i'd like tobias back but he clearly got bored of MK long before we did

Why does everyone always think John Tobias would be the savior for MK's storyline. Who's to say the storyline wouldn't be exactly where it is now had he stayed with Midway?

couse it would be different he would never kill liu kang or kahn or introduce some generic character or kill all the characters and leave the story open ended

Well no one can say for sure but what we can say for sure is that Boon screwed it up royaly ..so give Tobias a try!!

Unlikely, given how narrow the focus of Tobias' plotlines were.
Even MK4 and the backstory of Mythologies weren't nearly as expansive as something like Deadly Alliance; which I think did very well to honor each individual character, while also telling a large and cohesive story.
The big shame there was that they didn't take a more literal approach to continuing the narative, falling back into old habits (and new directions).

Characters post-Tobias haven't all had a great treatment, but it's also been nice to see a lot of them develop beyond the coloured, pseudo-superheroes of the early games.

I'd speculate losing Tobias gave MK a chance to blossom.
I also doubt the guy bringing comic references to the games would've had major objections to crossing over with a comics company already suited to interdimensional hijinks.

I would have to agree that the game with the most storyline detail in it was without a doubt Deadly Alliance, a Vogel game.

First of all, killing off Liu Kang was a good idea. Second, Tobias also killed off characters and gave us plenty of generic fighters.

How does anybody know he'd be against MK vs. DC? Tobias was a comic fan and artist who openly admitted he got a lot of MK's ideas from comics. For all we know, he would be 100% behind the crossover idea.

The idea that if Tobias returned everything would magically be better is idiotic and not based on anything realistic. Yeah, Tobias gave us a lot of good things...but he was FAR from perfect. Let's also remember, that when he left Midway, he created Tao Feng....which, if I remember, was a total bomb.

The belief that if John Tobias came back Mortal Kombat would instantly be returned to its glory days of 1993 is a myth. A nonsensical bullshit myth spouted by fans who can't let of of their nostalgia and are terrified of anything that's new.

The truth is, if Tobias returned...some things would improve. Others would get worse. Ultimately, we'd be right where we are now.

Boon + Tobias = Mortal Kombat

Okay first play Tao Feng then tell me if you want Tobias back.

Tobias left on his own accord, and made a laughable game called Tao Feng, what despite the good concept was ultimately inferior.

I promote Vogels creative command over the franchise.

Has anybody here ever actually seen the roster of Tao Feng? The names of the characters? Every single character in the game is a word or two strung together. "Fierce Tiger", "Fiery Phoenix", "Iron Monk", "Master Sage", "Divine Fist", "Exile".

And people have the gall to call Deception's new characters generic and shallow. I'll take ten Kobras over one "Master Sage" any day.

Why? Tobias did sweet fuck all. And you could completely give the series over to John Tobias and he could write the greatest mythology of all time for Mortal Kombat. But it wouldn't solve anything. Nobody would care if the game played like 1992 on steroids. You'd still buy the game, beat arcade mode, read all the cool little endings, and then the game would get stacked up on your shelf and collect dust after two weeks when you were "bored" with it, just like MKD did with all it's storyline progression and millions of gory fatalities.

We don't need John Tobias, or Quinton Tarintino, or Jeffrey Archer, we need Yu Suzuki to sit Ed Boon the fuck down and yell at him for nine days about move properties. Trying to build a great story around a shoddy fighting game is like building a mansion on a foundation of mud. If the game is good, the story will follow; and even the story isn't especially great, it'll be amplified by the personalities the characters fight with and how they interact with one another in terms of gameplay. See; Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Battle Arena Toshindin -- Lee Chaolan is a fun character to play because he gives the feel of being light on his feet and swift, which is a reflection on the personality of his character, thus giving us more insight into how he might act when placed in certain situations in a story context. A good game makes playable characters, and playable characters are likable characters, and likable characters reduce the need for a storyline to be incredibly complicated and deep in order for it to be interesting to the player.

If you want a bitching Mortal Kombat game you'll never get bored with, that has tons of cool features and a sweet story, start here: To prevent constant 50/50 mix ups, we need to...

Dude, don't ever use Tekken as an example of story and character. Gameplay is fine, but not story. Never story.
Goddamn game has a grizzly bear that can read and communicate with humans. It's not even a genetically engineered bear or a robot bear or an alien bear. It's just "well trained".

It's not a matter of John Tobias wanting to come back or even Midway wanting him back. The feeling is mutual as far as i am aware, tobias has stated in numerous interviews that he would never return to the MK series and he "supposedly" thinks nothing of the game anymore. I think there was a fallout somewhere along the lines which is why he and many others quit the team.

Since Tobias has left the story has definately gotten better in some respects. But some of the new character developments are poor - Hsu Hao, for example worst character in a fighting game ever.

To top it off. Tobias won't ever come back to Mortal Kombat. Period.

From a storyline perspective, there's nothing wrong with Hsu Hao.

Chinese military officer, secret agent for the Red Dragon, gets a cybernetic heart which makes him super-strong, but also emotionless and single-mindedly loyal. Infiltrates the Special Forces to help them destroy the Black Dragon, then turns on them, becoming Jax's archnemesis.

It's actually kinda clever. He makes a pretty good Anti-Jax, really. The only reason people dislike him so much is he looks awful and his fighting style sucks.

And frankly, if we're going to determine who the worst character is based just on how ugly their design is, I think Dairou wins that one.

agreed i like hsu hao and i happen to think he looked and played great

I never liked the whole realm of order realm of chaors Seiden thing. It just seemed so random. It didn't really have anything to do with the existing characters. As a result I find myself constantly forgetting those characters individual stories......

Anywho, I think on the whole the story's been great with and without Tobias (armageddon excepted). It's not like every character in the old days was fully developed when introduced. Ermac and Rain come to mind. As cool as they were to play as, it's not like Rain's (some bad guy from edenia) plotline was clever or skillful. It was little more than an excuse for another pallette swapped ninja. Now they did alot with the character since then, but alot of character were like that at the outset.

Cyrax and Sektor's MK3 bios were essentially "they're robot ninjas trying to kill sub zero" My biggest problem with the new characters is the failure to take them anywhere in their 2nd or 3rd game. Alot of that has to do with Armageddon's lack of plot, but it's still disappointing. What's happend to Ashrah lately?
For that matter, some characters seem all but forgotten and are included for little more than nostalgia. Has Kano done anything relevent in the last couple games?

Hey, ya suppose they'll ever take the Saibot out of Noob's name?

Most of what you say is very very true. Well written.
But don't take Tekken for story. MK has the best story of all fighting games. Tekken has far better character design.

Ninjacage John Tobias wouldn't had done any better on the MK series then Ed Boon did. You people think hes like a god lol. The Savior of MK, The lord of MK, lol pathetic. Have any of you seen his fighting game? It sucked ass. Ed Boon is way better then John Tobias.

After Deception, Ashrah escaped Hell and ended up in the vampire realm, where she started using the Kriss to slay vampires, becoming an enemy of Nitara.

Kano was extremely important in Deadly Alliance, as general of Shao Kahn's armies, fighting against Kitana and Goro's forces. Kano's army actually won that battle. Then when Kahn "died", Kano switched sides to become Shang Tsung and Quan Chi's right hand man...until Quan double-crossed him, hiring Mavado to replace him.

Yeah, compared to Mokap and Striker who are average Joes that can uppercut people twenty feet in the air and shoot fuckin' fireballs, a dancing bear is absurd.

My point was that often you can become more familiar with and attatched to the characters of those games just by playing as them than you can by reading the bios of half of Mortal Kombat's vanilla, one dimentional characters such as Sonya or whoever. The bottom line being that MK needs a solid gameplay foundation on which to build characters who fight as their personalities should fight. It's pretty difficult to have characters whom fight with personality in a competitve environment until you've established and polished the parameters of that competitve environment. Waaaaah, Tobias. Fuck Tobis; FRAME DATA. I know a lot of MK fans think that shit is boring, but it's more important than elaborating on Sonya's relationship with Jax in a bio because that shit brings things to life in your imagination, not in the game -- If you polish the gameplay, then you can make Sonya PLAY as a character of her personality should play, and that doesn't just bring the character to life in your imagination, it brings the character to life in the GAME. That's why people are attatched to Hwoarang and nobody gives a fuck about Darrius.

Regardless... just look at the last couple of MK games: you can have all the gore and intricate novel length bios you want in MK9, you'll still get bored of it in two weeks if this stuff isn't straightened out to give the gameplay longevity. The only way to give the gameplay longevity is to make it simple and functional. If you don't want to get sick of the next few MK games in a matter of weeks like you know you do, everyone who enjoys MK needs to start talking about gameplay issues as a community. Or your favourite franchise is going under and it's going to have to resort to whoring itself out doing things like this crossover garbage in order to stay afloat.

What was so bad about Toa Feng? It's been years since I played it, so I don't really remember it too well, but from what I can remember the game wasn't any worse than MK:DA-MK:A.

I'm currently watching the Gamespot review to refresh my memory. The reviewer is complaining about a lot of stuff. And as he's talking I can't stop thinking about the last three MK games. Every point he's complaining about, isn't any better in MK.

The graphics look certainly better than the last three MK games, which went for the cartoony overly buff style. Animations look actually fluid and and combos look better than anything seen in the MK games. You can even use the environment to your advantage. Like running up a wall and kicking your opponent into the face. Something I always wanted to do ever since I watched the first MK movie.

I can't really comment on Tao Feng's fighting mechanics though. Like I said, it's been a while. But MK has got one of the worst fighting mechanics I've seen in any fighting game, and it's hard to imagine that Tao Feng actually managed to be worse.

We're talking about characters and story, man. Tobias's role on the MK team was characters and story, so if he came back to Midway, that's what he'd be doing again.

And the characters in Tao Feng were all the bland. I mean even more bland than ninja palette swaps. We don't want anything like them in MK.

Oh, well... reading comprehension for the win. >_<