RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
I don't think it was a struggle, though, because immediately after Sindel does it, Nightwolf kills her, and Nightwolf's not that important to the plot. He's not a "main" character.
The real heroes, Liu Kang and Raiden, didn't actually have to struggle to beat her, and since there's only one chapter left after she's dead which Raiden spends alone fighting Scorpion, the zombies, Liu Kang (all of which are NOT members of Kahn's invading army), and then Kahn himself, the rest of the invasion wasn't actually a struggle because of those heroes being removed from the fight either.
A struggle is not merely physical.
Raiden grew so desperate after not only failing to get help from the Elder Gods, but also seeing his the majority of his warriors lying dead, he begged a dangerous enemy for help. He sunk to an all-new low, forming Liu Kang to lose faith in him.
That was the struggle Sindel created.
To say, Nightwolf himself did physically struggle to defeat Sindel, however. Hell, he had to die in order to defeat her.
RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
A) Give the bad guys chapters and let us play as them, so that we/they can actually win some fights. Reptile, Baraka, Mileena, etc. look like losers because they lose every single actual fight they're in. The stakes of the two tournaments would have been higher if we had seen more onscreen eliminations of the heroes. The only good guy who we ever actually see lose a match is Johnny Cage.
While I've been longing for chapters for villains, it won't necessarily prove that they are a threat. The chapters are designed to bring victory to the player; the matches are practically void. It's not the chapter itself that matters, but how the chapter plays out. The villain would have to be acknowledged as a threat, not simply win four fights.
RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
B) The problem isn't killing people, the problem is which people they killed. Just for example, why not leave Stryker and either Cyber-Sub or Smoke alive so they'd have a chance to grow into their new roles. Why bother to change them if you're going to wipe them off the slate at the end anyway?
Yes, Cyber Sub-Zero and Stryker getting killed off was kinda dumb, but it doesn't have anything to do with villains being or not being a threat. When it comes to specific matches, how one could matter is if the villain's opponent is in fact perceived as a threat. Let's say Mileena goes up against Fujin, a powerful wind god, and Fujin is killed. The player would be like, "Daaaaaaaaamn!" Those are a kinds of battles a villain would need. Not all the time, of course.
RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
Or alternatively, if they had told a more traditional story where Liu Kang and Kitana remain the main heroes instead of being turned into tragic victims, you could still kill other, less plot-relevant good guys in order to up the "these guys are dangerous" factor. There were several deaths in the original trilogy, after all, though some were undone by later games. Johnny Cage and Kung Lao was kind of a big deal back in MK3.
I think NRS had clearly grown tired of having the same heroes, and I think that's why they did what they did.
I certainly got sick of Liu Kang being the hero a long time ago, and I got sick of Kitana simply being a princess. I would've much preferred other events, but we got this one.
As for the upping, killing less relevant good guys does nothing for a villain. It only satisfies the players who value the more relevant characters. "Yeah, let's kill Art Lean instead of Johnny Cage. That'll show how powerful Goro is!"
If the less relevant heroes are all immensely powerful and were very difficult to defeat, I'd consider your approach. But they're not, and we know they're not. It wouldn't mean a thing if they were killed.
