Corrections and Clarifications: -MK11 had Sonya lose her gauntlets for a couple of fights. I forgot about that.

I love how Kano hasn’t won a single time in this entire timeline. I can’t help but think back to a video about him sucking in MK11 that joked about him being overtly sexualized.

Scorpion: *Defeats the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman* Also Scorpion: *Defeated by D'Vorah and Johnny Cage*

Soul Calibur 6 fleshing out everyone on a shoestring budget, including DLC fighters, while MK doesn't even bother for the simple visual novel style stories on a triple A budget is both hilarious and sad

MK12: Fire God Liu Kang loses every damn fight he participates in during the Story Mode.

The fact that netherrealm has kept the god awful chapter system is ridiculous. Not choosing characters based on the situation at hand is destroying the narrative. The excuse that chapters help us learn one character at a time has also become irrelevant seeing as now we have character specific tutorials in mortal kombat 11. Why not give the player an option to try one before they start a fight with any new character? Sure it may slow down the narrative for newer players, but it beats DESTROYING the narrative.

Honestly they wouldnt even really have to get rid of chapters if Netherrealm would stop being so obsessed with turning heroes evil. I've even started questioning if the writing staff was just obsessed with revenants and too lazy to find a suitable conclusion to that whole plot point. Again, turning not only Kitana, but also Sindel and Jade all 3 into revenants was a awful decision because it leaves no one on the other end who really cares to help them. You are forced to sit there as a fan and play as Cassie and friends beating them with no real closure, revenge, or any kind of feel good moment for those characters.

Dark Raiden sure dodged a bullet not being MK 11 didn't he?

Netherrealm: Has massive potential for so many things in their stories, like characters, settings, and structures. Also Netherrealm: How about let's only have the hero's win and make villains complete jokes. Oh yeah, and let's completely ruin klassic and iconic kharacters.(note)

Mortal Kombat Deception’s Konquest mode was a glorified tutorial but holy crap what a tutorial. Being able to explore all the realms was a treat for me and my brother as fans. I wish they would bring it back.

I mean, for as simplistic as it was, I think the Subspace Emissary handled it's story better than modern Netherrealm. With a focus on small groups of characters at a certain time until they ultimately team up together, no character feels robbed of spotlight (Aside from Sonic showing up last minute). Fights between heroes are typically chalked up to misunderstandings, are instigated by the canonically fight-happy Meta Knight, involved a Pokemon, or are broken up before it becomes a playable fight. Finally, non-boss villains feel on top of things even when they aren't playable until the end, as opposed to NRS making their villains out to be basically stronger mooks.

Face it, there's TOO MUCH INJUSTICE crap on NRS minds that they can't even separate the franchices. The fan beloved MK mystic atmosphere is just not there anymore. The focus shift to SF characters speaks volumes about the story direction. Cassie and Jacqui are more important than Shao Kahn, Shinnok or anyone with a challenging character arc. Fun fact: Wanna know WHY so much focus on revenants? Because that way writers do not have to compile a good script for them, so they reduce them to mindless jobbers. Mortal Kombat deserves a better studio. Boon and his baffoons had their chance.

The 3D Era has proven the old meme true once more: John Vogel is a genius

One detail that I really liked in DOA5: you can actually piece together the tournament, and the brackets line up. And the way they did it was really simple. It would be like, you're playing Hitomi, she wins a quarter final match, then a semi final match, then it skips ahead to after the tournament, where she's talking about her loss. You don't know who she lost to, but you find out later when it gets to that person's chapter. And the two people that Hitomi beat, you already knew beforehand that they lost to somebody.

I honestly thought that MK9 Jade's ending and MKX's Kitana ending was setting up for MK11's story And I was so hyped, Kronika was this being that possessed Jade, that's why I thought she wasn't in mkx, 'Jade' or Kronika were showing Kitana what would have happened if Raiden didn't reset the timelines. Yes Shao Kahns Mka ending would have been cannon, with him merging the realms until he goes insane, but it would have left an opening for Kitana to finally be able to defeat the man she has wanted to kill for her realm. Like Azula's final battle in Avatar, Kahn was unhinged, off his game, it would have been the perfect moment to show that Kitana has been practising and matches up to Kahn thanks to him moulding her into the perfect warrior and successor, and that the things Kahn saw as weaknesses in her 'that he tried to scuff out with Mileena's creation' were actually strengths. It would have been kinda poetic by finally fulfilling Kitana's entire character motivation and possibly opened up new possibilities like, with her hatred for Daddy Kahn out of the way she could see that it is partly Kitana's fault why her 'sister' hates her, and make some kind of Nebula and Gamora make up relationship in the ends. And sooo many more opportunities for every other character, whether they be classic, 3D or new. But we got.... Mk11 (This is written really badly, sorry)

Mk11 biggest plot hole:shao Kahn is killed/severely injured by kitana meaning that Kung Lao never died nor sindel killing half of mk9’s roster and raiden never accidentally kills liu kang

I just miss Deception’s RPG style story mode, I know a lot of it is definitely nostalgia for me but exploring all the worlds and interacting with characters whilst they were taking part in their own unique stories unrelated to Shujinko’s and seeing the story slowly reveal over the course of the game’s length was exciting and unique and if they’d had just fined the rough edges and kept working with this formula in-mind going forward, this would be an incredible and unique aspect to the series.

Many questions arise as to how this storytelling philosophy has reached its current iteration. However, looking at the Midway era I can't help but feel that this is where some traits began. In the midway era (post John Tobias) much of the new cast of mkda was scrapped (hsu hao, mavado, drahmin, nitara) and co wizard quan chi began to become more and more central to every nut and bolt that comprises that storyline machine of that era. This culminated in mk vs dc's portrayel of quan chi (nevermind the fact that he survived raiden's kamikaze attack, alongside tsung in mkd, how?). Since than you begin to see a hierarchy of character centric chapters, you get to see the progression of heroes and villains, while story wise they are portrayed differently. I will go to quan chi and kano, look at how they were treated, ever the punching bag of the main cast, or reduced to a glorified few scenes, remaining the punching bag. The problem with post Midway story structures is how the characters are watered down to basic components, while they ended in the midway era with much more. Let's take Raiden, in the Midway he was excellently voiced by Hernan Sanchez (in MKDA) and later Richard Epcar. I feel that Raiden's character went through some of the most drastic changes in the series, he went from arrogant god (mk1) to the mentor (mk2-4) to the leader in the trenches (mkda) to a fallen diety (mkd and mka) to a leader of enemies and allies (mk vs dc, all be it with the obsessive need to use quan chi as the leader idea progenitor). Compare him to NRS Raiden, voiced epicly by Richard Epcar, beyond mentor figure and retracing the mkd dark raiden character what can you say about him? Raiden doesn't develop any sort of questioning of his fellow gods, he is blindly following their advice and never suspecting their constant ambivalence towards earthrealm's fate. I thank you for adding your points to this discussion, as I hope that NRS will listen to you and many others who share these questions marks on characters' placement in the story and in the universe.

Spoiler for MK12: D'Vorah oneshots the One Being and then proceeds to get slapped to death by Kitana.

Three things can kill any good narrative on arrival, in my opinion: time travel, alternate universe plots, and any form of cloning. These KILL character importance and suspense. They'll always be back. You'll see it from a mile away. Who gives a damn about Liu Kang 64 dying when Liu Kangs 34, 27, and 19 are fine? Speaking of characters dying... What the actual f*ck with MK11? They're rebooting the franchise. This is the perfect opportunity to actually kill some major characters without "losing" them for the next installment. What happens? Not a single win for the bad guys. Seriously. I pitied Kano. This guy has committed horrible atrocities, and I pitied him.

I still havent gotten over the fact that NRS transformed one of the most iconic fighting game bosses of all time into Donald Drumpf with a hammer.

I find it funny when you say that mindless NRS fanboys say that you complain too much about the NRS MK games and their stories, and say that you don't care about the series, when you constantly make it point to say that you do, and with all of your analysis, I'm just glad to see that you still can prove your points without making things personal. Yes because someone complains about something means they don't care. Which is also a comment that I have gotten many times before, complaining about WWE and the poor state of both RAW and Smackdown, stating that their third brand NXT is the best thing WWE has going for it, but I'm quickly met by fanboy retort saying that I just like indy darlings, and that I want WWE to die because I watch wrestling in other promotions or if i were to have my way, WWE would already be dead. I know this is an understatement, but we seriously live in a day and age where people have become so desensitized that they've just accepted mediocrity.

hope people are tweeting this to boon, would be nice if they simply took some of your advice on how to fix some of these issues they have.

I miss the start of the 3D era of story telling for Mortal Kombat, I remember how crazy it was to that Liu Kang and Shao Kahn were both dead in Deadly Alliance. It really helped establish the seriousness of the threat of the Deadly Alliance as well as giving the chance for new comers who have been since thrown to the wind sadly.

I miss konquest mode from Deception and even Armageddon.

The thing about Netherrealm, MK, and Injustice in general is that they wanted to make it this singular, broad and partially cinematic spectacle so it could appeal to the masses, but they also want to simultaneously develop these characters, specifically the heroes, which is why they have their own arcs. There’s a method to the madnesses, which is also why intro dialogue exists: it’s used to develop the sideline characters and create world building, one of the better aspects that NRS has.

Guilty Gear deserves more recognition in general. Fighting games used to have the unique ability to present multiple possible outcomes for the overall story with each character's arcade ending, with the sequel revealing which ones actually happened and which did not. I always found that kinda of exciting, but lately that feels like it's no longer a thing.

Him breaking down all the MKDA and MKD plots really made me realize how much I miss that method of storytelling. The world felt so much more alive, because the characters were all people with their own goals and methods and we got to see so much more through their eyes back then. The story is so condensed now that it feels less like a fantasy world full of different realms, cultures, heroes and villains, and more like a shitty action-scifi show that got unceremoniously dumped onto some random streaming service. The characters no longer live in the world, the world bends and breaks around the characters to fit with the protagonists' mission. Bare minimum worldbuilding, NO consistency in power level, personality and backstory has been sucked out of most characters and realms (you know, all THREE that exist in the new timeline), and literally the entire MK universe is now focused on the Cages, Raiden, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and maybe Liu and Lao if we're lucky, rather than every character having a unique plot and perspective.

Of all MK games I think Armageddon mixed the Story Mode with the Arcade Endings the best, we are given a story that explains the context of whats happening and why everybody is fighting, only at the very end of the story mode the equivalent of the "Tournament" starts, the arcade mode is the fights the character is in and the Endings are what happens if they win the prize, and we are left wondering who is the canonical winner for the next game.

Kind of surprised you didn’t talk about Smash Brothers Brawl’s Story mode: Subspace

appeals to G.I. Joe fans so that why I've been seeing more guns and soldiers and less magic and sorcerers in my MK's.

I'm curious. As someone who isn't really a fan of the games, but interested in the characters of the franchise, how would you feel about this NRS timeline being restructured into a game that features Shaolin Monks beat-em-up style of gameplay? The reason I ask is because as someone who doesn't play the games, but is interested on people's opinions about them for some strange reason, it feels like MK as a franchise is often at odds with itself, narrative-wise and gameplay-wise. For instance, its penchant for indulging in copious amounts of gore is hurting its reputation more than it helps it when you see a father, Johnny Cage, bash his daughter's, Cassie, skull in. And then there's the narrative that restricts itself for stupid reason that lead to more problems than it superficially solves. I think taking a step back and going into spin-off territory again might be good for the franchise at this point. I think MK as a franchise neatly fits itself into an over-the-top action brawler like Bayonetta. In games like that, the ridiculous amounts of gore that MK built its franchise on is more acceptable because you're beating up faceless mobs the main characters have little relation to 90% of the time. So, you're free to be as over-the-top as you want to and no one will raise an eyebrow. As oppose to what MK does now where the over-the-top-ness in tone poorly contrasts with the more grounded tones the stories try to convey to the audience. And since this modern timeline is effectively a war story, you should have a shit-ton of faceless mobs to smack around. On top of that, the modern games' affectionately titled 'dial-a-combo' system would probably be more forgivable in a beat-em-up/hand-n-slash style game as well. Not completely forgivable mind you as no one wants to remember a laundry list of combos. (I'm looking at you 3D Ninja Gaiden games!) But, say you streamline it similar to something like Nier: Automata's combat system where there's basic combos, but also 'command normal' type moves that the game doesn't explicitly tell you about, but are fun to figure out. Add a couple more combo variations between playable characters as well as an MK flair, such as fatalities being something like torture attacks in Bayonetta, and boom, you've got a satisfying combat system that won't be too taxing for the player to get a grasp of, but still has a fair amount of depth to it when you add in humanoid boss fights. I also think this approach can help focus MK's rather unfocused main story modes. Take the character chapters and make the playable characters in them be playable in that section. If buddy characters are there with them, then they're A.I. controlled. For instance, Kung Jin's chapter in MKX where it's just an all-out outworld brawl, I think, would be dope in real-time and if the game allows you to choose between Cassie, Jacqiu and Kung Jin (I forget who's all there with him) while the others fight along side you. This could open up the doors for good old multiplayer button-mashing fun online as well as drop-in/drop-out co-op locally. You can still do the A,B, and C sub-plot approach with the timeskipping NRS loves oh-so-dearly without totally sacrificing the capabilities of every character simply because the player can only play as one at a time and things won't feel as restrictive. I'm not saying any of this is perfect or will even make things better, but I do think it'll serve the franchise's exceptionally boggled tone better, especially if NRS wants to keep promoting the violence and its stories. Games like DMC and Bayonetta can still gives us characters that we care about in utterly ridiculous and practically nonsensical stories without sacrificing character integrity too much because it's not necessarily about the plot, but about watching these characters interact with each other in their respective universe. And let's face it, as "gripping" as NRS MK plots are... Everyone knows that the best writing by far is the pre-fight one-liners between characters. Imagine getting them every 5 minutes in an action-brawler game with these characters. It'd take a heavy amount of tweaking with the brawler style approach, but I think it'd be worth trying, even with this exceptionally screwy timeline. But what do you think, if you've actually made it this far? lol.

They should just make story chapters centered around a theme, like "netherrealm warriors" where they can switch around for fights with fighters like scorpion, drahmin, or moloch while they defend the netherrealm from lets say outworlds forces, making good and bad sides for story

Couldn't agree more. Recently played the story mode of MK11 and it was pretty jarring how Sub Zero is never allowed to try and save Frost from herself, or Bi Han because we already did his chapter so no more development allowed, further adding in that because heroes only we didn't get any time as Frost which could have developed into rejection for her current path resulting in an excellent source of info for the heroes who are trying to deal with Kronica. Johnny wasn't allowed to mourn Sonya, we didn't get any time with Shao Kahn taking over Outworld, and what about Shinnok? Kronica has the power of time at her disposal and she didn't restore him to add as a powerful ally?! the structure is out right broken and I had to force myself to finish it. What a disappointment NRS have become.

I like story modes in fighting games, but I think individual character openings, rival cutscenes, & endings tells better stories. In story modes, you'll always have some jobbers and even some of the previous character you played will be a jobber.

I enjoy the games very much injustice and mk but I will not deny the story's are very much flawed and there are many wasted potentials on characters and plot points. Noob is basically a really cool looking jobber, Shao Khan is a joke, and so much more.

I would say they should bring back the original MK timeline, but I feel like they would ruin it big time.

Wasted potential: Shinnok when? Seriously, an elder god who battled against all of his peers and could only be sealed, not destroyed. Ends up losing to brats. Yes, i'm still salty.

I would say a possible good thing for Injustice 2 could’ve done is work something with the Reverse Flash thing, where he mention that one of his ancestors(I’m assuming either Meloni Thawne or Eddie “Cobalt Blue” Thawne) were killed, leaving him in the past, this could’ve made him neutral, and given him a chapter in wanting to kill the regime in retaliation, As for Captain Cold, you could say he works with the insurgents again, have Mirror Master(McCulloch) work with Cold to recruit a new era of Rogues like Weather Wizard’s son becoming the new Weather Wizard, Owen Mercer taking the mantle of the new Captain Boomerang, Axel Rotten becomes the new Trickster, and add some of the insurgents. For Deadshot, a chapter could’ve been done where Batman removes the implant and recruits Lawton, Lawton takes out the rest of the Society and work for Batman full time There’s just so much potential for these guys yet it was never done

Nobody: Not a single soul: They should hire you

TMNT: Tournament Fighters and the Art of Fighting Trilogy also had Story Modes. They weren't as in depth of course, but they were my first exposure to a fighting game having a plot to motivate the characters.

8:05 thats what i freakin hate about MKX. Of all the characters you play as during Story Mode, 7 of the 10 are part of the Special Forces. I thought this game was about mystical realms, creatures of all sorts of shapes and sizes, fighting to the death, defending your realm... Not glorifying the fucken US military

1:42 RIP in pepperoni, Sonya’s core values

When your favorite character gets so little screen time and no one cares about them so they don't even get a wasted potential episode: *SAD BARAKA FAN NOISES*

One positive thing about Aftermath's story was being able to play as Sindel during Fujin's chapter. Felt like a breath of fresh air.

To fix the chapter problem in my opinion 1. Once a character has been used in a chapter don't use them unless its a duo chapter with someone who hasn't yet. 2. Pick people based on the situation 3.if there not as strong as the opponent then have it end in a tie. Or have it that it was a tough fight but in the end you still loose and now there's a excuse on why you would win in the next fight

I thought that there was no potential for fighting game story telling, but because of this video my fourth eye has *GROWN* . And because of that I now truly understand the potential for story telling in fighting games

Here's something I came up with. At some point in this story, the characters are split into groups of 3. In each chapter, you choose a group of characters that you get to choose for each fight. When the next chapter starts, you see that some characters are blacked out, indicating that they are dead. This adds replay value as the player can replay the mode multiple times to find out what happened.

I love how SC6 did their story mode and I hope this continues with SC7 whenever that happens. They even did a time line for each characters event.

26:26 Finally someone said something about that also, I dont know if anyone seen it but... Have you noticed this? 1. In mk9 one of kabal's eyes is white in his damaged variant while it's fine with the mask on (edit: this actually isnt an issue the eye is still damaged, it's just harder to see) 2. In mk11 how did Hanzo BURN Scorpion!? Edit: AY! Whoever liked my comment, thanks :^)

8:58 Corrupted Shinnok is basically a Dark Kahn reskin.

My personal opinion should be each character should have a individual mode, what they did during the story. Basically Smash Bros Ultimate's classic mode but with cutscenes

Finally someone said it. I always found it so weird that Johnny Cage only wins 4 time in the whole history of Mortal Kombat 9. He even gets his leg broken in the arena, i have no idea how he made it there. Even though the Arcade ending says that he has a super good powerful, stronger than almost everyone.

6:28 I really love this part of the video because it has a really cool fade in and out effect that makes it seem like it goes into a transition from Dick Grayson to Damian Wayne during the same Nightwing intro. Keep up the good work on the editing software you're using, The4thSnake.

Apart from the BlazBlue part(I never had an issue understanding its plot, but that's neither here nor there)and Tekken 7(I generally liked the focus on the Mishima family as the main story) I agree with everything you said here.

1:25 kitana was originally gonna have her own chapter, i wonder why it got cut?

The overall issue I had with NetherRealm's MK trilogy was a simple one: if you're going to make a single narrative, end that story with some FUCKING CONSEQUENCES IN THE END. I was interested in the time travel thing in MK11, but then I realized it largely made irrelevant the plot from the last two games. "Oh, no, Dark Raiden is going to run wild on NetherRealm! Better get ready for a final plot about the war between earth and--oh, wait, never mind, he CEASED TO FUCKING EXIST."

Another thing that I just don't like is how a character is exclusive to a chapter cause the problem with that is you always know who's going to win in a fight

0:01 intro 1:14 all nrs games 14:45 all fighters motivation 16:50 how other games have better story 25:16 how nrs can fix itself 31:10 outro

Me: Netherrealm is the best at fighting game stories! Change my mind. *The4thSnake presents video that changes my mind* Me: Huh. Well played.

You make valid points about fighting game story modes, and as a man who wants to be a voice actor and writer for fighting/action games, I will take inspiration from this. I thank you the4thsnake

15:17 actually in MKA konquest mode we can see diversity in kombatants goals and motives. Tekunin,SF,Lin Kuei,red dragon,shujinko,shinnok four main allies of forces of darkness showed a lot of personality and the chemistry betweeb then in a little cutscene(kahn,onaga,shang tsung,quan chi),they could not stand each other and knew they would stab eachother in the back,but decided to work with eachother for the time being

Netherrealm after seeing this video: I'm going to pretend I didn't see that.

More like devolution ba dum tsss

Ooooo... Snake makes another MK video that’s almost about an hour. I got my popcorn ready... cuz this gonna be salty. JK I love your vids snake.

Seems the Netherrealm stories share something in common with superhero films more than they do other fighters or even their own MK heyday. Whether it's MK, Injustice or MvC, they're being presented to you as an interactive blockbuster rather than the lore exploration even the arcades used to offer. If they weren't prepared to go back on themselves, I'd question whether going a TV serial route rather than a film one would work better? Ala Game Of Thrones (with a little more care for the ending though) or Walking Dead?

I feel the same way with some of the King of Fighters. Series stories

A hard yes from me for the suggestion at 29:48...I see they have the day and night cycle for arenas in the concept art and I wished they included it in-game as well. Let's tweet this video to NRS every month-end until MK12: Scorpion's New Life releases

28:27 you literally have the fastest man in the world in your hand, and you choose to throw him away from you

Something I dig about aftermath is the fact we FINALLY play as most of the villains for once

I think for honor did something pretty cool with their story were its 3 chapters 1 per faction you get to play most of the cast in that chapter

4th snakes my favorite videos bi han first subzero wasted potienal

Old Story Mode = Action and exploring as well as fighting enemies and getting items and keys to unlock coffins in the krypt New Story Mode = More movie than actual gameplay With the new technology, I was at least expecting a story mode in the style of konquest from Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon mixed with each other, telling the story of each and every single character in a huge environment you can explore and at the same time, understand the story of the character you selected earlier and as soon as you finish the story of that character, you move to another and it goes on and on, and also, give the option to keep playing even after you finished the story of a certain character so you can go back and explore a certain part you forgot before, that would be good and it is possible to do it, but nrs rather do movie movie movie and less gameplay in the story mode, I don't know why they wanted to make a movie about mortal kombat if the games are literally that already...

I love all of the valid points you always make, wonderful video as always

5:01 The whole Johnny and Jax fighting in the armoury because Johnny's perving on Sonya wasn't needed.

You have given up on Blazblue. Well you do whatever you feel like. I will just say this it had better character relationships then Mortal Kombat.

It's crazy how NRS could still learn many things from a 3 years old video. This video is actually one of the reasons you got me interested in the Soulcalibur and I can't thank you enough for that Snake. I'm not that much into fighting games but I had a blast with SCVI; much better than Injustice 2 which got old pretty fast. Side note: don't know if you're already aware but Geralt's story is supposed to be canon.

1:41 Jiggly Jiggly Jiggly

So what's your thought of the new Mortal Kombat animated movie?

It would be so easy to make "faction" chapters work excellently in MK and while there is the possibility of spoiling the end of someone else's events, I always found it thrilling to find out how we got there. An example is in Sonic adventure 2 where you pick between dark and light sides of the story. In the dark side of the story, Eggman tricks sonic, who's holding a fake chaos emerald, into standing on a capsule lockdown platform. He then shoots it out into space with sonic inside of it and it explodes. Tails then chooses to fight you, and you have a boss fight. After the fight, it cuts to a radio talk with Shadow where Eggman mentions he got the last emerald, but before Shadow can do anything, sonic shows up where all he says is "I die hard." and you have a final fight with him. When you play the light side of the story, you see that sonic manages to use the chaos control when in the capsule and escape just before it explodes. You also see that Tails canonically wins the fight vs Eggman, but while tails is mourning sonic, eggman sneaks off with the emerald. Then finally, when sonic talks with shadow, additional dialogue is added where shadow points out how sonic used the fake emerald to use chaos control. Lets use MK11 for example and lets do a similar structure; villains and heroes. For the villain chapter, we got to play as all 4 newcomers, but also as dlc only shao khan even if you don't have the dlc (IE a test play as the character). This lets us play as the revenants and all the villain side characters as well as the final boss. How interesting would it be to not only convince revenant liu kang and kitana that Kronika is the real deal by fighting them in a 2 on 1 fight AS Kronika, but to do the same to convince Shao Kahn that she is the real deal. Then you can have a segment where you play as Shao commanding Kollector, d'vorah, and whoever else as he goes about retaking outworld forces. Hell, throw in a surprise fight where Shao finally has d'vorah alone and decides to pay her back for what she did to Mileena and you play as shao to beat the shit out of D'vorah and have a story-line fatality where he shows his MK2 level powers of sorcery to not only kill D'vorah, but consume the entire hive's collective souls through their mind link and Kronika writes it off since D'vorah was the most back stabbing of any character yet. And when that is over, Shao muses how he's trying to plan for the eventual overthrow of kronika but needs to have enough forces at his command to cut the path for him to do so. As for the heroes, it plays mostly like we've been experiencing, but the villain side explains why certain heroes are just gone and never heard from again with villains actually killing them off or otherwise preoccupying them.

I think that a lot of these problems can be avoided by having the losses of playable characters be integrated into the story. That is something I'd love to see.

Also, in chapter 2 when kotal’s getting his arse whooped by Shao Kahn, Liu kang is in the background with a totally different outfit.

I always knew something was off with the Story man. Like the material is AMAZING

One fighting game story mode i really enjoyed was Marvel Nemesis Rise Of The Imperfects where you could only choose to play as 4 different characters as they deal with whatever is happening on their end. To further down the story (and it's timeline), you had to choose which character to kill off where you face that character as one of the original characters they introduced in the game, which would showcase their backstories, while at the same time showing off the actual strength of these characters by literally having them kill off heroes you were already playing as beforehand. I mean, it'll make you think twice about taking on a ballerina after learning that she has a power to cause miniature earthquakes and kills off The Thing. Sure the big bad of the game is a knock off Lex Luthor but it was wildly entertaining where the heroes try to save what's left of NYC during an alien invasion as they pass on information to each other, or even some don't see each other at all. Even had a plot device to have fights between the heroes through knock off Luthor's mind control device

NRS Mortal Kombat is so fucking overrated. I remember how disappointed everyone was with MKX and then MK11 came out and suddenly everyone started praising MKX wtf. I don't like X or 11 but 9 was pretty good. My all time favorite is Deception.

I love your videos man. Everytime you post It really makes me think deeply about different aspects of games and storylines.. thank you

I gotta say I am tired of arbitrarily playing as the same character 4 times in a row knowing for a fact that they are gonna win the whole time

I really liked the action adventure style story modes of the 3d games. I hope nrs ends up doing something similar, but most importantly. PLZ WRITE A GOOD STORY THIS TIME HOLY SHIT

Midway > NRS.

I'd rather have a adventure or beat em' up mode rather than a story/movie mode.

What if someone were to introduce a system kinda similar to MK Mythologies (with numerous improvements) between fights fire when you have to travel from one place to another, and interact with other characters in the game? Or hell, bring back Konquest Mode. That’d be interesting.

I feel like if this video was seen by somebody at NRS, they'd probably see it as an attack and try to get it taken down despite the fact that this video could be interpreted as advice.

NRS knows that the lore is a huge selling point but each installment has less and less lore and story to it. My idea has been to have a cinematic story without chapters that shows the climax and ending of the story while having a konquest mode that lets people learn more about characters, having them win canon fights, explore the lore, while learning their gameplay.

Honestly I’ve always wanted to write an Fighting Game story, but I’m not sure how I should structure it. I’m hoping to get some advice on the matter.

Honestly, I don't know if the "cinematic" style works with the kind of series Mortal Kombat is. It deserves something like Konquest mode. People doing their own thing, with the masses and masses of lore just sort of in the background all around you, not the focus, but definitely unavoidable. Also, imagine a conquest mode in the style of Shujinko's one, but you play as multiple people. Possibly even having an RPG style party of two or three characters, who you can choose between which character you fight with in the Kombats. Then you have the choice of going "Oh, I've been playing as Kung Lao for a while, but I just got Sonya, so shall I try out a new character or stick to my current go to?" Kung Lao would later drop out of the character list anyway, so it's not like you'll he using him through the whole game. You'll have to get used to using a few characters.

One thing they could also do if they just can't get rid of the chapter based story is use the gimmicks they have in game to make the fights seem more interesting and challenging. For instance in MK9, when fighting Reptile, he can turn invisible, so have him constantly invisible during the fight so its more unique and it actually has Reptile being intelligent and using his powers. Have A Shang-Tsung fight where he's healing and your health is being drained at a point where he's using his soul stealing abilities on you, have Kabal move faster, have the player character have a bleeding effect if they were injured prior to the fight. MK9 had so many little gameplay gimmicks that could have fit into the story and yet do nothing. Injustice was smart with the minigames as it allowed characters to do more than just punch each other and it had an actual consequence so you could bring that back as well. Have a minigame where Johnny Cage is tossing Force Balls or whatever his green ball attacks are at a horde of Tarkatan's to keep them back or have a running minigame with Kabal where he has to avoid obstacles at high speed. Again, you get to show off the character's powers and they get to do more than punch people. You brought up another good idea with the QTE's, let some of the non playable characters have them so you still get to play with them in some aspect and they still get to do something. With this concept, you actually could control all the Kombat Kids where you could have a QTE where they are all dodging attacks and fighting people and at the end, the player character gets to fight the villain while the rest are dealing with the minions but they weren't just easily knocked out to get them out of the fight, they are actually doing something so they seem more impressive. Also, yeah, have arcade endings be canon. With most, if not all of them being non canon, it means that only the major characters like Liu-Kang, Cassie and Raiden actually do anything of note. Sub-Zero trains the Kombat Kids and has an offscreen fight with Kotal's army, his arcade ending could show how that went. We could see what Erron Black did afterwards, what happened with Kano, what Raiden did after threatening Liu-Kang and Kitana, etc. The only point where non canon arcade endings made sense was in MK11 because there really isn't much the other characters can do since time is reset so that actually makes sense to have it be what they do with the Hourglass but every other game? Just makes the characters seem less important because they don't have anything else going on besides the main plot. So many different plots were going on in old games, every character got some time to shine. Ashrah even gets a bad ass moment of hunting down Ermac and we don't even see how the fight went, just that clearly Ermac didn't die but Ashrah didn't either so either Ermac beat her or she beat him which makes her potentially more impressive as a new character. I think a major issue besides the chapter things is also that everything is exclusively focused on the main plot so any character not involved has nothing going for them which makes them feel wasted. Do more with the Storymode, use fun gimmicks to get diverse fights and unique playable moments and let your characters have their own designated story and ending within the larger story so everything feels important instead of just non canon or useless filler.

The story telling has certainly gotten better HOWEVER the stories have not 😂

You have many great ideas about what the story of MK could have been that it would be awsome if you made a video of you reading your own original story about the MK universe. Keep up the great work 👍

I’d say SFV is probably my favorite structure I like the one single narrative combined with individual character story’s to give characters agency’s and advance their arcs if the story can’t accommodate them plus the obvious everyone gets to be played as which just works from not just the obvious narrative advantages since it means your villains can take Ws and can thus be taken seriously but gameplay wise since your guaranteed to find to find a character you may like with the whole roster since your sampling everyone I’m interested if SF6 will be doing the same or something different given what little we saw so far it might be a description style conquest mode so we’ll see

Something you didn’t mention about MvCI’s story mode is something kinda interesting about the villain, Ultron Sigma. In the opening chapter you actually get to fight him but it’s a fight that’s so hard and basically built on you getting your ass kicked. I just think that’s a nice middle ground between “never playing as a villain” and giving them some wins to make them feel threatening, since you know they’ll be just as unforgiving the next time you fight them.