Topic: Mortal Kombat: Armageddon: Game Intro

[JonLeung]

[mephea]

wow, thats the coolest thing ive seen to do with the mk series since mk2 :p



zombie liu kang? roflbrothel!

[JonLeung]

(Sure, I write a long post and find out I'm not logged in and lose the post.)



Armageddon brings back everyone from all past Mortal Kombat fighting games.  Yup, quite a roster.  Some are back from the dead.  The bosses are all there (though Motaro looks quite different).  Even Sareena from a GBA game is there.  The joke character Meat from MK4 is there.  Chameleon (with a C, from the PSX version of Trilogy, the ninja that cycles through the male ninjas moves) is there for sure, but Khameleon (with a K, from the N64 version of Trilogy, the ninja that cycles through the female ninjas' moves) is probably the ony character whose appearance is questionable.  (She really should be, as she has an actual story (that ties into Reptile's), unlike Chameleon.)  Plus, there are at least two all-new characters (the heroes of this game's Konquest mode), as well as Kombatants that you can "Kreate".



People shouldn't have given up on the series.  I agree that II was the best of the 2D games (that is, until Trilogy, since I love fighting games that bring everyone back, just like Armageddon will).  3 was a step back, 4 was crappy, and the side-story games were kind of embarassing.



But the series came back this generation, and it's a shame if you missed them.  Deadly Alliance and Deception were really good.  The series showed that it was strong as ever, with actually decent 3D fighting, staying true to its roots, but also new characters, redesigns for all the ninjas (!), and Konquest modes in both games (Konquest in Deadly Alliance had a series of training missions that tried to tell a story, but the Konquest mode in Deception was a truly epic one-player mode).



Since it sounds like you don't know, and it's barely spoilleriffic since it happens at the beginning of Deadly Alliance right in the game intro, is that Liu Kang was killed by being ambushed by Quan Chi and Shang Tsung outside of a tournament.



He came back in Deception rather zombified, though in Konquest mode (since that takes place over a big chunk of Shujinko's life), you can see and fight against Human Liu Kang and Ghost Liu Kang.  I wonder if they'll be back and playable in Armageddon (since everyone is back, though not necessarily all forms of them, as I didn't see Human Smoke or Reptilian Reptile).  It does seem strange that everyone's been brought back from the dead but they aren't as zombified as Liu Kang.  I guess he really likes those chains.



It says October 9, but that's for the PS2 and Xbox versions.  A Wii version is coming out Spring 2007.

[TerraEsperZ]

Since you know Mortal Kombat so well, how about a little history lesson of the MK universe? I hate playing tournament game, but the game story is interesting, and I'd like to know who is supposed to have won in which game.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[DarkWolf]

I've been meaning to check out the newer MK games, but I'll admit I favor the Japanese fighting games much more.  Some of the PS2 games should be on sale now, I should see if I can find them.

[JonLeung]

Grrr @ TerraEsperZ.



Well, actually, at my computer.  I wrote a relatively long post about Mortal Kombat and somehow it didn't get posted.  >_<



Even so, it'd be too difficult to sum it up.  Well, you could, but there are a lot of interesting details I'd hate to leave out.  I'd recommend the individual character biographies on Wikipedia.  I would guess that Armageddon will explain a lot more about everyone, but it's been said that it's a reboot of the MK universe, and so many characters may be gone (for real) after this.



I also made a note about how I like fighting games' stories.  So many varied characters each with their own story.  They can each have part of an overall story, or perhaps alternate storylines that you're left wondering which ones happened until the next game clears it up.



Mortal Kombat's been around for so long, too, so the whole MK history is long.  Not to mention that it makes references to battles of millenia ago and involves multiple realms and races, even immortals and the undead.  Street Fighter has been around a long time too, but the story is weak and recycled (Ryu's looking for the next big fight...again), even without half a dozen versions of II alone.  King Of Fighters is very convoluted, and it doesn't help that very little of it is in the games themselves...for individual storylines you need to refer to biographies from elsewhere, sheesh.  Not that I don't enjoy Street Fighter (or any Capcom fighting game that may include them) or King Of Fighters (or any SNK fighting game that may include them), but MK's storylines are definitely on a whole 'nother level.



Anyway, if you ever play Deception, play the Konquest Mode.  It's a one-player adventure mode that focuses on the life of Shujinko.  He starts out as a teen, and ends the game as an old man.  Throughout his life he'll be helping the main villain of the game, but he never suspected his evil intentions.  Along the way he meets every playable MK character in that game, and various others as NPCs, as he quests across the six realms (Earthrealm, Outworld, Netherrealm, Ednia, Orderrealm, Chaosrealm), so while it won't explain everything about the MK universe, it's a good sampling of things, and you get a good idea of who's allied with who and that kind of thing.



Wikipedia is still my top recommendation, though.  Why not start here?

[TerraEsperZ]

I wonder if the MK story gets retconned with every new game? The first few Mega Man X games tended to do that (one says X will kill Zero, the next says the opposite, then Zero goes to sleep presumably to lead to the Zero series but the next X games has him back for more, etc).



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

I don't think the MK retcons are really all that significant, to be honest.  I don't even really consider the fact that the ninjas (top row of the MK:A selection screen) now look considerably different from each other instead of being palette swaps, or that some characters (notably the formerly secret characters) have new move sets to be considered a continuity issue.  To me, it only truly matters if it affects the overall storyline in some major way...something like Kano changing from half-Japanese to Australian isn't important.



As for the many endings possible with each game, I usually assume the bad guys' endings to not become canon.  Or the most common story threads that don't conflict with each other will carry through.



Well, okay, I suppose you could consider a lot of retconning if you consider that for a series known for its Fatalities, no one ever seems to die (or stay dead) for more than a couple games, thanks to Trilogy and Armageddon being true games with storyline (and not just storyless dream fights like Marvel Vs. Capcom or King Of Fighters '98).

[DarkWolf]

I don't tend to dwell on the story lines of fighters very much.  Most of them start out in the arcade, and a lot arcade games have poor story lines.

[JonLeung]

The recent MK games were made specifically for the home consoles, and that's where the more interesting developments in the stories have happened.  I can't harp on Konquest mode in Deception enough.