Blame it on the WB!! Well, not all of it

If you’re a regular viewer of The4thSnake and you follow his opinions on the HD continuation of the Mortal Kombat franchise or you simply keep tabs on WB Games and NetherRealm Studios, a conclusion you can draw is that the games started to get… complacent and stick to familiar angles come MK11.

Which is ridiculous to put into a sentence when we follow the series from inception all the way until the modern day. A couple of fighters in 1992, extra fighters and moves the following year, elevated stakes by 1995, experimentation with 3D after 1997, perfection at a cost from 2002 to 2008, bankruptcy, rebirth in 2011. And by numerous metrics, MK9 isn’t just a beautiful retelling of the first three games in the series, but is a grand return to form that blesses legacy fans and acts as tour guide for new fans. (^_^)b

Yet there’s differences and drawbacks to focus on with both of these.

1992, 1993, and 1995 had Mortal Kombat’s debut, MKII and MK3 respectively. The introductory game gave us a competition between seven different warriors and a mirror match. Goro is Shang Tsung’s four-armed bodyguard and Shang Tsung’s ultimate goal is to steal souls. In the next game, after he fails and Goro gets killed, Shao Kahn leaves Shang Tsung with one last desperate chance to both enrich Shang Tsung’s own soul collecting goal while weakening Earthrealm’s defenses so that Shao Kahn may take it with little effort. But once again, Liu Kang Bruce Lee’s himself to the top of the food chain.

If I may, I must allow a monster turd to pass through. He apparently didn’t die for real at the end of MKII.

The game does a rather poor job of explaining it (doesn’t even have dubious Japanese-to-English translations to lean on for this), but the stone shatter death scene is mitigated by none other than Shang Tsung who revives his master. And come the third game and ultimate version, he revives Sindel too in Earthrealm. When she was alive to defy his push into Earthrealm and it cost her her life, she banned Shao Kahn for eternity from entering Earthrealm, but if she was reborn on Earth and refit to serve Shao Kahn as desired, then those barriers also cease to exist.

Personally, I prefer this outfit of hers to her appearance in Deception or afterward.

Based on that description, it can be said that Sindel wasn’t always evil. And this is true, as both the original and the HD reboot series acknowledges the restraints Sindel put on Shao Kahn before she died. Even when she reappears to aid Shujinko in Deception, this holds true, though with alterations and caveats. She was undead by MK3, but expanded upon and featured for a dedicated amount of time by Deception as a classic character alongside Jade, Scorpion, Baraka, Mileena, Nightwolf, and Kabal. This also puts Shujinko’s place in canon in an awkward position. He was technically retconned to fit Scorpion chasing Quan Chi down in the intro cinematic for MK: Deadly Alliance but debuted in Deception as the next generation Liu Kang… even though Liu Kang died in his lifetime.

Channel: VGSuite

(-_-) We’re only getting started.

For MK4, Shinnok, the fallen elder god from the Netherrealm, is the final boss, which aligns with my gut instinct that MKX is the alternate diversion to the original 1997 Mortal Kombat 4. Both feature the bone head as the final boss, though I haven’t played MK4 yet, so I’m not sure if he had an upgraded, corrupt version. He probably doesn’t in stark contrast to his HD reintroduction.

As for Deception and its counterpart, MK1, blends it with Armageddon by introducing reality-breaking stakes. Shujinko’s role is more prominent with the emissary Damashi taking him on a 40-year journey to collect the Kamidogu to send to the Elder Gods for safekeeping, only for that to flip and bite him in the ass and everyone else in the fabric of existence. Onaga’s being one of the most devastating in a long time:

Channel: shinquan

And the One Being does indeed return when Shinnok tries it in MKX.

Channel: Kamidogu

From being the One Being to awakening the One Being. Perhaps at a later date I can recount all the villains Mortal Kombat has had in the last 30 years so that we can properly rank them. Based on performance, Onaga solos with unholy backshots on existence if you know the lore. Blaze was merely a fiery automaton.

╰(￣ω￣ｏ) The Dragon King wouldn’t–he will (👉ﾟヮﾟ)👉 He promises!

So all that aside, what are my issues with the old and new timelines? Where do I draw the line and start rewriting things? Depends, really. I mention The4thSnake as though his word is law and to his credit, he probably knows way more about the games than I do. But he’s not the only voice in the MK community, not even just the mature and bloody games community. Actually, those games need to be specified further, only a handful of them spill enough blood to summon the vampires and the blood donation centers.

The4thSnake, Tactical Bacon Productions, and even TrueUnderDawgGaming all talk about corners of the franchise that aren’t really explored anymore and as much as they praise different parts of the franchise, for The4thSnake and TBP, the story mode in MK9 and beyond needs a major overhaul. Doing away with the chapter system locks the audience to a subset of characters that can be explored beyond the main story or expanded upon further than a subset of four fights per chapter across 12-16 chapters.

I’m a little torn on this. On the one hand, the bias pivots the chapter system to only the protagonists, but not every protagonist/hero type gets a greenlight.

To be fair, his motivations were ambiguous come his debut in 2002. He merely wanted to be the best swordsman in the world, and Shang Tsung weaponized that with extreme prejudice. It cost him his eyes but taught him a thing or two about humility. He was changed from DLC character in MK9 to plot relevant in X, but largely as one of the quieter serious hairy dads to Takeda as Takeda and the other Kombat kids took charge. More on that later.

Roughly every “good guy” gets a dedicated chapter in MK9, though to hear it from The4thSnake and TBP, that’s the game where they all solo and they hardly come to blows with one another. You don’t start playing as Sub-Zero for instance until after his brother adopts the mantle. No matter the timeline, the canon is that Scorpion kills Bi-Han in the tournament whose corpse is used for Noob Saibot (technically meaning Scorpion made a new friend by ripping his spine out) while Bi-Han’s younger brother Kuai Liang is the new Sub-Zero. Bi-Han was the more ruthless of the two with Kuai Liang fighting more honorably, though both brothers are quite cold in their outlooks. No pun intended.

Personally, this is one of his best looks \(^_^)/

Noob Saibot had been on the backburner for Deadly Alliance, leaving Kuai Liang to reinforce the idea that the Lin Kuei was undergoing a philosophical overhaul, so the Lin Kuei being immoral mercenaries to a pro-Earthrealm militia when Kuai Liang becomes the new Grandmaster is one story beat to keep. Though, if NetherRealm is serious about showing the Lin Kuei under Bi-Han, then it’s better to give him more than five minutes of screen time.

As for the rest of the evil characters, they got their fair share of screen time if you played them in the 2D games and if you met them in Deception. They were already taking their endings to their logical conclusions before that, it’d just be a bonus and a logical step to contextualize the middle between the start point and the end point. Even for characters guaranteed to lose, Shaolin Monks shows that Shang Tsung is a sore loser. The old man got away in the midst of the tournament while Goro f[quake]ked s[block]t up, and didn’t really stop manipulating events from behind the scenes. It was clever of him to feign defeat and form a temp alliance with Baraka and catch the Wu Shi Academy off guard; how else was he getting those catapults to Earthrealm?

Then again it puts all the emphasis on the main four villains of the MK universe: Shang Tsung, Quan Chi, Shao Kahn, Shinnok. The jobbers are wind-up toys at the best of times. They all have their own motivations and all get some kind of spotlight by at least MK9, but the stakes still retread the old 2D games with some tweaks.

Not everyone needs a spotlight, that’d make the game even longer than it already is, but The4thSnake proposed a display of strength with a few of the NPC jobbers that appear in the Ladders and nowhere else. Some of the heroes do take their Ls in the story mode and per those rules, they’re eliminated from the tournament, method notwithstanding.

Though more playable villains can shake things up. Shao Kahn is already capable of bodying anyone he meets, as are Goro and Kintaro. At least hand the reins over to the canonically evil characters and let them eliminate some of the good guys, maybe re-establish the neutral types and have them work off each other to fulfill their own goals where their interests align.

And in that vein:

3D games or HD games, his entire reason for being has been to get vengeance on those who wronged him, exterminated his clan, and butchered his wife and son. The old games had him anger himself back to life like a Kratos… before Kratos was conceptualized, while the new games tie his resurrection directly to Quan Chi which was truer of Noob Saibot. Regardless of how they bring him back to life, making him Quan Chi’s glorified lapdog is something I’d tweak. It could be tied to how Quan Chi’s magic works with the Revenants, Sindel, and Noob Saibot being his undead slaves, but Scorpion’s anger being strong enough to revive him without any necromancy was what made him an outlier. He wasn’t necessarily tied to Quan Chi, but it did still take him ages to learn that Bi-Han and the Lin Kuei never touched his family. They only slaughtered his clan.

I think there can be potential in him realizing his mistake and creating a worse opponent in Noob Saibot. He owed Raiden for breaking his promise to spare him, but makes up for it in the MKX ending by positioning the revived Shirai Ryu as defenders of Earthrealm alongside the Lin Kuei, circling the long lost Shaolin Monks sequel of Fire and Ice that was never made.

Credit: u/xGrimaulonXboxx, r/MortalKombat

This is another thing that needs to be addressed: Ed Boon clearly wanted to pair the two, even well before Shaolin Monks allowed it on a technicality by way of co-op mode assuming one beat and unlocked Scorpion and Sub-Zero for Single Player Mode. Grab a buddy and another controller, select Co-op mode, pick these guys and you’re on a roll.

To a lesser extent, in Scorpion’s MKII ending, he witnessed Sub-Zero declined from killing an opponent in the ring, which establishes very early that this Sub-Zero is Kuai Liang who is not the ruthless Lin Kuei assassin that killed Scorpion before. Scorpion realizes that he was wrong to kill Bi-Han and vows to defend him in atonement. That was in 1993. You technically can do this and make them partners in 2005’s Shaolin Monks and make them a duo in MK9. I mentioned in 2023 that this seems to be NetherRealm’s fate having begun when Paradox Development, later renamed to Midway Studios Los Angeles was acquired in 2004, made Shaolin Monks. But thanks to an indefinite and then-unprecedented money drain, they weren’t able to bring Fire and Ice from storyboard to computer software. This isn’t a team of a couple of dudes goofing off on beige desktop towers anymore, this isn’t mid-2002 in Chicago where they can walk each other through Quan Chi’s stretchy neck fatality.

ಠ_ಠ

WB is a massive company with enough workers to populate a city in Montana, maybe more. They’ve also got enough money to fix every Balkan road and buy 12% of Hollywood if they wanted. The point I’m circulating around is that the resources to build Fire and Ice aren’t missing, neither is the desire from the guys who originally made Mortal Kombat over 30 years ago. What is missing is some convincing to let WB give NetherRealm something more to work on than safe, mainline entries. To be fair, spinoffs have been a hurdle that took Mortal Kombat nearly a decade to clear. Mythologies was meant to be its own line, but Sub-Zero was so s[ice]t, that they didn’t try again. No one wants to acknowledge Special Forces and Ed Boon would probably implore you to emulate MK 1992 than that piece of dogs[gotcha!]t.

Still, the closest that they can probably get is DLC and expansion packs. Khaos Reigns is a notable example and rather than a Kombat Pack with third-party characters, just let the guys do it OVA style and have Sub-Zero and Scorpion go on an adventure. They’re already defending Earthrealm, it’s time for them to show it.

Speaking of telling and not showing anything:

How do you get away with introducing him apropos of nothing in the character select screen of MK: Deception, giving him a plot point in Armageddon, giving him the most destructive ending for that game and leaving him as a tease in the future? Dark Raiden is an ultimate in wasted potential, guaranteed to get introductions and as soon as they get close to fleshing out how far he’d go, they back out before it gets too dangerous. Maybe WB is still to blame for this, but either way, the logical conclusion of destroying the realms can still be teased without crossing over. Veteran players can search for his Armageddon ending to see it.

Channel: Kamidogu

Get as far as him plotting to destroy the other realms, start with the Netherrealm like he does in the beginning of MK11 and after that, show him wiping out and possibly even subjugating neutral or friendly realms. The other Earthrealmers question his train of logic and he becomes the one that needs to be stopped. This would have to be at a time when the sorcerers and Shao Kahn are dead and Shinnok is incapacitated. Revenant Liu Kang and Kitana are technically the villains, but they were sidelined in favor of Kronika. I’d boot her so that Liu Kang and Kitana can fulfill the role they were supposed to have in MKX.

Oh yeah, those two were robbed of their starring role. Angry revenants on Quan Chi’s leash, brand new rulers given their only threat from Dark Raiden, sidelined so Kronika can achieve the 50/50 Tao-style balance even if it meant going mad to do so. For my take, keep the tension of Dark Raiden getting medieval on all perceived threats to Earthrealm, even against realms that otherwise don’t deserve it, which would mean reintroducing the Orderrealm-Chaosrealm Cold War that was ongoing in Deception. Liu Kang and Kitana could be crippled and seek guidance seeing as Raiden attacked them outside the rules of Mortal Kombat, which is a rehash of Kotal Kahn’s ending, which is in turn a rehash of the Mortal Kombat tournament being hosted in Outworld this time around from MK9 and II. Wow, this is all a time-honored tradition, isn’t it?

Then I say either put Kronika in around the first quarter of the game, or double down on Raiden being the villain again, and a tragic one at that. He was desperate to save Earthrealm from the existing threats. He tries to live up to his threat he made in MKX, but the writing introduced the time travel crap in MK11. It’ll screw with established canon to put Kronika in at a later point, but it’ll feel like much less of an ass pull this way. Establish Kronika at some point in Chapter 3 or 4 or if we remove the chapter system, hasten and fix the pacing so that Dark Raiden and Revenant Liu Kang square off against each other as they’re seemingly destined to do.

They don’t need to destroy each other yet, but they can come close in the build up toward the end. For Kronika, her role was to keep them in perpetual combat as their combined strength were a threat to her plans. Merging Raiden’s and Liu Kang’s powers to form Fire God Liu Kang (and reintroduce him since Mythologies – Sub-Zero) is one of the better ideas NetherRealm has had and I imagine by this point, it’s Liu Kang who initiates the merger this time. He’s not a god by any means, but this can flip the script to make him reach out and implore Raiden to refocus the threat to Kronika. Dark Raiden strikes me as the one who’d need convincing to abandon the warpath and refocus his attention after bringing the other realms to heel.

One thing I am doing away with is the time travel shenanigans. I won’t make Kronika that powerful, but she would still have a thumb on the scales.

All in all, the ideas that the Midway Games were allowed to explore were before the franchise had an established footprint with the last canonical thread to wrap up in Armageddon centering around Taven’s quest for godhood doubling as both a disarming/extermination mission that was heavily altered due in large part to Onaga’s holy men keeping Blaze hostage for an untold amount of time to guard the last dragon egg until it hatched. Because of that, there was an excess of energy for the fighters in the crater in Edenia. It can be suggested that with no one dying or losing their abilities in the original timeline, the apocalypse was either postponed or straight up didn’t happen because everyone was stronger now. MK9 fixes that amending the winner to Shao Kahn, and making him the last one atop the pyramid, kicking off the reboot in 2011.

I think the major changes happened after 2015 which was where they started to play it all safe when they had more new ground to tread while reintroducing previous elements from the Midway lineup. But even with that there were ideas that the devs wanted to put up, but the main heads at WB didn’t want the beginnings and endings to be that radically different unlike the middle which has developed a pattern of tickling novel ideas before course correcting to the tired formula that makes the newer games ape the MK9 hype, failing to acknowledge that MK9 has a few years gap between the previous mainline entry and itself.

MK used to take risks back then, and if it weren’t for the executives, they can take even more and reintroduce elements that would shake up the games in particular and the franchise as a whole. If the games had extra tweaks, then there’d be more to love then there already is.