Well, blue can also have a royal meaning. It is also associated with sadness, melancholy, coldness, and calmness. Traits I would associate with Kitana......though, most likely, blue was chosen for her without a great deal of thought. They probably just picked a color.


As for the mask....well, ninjas are XTREEEME!!! She's a princess, but she doesn't dress like one! That's what makes her cool God dammit! She makes that shit work!

I think everyone should hold off on judging how much detail etc. these 3 characters have, before you see their official high res renders and some gameplay footage. You are basing these claims off of low quality, blurry, cut out images recorded on a video camera recording a projector from about 25-30 feet away. I think its only logical to wait until you see something else, before you complain or nitpick.

I am using my 32" flatscreen HD TV as my computer monitor, and I still can't see anything remotely well enough to say the characters are bland...

No alts man....no alts at all.

I'm glad Jax has the arms in this game. Since it's pre MK3 I'm betting they're more prototypes than anything. Be nice if he keeps his MK2 moves though. There sure are a lot of Jax haters though, damn. The only thing that's pissed me off is when they make a military soldier and ghettofy him into a stereotype with the awe yeas and that god awful alt. he had. Other than that he was always a pretty kick ass character.

Agree ^ lol gotta love the boos and noo with Jax then Joker pops up and the crowd goes nuts LMAO...just proves my theory about Jax being a wasted slot overall.

Kitana looks fine, there's nothing wrong with her design. Looking hot as always.

Jax-boring as always lol no matter what they do to him

Joker-AWESOME

GL-Awesome

LOL. I didnt think it was such a "big boo". Besides, none of the Mk characters were really being cheered for. Its comic con, the DC will obviously get the "yays" before the MK guys.

Jax isnt really a waste....unless he took the spot of Rayden or Johnny Cage.

I know you want Fujin and Ermac, and even though I love both, I doubt they will make it. But I would pick Ermac before Fujin. Ermac has huge potential, and MKD gave us a really strong character in all senses of the word.

They should only find a way to make him less ninja like and more mystical. That way, he wouldnt have to compete with the icons such as Scorpion, etc.

More compelling and relevant than anything queve said! Wow!

The sheer commonality, and bredth of meaning of blue, is exactly why purple is obviously the superior colour. It's already a colour famously attributed to series-icon Sub-Zero (and the Lin Kuei), and while there are other purple characters, again, they build on the association of Edenian royalty.

If nothing else that's a start to building more of an identity into such an embarassing design.

The mask is not a trademark of Kitana.
It's a piece of embarassing history that should have been wiped from the slate as soon as the tools made it viable! Sub-Zero and Scorpion have the mask trademarked, if you want to talk about it in broad terms.

Mileena is the character with motivation to wear a veil, and to that end, Kitana would arguably want to distance herself from it. As if being the face of hope and justice in Edenia isn't enough reason to just toss it aside.
Her character benefits in no way from this forgotten restriction of technology.

Of course, all arguing about the mask and colour does is obscure the fact that, while even those basic details missed out, the character on the whole was short changed by a continued lack of progress and vision being quickly renewed as a trademark of the MK team, post MKDA!

Why is everyone complaining about Kitana? I don't see anyone complaining about the fact that Superman is wearing the SAME OUTFIT HE'S WORN FOR THE LAST 60 YEARS. Not that it's a bad look for him, just wanted to put things in perspective. Just as that is his trademark look, the blue ninja outfit is the trademark look for Kitana. She just looks .....generic....in her other outfits.

I like Kitana's look, Jax's look is okay, and GL is as boring as ever.

Seriously, the DC characters just look so bland and you know what to expect, so why are people bitching about Jax when all the DC heroes haven't had an updated costume in forever?

Superman has endured sixty years with very little change for a reason... His is the costume that arguably defined the conceit of the four colour superhero. He didn't step up with an off-the-rack blue one-piece and claim to be iconic. He had the decency to slap some logos and colour onto it, and define generations of entertainment afterward.

Kitana's significance outside of this little corner of gaming? Zilcho.

Simplicity and longevity aren't the issue.
It's the creatively barren logic and design.

Excuse me! That's some rather extreme blasphemy.
And you're gonna need His help real soon,
if these super-dumb politicians attack Iran.
So watch your mouth, please.

OK...so Kitana's look is not significant. Interesting. Maybe not, but just like the very existence of Ermac, it is a throwback to the drawbacks and quirks of the arcade age in which Mortal Kombat reigned supreme and gained its fame. Frankly, without the blue ninja outfit, Kitana doesn't even exist to me. Princess in distress has been done to death in Mario and countless other franchises. The mask is what sets her apart. She's an ASSASSIN princess. And to say her look is without luster and creatively barren, you must have never seen the UMK3 era illustrations of her and her fellow femme fatales. And, yes, I would have definitely preferred that look over her one-piece.

1.- I hope you were being sarcastic with your first cooment. Because I dont see how my responce to you was, er, silly. I did elaborate, am I correct? I'd please like to know.

2.- I guess you can be right about the mask not being her trademark, and for character development, you've got some very good points, but I guess we can agree that Kitana is known for having a mask, and well, ninja or not, she looks beautiful with it. Not that its got to be based on how good a character looks with it, but you know its a factor.

i've often wondered about this. from a continuity stand point she should definitely loose the mask. especially since people are easily tricked into believeing that mileena is kitana.

but her most recognizable has the mask so that's the way they decided to go in i guess. green lantern looks like green lantern. kitana looks like kitana, although i wish they would've taken her hair out of the pony tail. honestly ANYTHING is better than the bun but my favorite is still her MKII hair. jax, still glad he's in i think i'm the only person that liked his MKDA alt and saw it more as comic relief than making him stereotypical. i even liked the oooh yeeeeaaaahhh. i can't tell from the render but i think he has his metal arms again which doesn't shock me considering they've become his visual trademark. i'd like to see him in his MKSM look though.

That'd be a great example if Kitana got herself a fleshed out, individual design! I'm not sure deliberately referencing the technological limitations of 1993 are really a great justification for a bland costume. Especially when there are probably far superior, more artful examples from the same era of technology.

Someone raised the point elsewhere of people not complaining about Street Fighter characters. Ken and Ryu are the same thing, but with exactly the kind of personality and logic the MK swaps lack. They have well conceived costumes that appropriately embody what they are; the benefit of an identifiable head; and a reason to look similar.

Of course, MK is pretty much a how not to to most of SFII's hits...


Not likely! I'd like to think by sheer volume of movie-goers Kitana is better known for not having a mask. Y'know, because I know logic is going to be crushed under the mighty fear of change!


Nice one! Thinking is good!
Although, be well warned. It will almost certainly make your MK experiences substantially less enjoyable!

Riddle me this; is this any less recognisable?:

I don't think that anyone is claiming that Kitana's costume is iconic, or that outside of the MK universe, she is a character of the status of someone like Superman. That arguement is fairly moot anyway as we are talking mainly about MK fans here. Whether you like the design or not, it has come to be associated with the character. Kitana, Mileena and Jade were created as the female ninja equivalents of Scorpion and Sub-zero. Their masks only help to reinforce that view. We've seen subzero without his mask but he wil always carry the "ninja" alternate. (assuming the game has alternates!) I think that if Kitana remains in future MK games her design will continue to evolve, but she will also have her ninja look as an option as well.

You can complain about the lack of depth that some MK fans have, but it should come as no surprise that MK team went with this look for Kitana. I think a majority of MK fans expected as much.

You do make a good point about perhaps there being a shared color palette among Edenian royalty (Li Mei throws a wrench into that however). At some point in the story line, it would have made sense for Kitana to cease dressing like an assassin and more like a Princess. However, given the supposed time line of MK v DCU, it makes sense for Kitana to still have her older costume.

And again, as long as the character is beautifully done, I am content.

God and I have an understanding. I know where I'm going when I die. So blasphemy....blasphe-you....blasphe-everybody.


I'm not denying that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for Kitana to continue wearing a mask, given the way her story and character has progressed. But unfortunately, "icon" is the word of the day with MK vs. DC and in that regard, development and logic takes a backseat. So, like I said, Kitana is probably more remembered and preferred as a ninja and they ran with it.

Honestly, I'm not complaining about that. Sure the ninja concept is meaningless and outdated, but the "princess" stereotype has, IMO, been more damaging to her character...even though she doesn't fall into that cliche. So, in terms of iconography, I would rather she be presented as a ninja warrior first, who happens to be royalty, than the other way around.

But one perk of Kitana being masked is, as we saw with the Sonya render, the MK team still has yet to fully master rendering a female face. So Kitana in a mask does away with the possibility they'd accidentally give her a formindable jaw-line.

I'll ask you again:

1.- I hope you were being sarcastic with your first comment. Because I dont see how my responce to you was, er, silly. I did elaborate, am I correct? I'd please like to know.

And as for the new one, well, like I said, I agree with the mask thing, but I love how she looks with the mask.

And like Xia said, it does help to hide their concept errors when it comes to jawlines (points at Sonya and Catwoman ).

that is very very true.

I think Subzero is best example where the team should dump the iconic bullshit. He's better off without the mask, especially with the addition of the scar.

But I see what you're saying. The mask makes sense to me so long as we're in the MK2-3 period. If you're is a princess and a clandestine killer, it wouldn't be wise to toss your identity around.

Hah! I was impressed how well the human males have fared so far!
No human was looking terribly hot in the last generation of games!

I don't think anyone's really disputing the assumed reason behind, as much as the folly of that same logic that continues to let us down, and sell the MK franchise short. That is the point.

Although, as it happens, I really don't think Shang Tsung is anywhere near as recognisable as purple, maskless Kitana.

Lol.

Everyone boo'ed Jax. Is he really that bad?

Everyone else got a good reception.

Poor Jax...

Well, I guess you mean here.
Because there's only way to escape re-incarnation.. Love, and we're already in hell.
Except it's gravity and politics keeping us down, not flames and pitchforks.
(sigh)

Speaking of Sub-Zero without his mask, I sure hope if they decide to include alternates, they have this one from MK:DA:


I was a big fan of this look of Subby. It is afterall, his classic look. If they don't do alternates, they should have P2 have the mask and headress off.

Where we disagree is that you believe that this "folly" is a let down. My argument is that for most MK fans it is not a letdown.