characters were only added to increase sales because of popularity, having little to offer to the progression of the Story.
I gotta agree that there're things that do seem to indicate this was rushed. Maybe part of the secretly was to avoid the fans to realise this before release.

Gotta love the apologist hastily going through this thread and doing damage control, as if attacking the ones with negative reactions is going to do something, you get out if you can't deal with others having an opinion. Ridiculous.

You don't even make sense.
What to expect from salty fanatic?

i'm not at all surprised by any of this. the game seems rushed.
hell we didn't even get new character reveals until 2 months ago.

but, unfortunately, it's a fighting game and most if not all fighting games now are made for tournaments like EVO and such. there are worst story modes in fighting games tho.

and there's nothing a good fanfic and comics can't fix.

we can now just shake our heads and wait for whoever is going to be potential DLC, no point crying over spilt milk i suppose.

im gonna assume no one recorded the entire stream tho?

Amazing point. Wonder why they're still MIA?

Yeah, I mean this game is going to be awesome and fun to play for a long time. Am I irritated and sore over the roster choices? Yeah, but I'll get over it. In fact I pretty much already have. The actual story isn't as awful as people are making it out to be.

One thing is for sure though...they'll pretty much have me by the balls when it comes to further DLC past the Kombat Pack if they decide to do it.

Unless the people who got the game early just don't give a fuck about arcade for some reason, it does seem weird

You know maybe this story will turn out to be not as bad as it seems. I've only seen the ending, not been through the journey...I'm going to watch through the walkthrough when it comes out, but still NRS had a lot of missed opportunities

Agreed. Just even based on what we know from story, it seems like Rain and Tanya should've been in the initial roster. Sad they were excluded entirely or held to DLC.

And you can count me in the group curious about where this shit is headed, also. That head is still gonna give me night terrors, tho. WTF NRS?

You know when you write the summary like this, what exactly is the problem with story mode?

The arcade was shown this morning in an stream, it has 10 oponnents. I didn't watch it all because it was boring, the guy was playing with Kenshi.

A few things I'd like to see in MK11

- Make Fujin Protector of Earthrealm
- Have Shang Tsung appear and make him one of the protagonists
- Mysterious Edenian/Earthrealm hybrid on a revenge quest (much darker story) for the massacre of her adopted Outworld village by Netherrealm demons/story unfolds like a Greek tragedy
- Actually make Tanya and Rain more two-dimensional characters centering around the resurrection of Edenia
- Sareena's story with Sub-Zero and Noob's return
- Taven and Daegon finally making an appearance
- And Cyrax is out there somewhere not being stuck in some desert

Did Reiko just decide to fucking not show up.

He definitely dies in the comic if this is the case.

there's only one thing I would add to that list...
Where's Cyrax? oh,saw you edited your post. sorry

most important thing to me is that no one is complaining about gameplay.

Does the story ever cover how subby returned human. Or does nrs just pretend it never happned

That's being addressed in the comic not next week but the week after that.

That's because the gameplay is actually good.
Really does seem sad that a decade ago we had better story but horrible gameplay and now it's the exact opposite.

WOAH what am I hearing about no arcade endings????

Smoke appears in one of the Brotherhood of Shadows faction kills, so I'm thinking a couple of other revenants will also do the same.

They haven't been leaked yet. They're still in the game.

Hang on, what?!? Is there a video of this?

You know there is a certain bit a humor in the question of "Where's Cyrax?"

I'm imagining him waist deep in a desert somewhere going, "Aw Shit! NOT AGAIN!"

And we all thought that re-appearance in the Jade's Desert background in MK9 was just an Easter Egg!

Honestly though, I wouldn't mind at all if they took Cyrax's plot the same way they did before. Wandering around glitchy until Special Forces restores him. I liked him as a Special Forces agent. I'd like to see that explored more, instead of seeing him recruited and then immediately co-opted by Nitara.

I'm guessing his lack of mention in MKX is just to leave the door open for a return later. As DLC or in MK11. If they don't mention him now, whatever story they spin around his return won't contradict anything.