Narrative Continuity of Fighting Games is Convoluted, Especially Mortal Kombat X
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
What Yahtzee describes is the Tekken method of story isn't it? At least the old ones I played 2 or 3, I really can't remember. You play through 9 one-on-one bouts ending with a fight against a purple demon with a shitty cheap laser third-eye, and when you beat them you got a snippet of what it meant for them to win the tournament. I still remember some of them really clearly.
Like Anna, Nina's sister, in the shower for some reason. The Bruce Lee rip-off Chan(?) gets his own dojo. The drunken master pours 40 for his dead hommie. The bizzare one I remember is the iron jaguar. Not the guy with the jaguar head, king something, but his counterpart. His story ends with Xrays of his chest, and him walking to the ring and having a dizzy spell. Terminal illness? It's never clear. Oh, and the Arnie/Russian/robot dude, going AWOL and protecting a little girl, until an orbital laser blasts a hole in his back and kills him. Odd stories but they made sense narratively.
Like Anna, Nina's sister, in the shower for some reason. The Bruce Lee rip-off Chan(?) gets his own dojo. The drunken master pours 40 for his dead hommie. The bizzare one I remember is the iron jaguar. Not the guy with the jaguar head, king something, but his counterpart. His story ends with Xrays of his chest, and him walking to the ring and having a dizzy spell. Terminal illness? It's never clear. Oh, and the Arnie/Russian/robot dude, going AWOL and protecting a little girl, until an orbital laser blasts a hole in his back and kills him. Odd stories but they made sense narratively.
Is it just me, or am I the only guy on this site who actually liked the "New Generation" of Earthrealm fighters (Cassie, Jacqui, Takeda and Kung Jin)? Granted, it's mostly for the snappy one-liners they fire off during pre-match dialogue (look up "Cassie intros", "Jacqui intros", etc. on YouTube to see what I mean), but I also don't think their stories are really BAD - sure, they're not exactly surprising or groundbreaking, but they work just fine for me.
That being said though, I REALLY want to have at least one chapter in the next game devoted to Erron Black (especially with how his ending showed he was basically granted eternal youth by Shang Tsung 150 years ago, likely making him a real Wild West-era cowboy), and I DO hope the next story allows for some non-linear storytelling (I think that MKX was originally supposed to have branching paths, or something like that).
Hopefully, if they take time away from the microtransaction crap in this game, they'll have more time to actually focus on the story mode for the next time around
That being said though, I REALLY want to have at least one chapter in the next game devoted to Erron Black (especially with how his ending showed he was basically granted eternal youth by Shang Tsung 150 years ago, likely making him a real Wild West-era cowboy), and I DO hope the next story allows for some non-linear storytelling (I think that MKX was originally supposed to have branching paths, or something like that).
Hopefully, if they take time away from the microtransaction crap in this game, they'll have more time to actually focus on the story mode for the next time around
I liked Takeda just because he had a cool gimmick, and Cassie is pretty funny, but I found Kung Jin and Jacqui extremely boring, especially compared to D'Vorah, Erron Black, and Ferra/Torr.MaddKossack115 said:
What I'd really like to see in the next game is to have two story modes: good and evil, with the game explicitly telling you that the good story is canon. Then you could have a story mode where you get to see a lot more of (and play as) the evil characters (and the morally ambiguous ones too). The big thing I hate about story mode is that it only covers half (if that) of the characters that you get to play as.
I don't really mind that linear narrative of recent Mortal Kombat games story mode, but I do hope they will focus more on the fun/interesting parts. I agree that most new characters are just not interesting. They serve well as human punching bags, but I'm not thrilled to learn more about Jacqui or Cassie, I'd rather see how D'Vorah species actually breeds (10+ different larva stages, something like xenomorph from aliens?).
See, Mortal Kombat has a massive, massive convoluted canon story that involves gods, demons, time travel, betrayal etc. etc. And they acknowledge it very well in MKX - you see Kira, Blaze, Daegon etc. etc. mentioned. Which brings me to the main point. We're in a world where cyborg criminals hatch dragons and kidnap fire demons to guard them, immortal vampires, gods, cowboys and mutants plot intrigues against each other. You create a cinematic story campaign in this world and you spend screen time on boring temple thieves and generic military guys/girls? What's wrong with this team? I do have some hopes for next game though. They actually mention Onaga in MKX. But I really hope they focus more on weird and unusual worlds and characters. Like Deception maybe? I wanna see Chaosrealm in HD dammit.
I honestly would rather play as Meat and learn more about him than those boring new characters. In case you forgotten Meat is a failed Shang Tsung flesh pit experiment with not much story relevance, just a skinless dude killed during Armageddon with everybody else.
See, Mortal Kombat has a massive, massive convoluted canon story that involves gods, demons, time travel, betrayal etc. etc. And they acknowledge it very well in MKX - you see Kira, Blaze, Daegon etc. etc. mentioned. Which brings me to the main point. We're in a world where cyborg criminals hatch dragons and kidnap fire demons to guard them, immortal vampires, gods, cowboys and mutants plot intrigues against each other. You create a cinematic story campaign in this world and you spend screen time on boring temple thieves and generic military guys/girls? What's wrong with this team? I do have some hopes for next game though. They actually mention Onaga in MKX. But I really hope they focus more on weird and unusual worlds and characters. Like Deception maybe? I wanna see Chaosrealm in HD dammit.
I honestly would rather play as Meat and learn more about him than those boring new characters. In case you forgotten Meat is a failed Shang Tsung flesh pit experiment with not much story relevance, just a skinless dude killed during Armageddon with everybody else.
Speaking of orgies, saying the plot of a fighting game matters, is like saying the plot parts of a porn movie are important to 'the task at hand'. A lot of adult movies are just scenes now because most guys just fast forwarded through the parts with the background story of the characters and the bad acting and sets. By saying you dont like the actual gameplay you are saying you dont enjoy the main reason for the games existence. The fun of the actual matches and the learning of a characters moveset. I agree that some of the plots are silly but surely not as silly as Katamari or Fruit Ninja. Back in tha day the movie parts of games like Tekken was a graphical reward in the era when the memory constraints prevented much multimedia. The graphics of fighters didnt need to get any better than Dreamcast DOA2 and these games certainly DONT need stories.