The kombatants do not need to be digitized, but they certainly kan stand to be more realistic. Scorpion's arms shouldn't be thicker than his head.
For an example, look at the WWE screenshots that were posted earlier. The Undertaker is a real person, and his character model looks very much like him. It is recognizable and realistically proportioned. This is the most reasonable depiction of people that we can expect to see in the games, and I believe it falls in line with what Urban Smooth is talking about. We can have realistic, real-time lit people w/o digitizing them or drawing them from scratch.
I'm fairly certain this was used to some extent in MK4, though the characters really started to bulk up in that game. But look at the Living Forest stage. Ed's face is on one of the trees! I doubt they drew that from scratch.

The other reason I have against them doing this, even if it was technically feasible, is that I definately don't want a return to the costumes of MK1, 2, or 3. Starting in deadly alliance, we started getting very detailed costumes on the fighters. Many of these costumes just would not be possible if the characters were digitized. Things like Nitara's wings, Shang Tsungs ornate robe, or scorpions golden outfit from MKD. The costumes are very detailed and have become very important in defining the characters personalities. Take those away and I think you will take away an important part of the game.

Good input!
Sure, maybe this would be an expensive process, but, it doggone sure is a thing to experiment with!
Computer effects look much more realistic now days than ever before. And all they do is continue to get better. If you're worried about cheesy costumes on digitized real-life actors, those costumes could be touched up with added effects on computers. The same goes for lighting effects.
If you remember, when the old MKs captured real-life actors, some of them had costumes that were colored differently than in the game. Take Kitana and Sindel, for instance. Their costumes were red, not blue or purple. So, the coloring can easily be done.
You guys bring up War Gods. I have not yet played War Gods, but, I'll look into it. Tell me, were the characters more realistic that those of MK4? If so, then why isn't Midway going the route of real faces!? We all know that the facial movements and emotion on a real human face cannot be beat.
It's that realism that made MK great in the beginning. Think if the MK series had started with cartoon characters. I'm pretty sure MK would only be seen as a blood-filled version of Street Fighter.
The fighting series that can capture real people into a 3D game will be the next best 3D fighting series (as long as they are serious and don't try to make things cheesy or corny with humor).

I think a better or more convenient idea would be to make a separate series of MK games in the old style of 2D.
So have a line of 3D MK games and a separate line of 2D MK games.
I think that would be awesome and I'd buy the games for sure.
Benefits of this are:
1= It's easier to make the 2D games.
2= It would be cheap for midway.
3= Midway would make a lot more money.
4= You would have the old school feel again with real life actors.
----------------------------------------
The new generation of MK games could use the style based attacks, so every fighter has unique attacks like in the street fighter games. They could still keep the uppercut, some form of sweep and some anti jump in attack like the round house.
The game engine would be totally different from the old MK's. And much better, they could even use 3D effects for the backgrounds and fireballs.
Then they could have an old school version of the same game that would play like the old MK's with every fighter having the same attacks etc.
There could also be different versions of the old school games, like:
MK2 style
UMK3 style
a new style with a parry, throw escapes, a new combo system and a lot of other stuff.....
This would all be on the same CD.
I can imagine it now, Droooooool.....

First off I'd like to give congrats to Urban for forcing me to register after coming to this site for a couple years now. The reason I decided to give him my input was because of his comments saying he wants realistic gore in the game, or perhaps excessive gore. Now in todays world you don't need to play video games to see this, you don't even need to watch a movie to see it. Because why watch artificial gore? Why not appreciate the real thing. What do I mean? I mean do what I do and join the service. If you were to join the Army today, within 12 months you would be almost guaranteed to see the most fucked up shit you've ever seen. For example. In my first and only tour yet to date to Afghanistan, I had the joy of being on guard duty. Now while on this, a man came to the gate holding his jaw like it was broken. Protocol would require me to ask him to put his hands where I could see them so I could check him for possible weapons. When the old man took his hand off his jaw, I came to the discovery that it was unhinged. So as I watch his jaw fall to the side of his face, it reminded me back when I was able to play old school MK and rip people's heads off, and blow up their bodies. Yes its all fun and games, but it's when you start to get to the point where you are obsessive over gore that you really need a fuckin reality check. Now Urban my problem is that you are asking for realistic characters for you to kill. Sounds to me like you are either A. making a topic to get people fired up just to get a reaction, or B. desperately need to get a psychological thisthingisdisableduation. Now I'm not trying to tell you, "Mortal Kombat is life," because I'm sure you have just enough sense to separate that part of fantasy from reality. But honestly there is nothing entertaining about having to watch someone die in front of you, let alone just hearing a story from someone first hand.
Now that I've got my main argument done with, the logical argument I have for you is this: Since you liked to provide the matrix as an example, let's say the scene with the multiple agent smiths was done the same way, except the background was oh I don't know, any stage from MK:DA. Would that have been pleasing to the eye? Or how bout if Neo was able to shoot Ryu's (yes from SFII) Hadooken? It would look completely fuckin retarded. So you asking for realistic models, blood, livers, kidneys, and all other assorted human organs, how groundbreaking would that look it it was all played out on a cartoon background? Mortal Kombat is moving in a good direction, and is perfecting its own unique new style. Hell things could be a lot worse and we could have Cell Shaded Mortal Kombat. Be thankful for what they give us because its obvious you want to sit on the side and just bitch. There are two types of people in the world, the first bitch and cry they want change, and the second actually make the changes. Personally I think the first type is completely useless.

oh and also for the records here are Midway's most recent (2 Quarter) earnings.
Midway's Earnings Statement
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1022080/000104746904025668/a2141411z10-q.htm
Now I am not going to give you the liberty of explaining this document to you, but it touches on every penny midway spends, and its profit, and its worth.
Midway seems to be up about 140 million dollars, which sounds like a lot, but when you consider MK isn't their only game they develop and when you look at their costs and expenses you realize they don't really have a lot of funds. Developing games is expensive, and develop/fine tuning this technology you request is extremely expensive and plus the current hardware cannot support it. There are new technologies being used to map polygons which I'm sure our resident college student could explain. Anyways, just rubbing it in Urban's face that he should just step down ASAP before he makes a complete ass out of himself.

Knowledge31u Wrote: First off I'd like to give congrats to Urban for forcing me to register after coming to this site for a couple years now. The reason I decided to give him my input was because of his comments saying he wants realistic gore in the game, or perhaps excessive gore. Now in todays world you don't need to play video games to see this, you don't even need to watch a movie to see it. Because why watch artificial gore? Why not appreciate the real thing. What do I mean? I mean do what I do and join the service. If you were to join the Army today, within 12 months you would be almost guaranteed to see the most fucked up shit you've ever seen. For example. In my first and only tour yet to date to Afghanistan, I had the joy of being on guard duty. Now while on this, a man came to the gate holding his jaw like it was broken. Protocol would require me to ask him to put his hands where I could see them so I could check him for possible weapons. When the old man took his hand off his jaw, I came to the discovery that it was unhinged. So as I watch his jaw fall to the side of his face, it reminded me back when I was able to play old school MK and rip people's heads off, and blow up their bodies. Yes its all fun and games, but it's when you start to get to the point where you are obsessive over gore that you really need a fuckin reality check. Now Urban my problem is that you are asking for realistic characters for you to kill. Sounds to me like you are either A. making a topic to get people fired up just to get a reaction, or B. desperately need to get a psychological thisthingisdisableduation. Now I'm not trying to tell you, "Mortal Kombat is life," because I'm sure you have just enough sense to separate that part of fantasy from reality. But honestly there is nothing entertaining about having to watch someone die in front of you, let alone just hearing a story from someone first hand. Now that I've got my main argument done with, the logical argument I have for you is this: Since you liked to provide the matrix as an example, let's say the scene with the multiple agent smiths was done the same way, except the background was oh I don't know, any stage from MK:DA. Would that have been pleasing to the eye? Or how bout if Neo was able to shoot Ryu's (yes from SFII) Hadooken? It would look completely fuckin retarded. So you asking for realistic models, blood, livers, kidneys, and all other assorted human organs, how groundbreaking would that look it it was all played out on a cartoon background? Mortal Kombat is moving in a good direction, and is perfecting its own unique new style. Hell things could be a lot worse and we could have Cell Shaded Mortal Kombat. Be thankful for what they give us because its obvious you want to sit on the side and just bitch. There are two types of people in the world, the first bitch and cry they want change, and the second actually make the changes. Personally I think the first type is completely useless.

I've heard most of these arguments before, and responded to them already, so, I'll respond to your new input:
First of all, I know as a soldier, you see a lot of bad things. And, hey, it's going to happen! But, that does not make me want to step away from this topic. So, you chose a course for your life, good for you. That doesn't mean that I'm going to say, "Oh, this guy's a soldier. He saw bad things. That means MK shouldn't be more realistic."
That's not me, playboy!
I still hold very fast to my ideas about MK. Remember, MK is a game, not real life. So, wanting to see more REALISM in any game has no fault to it.
And, you may think I'm a terrible person for wanting to see real-life people hacked and slashed apart, but look at the first MKs! MK1 through MKT had real-life actors digitized into the game! That's what brought MK its popularity. And that is the reason why I would like to see MK go to real-life actors again. However, this time in 3D to stay with the fowarding of technology.
As far as your phrase, "bitching from the sideline," I see my comments and ideas as constructive criticism of the MK series, not a nagging housewife.
Once again, thank you for serving your country, and thank you for signing up for UrbanSmooth!

You could use this argument for all 3d games, so whats the point.
Nothing you say will change the way its done, so you are going to have to live with it.
Either you buy the game or you don't, simple as that.

I totally agree with Knowledge. Real life gore and violence is too real to be conveyed in a game. I know Urban has said he doesn't condone this, and its a shocking thing to even think, but have you seen the news lately and the Russian school fiasco? This is too real and it makes me sick to my heart. I dont want realistic body parts springing up in games that i play for fun or recreation...thats just sick.
MK1-T was never realistic, even with the power ranger style costumes and digitised characters. The 2 newer games are far superior in my opinion, and i would like to see the game progress in this direction.
Basically i am saying that i dont want anything to do with real life to appear in my computer games. Its my way to escape from it all.
I hope this isnt too far from the topic to count, i just think there is a line with how realistic things should be in a game, and i dont want it crossed for the above reasons.

I agree with the soldier's comments.
Urbansmooth: You're argument for more realistic gore is because it's what made MK successful in the beginning.In this answer you have detached yourself from the question.Why do YOU want it? What's YOUR desire for it? I want to know why you personally want the realistic gore? Would you watch video footage of war/traffic accident casualties with same satisfaction? For the record I'm not wanting any more gore whatsoever.
We all know MK caught the attention(any new does,but this doesn't make it a good thing to pursue) and Boon said recently he would never make any fatality realistic because he doesn't want people trying them on other people.Boon's statement is actually flawed but at least he is now aware.Flawed because for example nightwolf's tomahawk throw fatality can be recreated can't it?
Urbansmooth: Tweaking colours on MK2 characters is alot different to tweaking them on your version (the version that required billions of frames of data),also you could not spend the time adding details to costumes on billions of images.You would simple spend the money making the actual costumes first.Characters with transparency effects like smoke (with his moving smoke) would not be possible.

I'm agree with Knowledge and Bad_Girl_Love too... Too much realism would risk to relaunch the debate around the violence in the video games... Look what took place with Manhunt... :/

I wish MK7 would do that, so that the graphics in the game would be WAYY ahead of other games.
Remember the time when all the other games had to play catch up to MK graphically?
I want it to be like that again.

Actually Kerri Hoskins (Sonya) played the female in wargods.

I think you are missing the point Urban. I am not trying to sway anyone's opinion using my military background as leverage. I'm simply saying that I played MK1 when it first hit the arcades. I loved it. Then when I saw the real world when that type of shit happens, its not all glorious and great. Now I would say I am being a hypocrite by saying this (because I will always buy the next MK) but all of this excesive gore is making Americans in general less sensative to the real thing. We've managed to keep gore for the most part out of mainstream media (notice how I said for the most part, you can't turn on a channel of basic cable and watch someone get organs torn out of their body in a violent rage). Look at what happened when MTV said, "hey some skanky clothes is alright to show in our videos, as long as you can't see the ladies holes."
Gore isn't what made MK great, it was the storyline/controls/characters whatever got you hooked. The blood is what got people's attentiion but if they had the next MK a direct port of stickdeath.com no one would buy it. Great things can be made without pushing the boundries. GTA doesn't feature body organs and excesive gore (yes I know you can pop someones head off but its in a more comical way) and its one of the greatest games of all time. The matrix avoided showing scorched and mutilated bodies in its scenes and it also did excellent. People like over the top special effects and charismatic characters, otherwise you'd see a large sale of "Faces of Death" movies and other garbage that people create.

ImmortalKombatant Wrote: I wish MK7 would do that, so that the graphics in the game would be WAYY ahead of other games. Remember the time when all the other games had to play catch up to MK graphically? I want it to be like that again.

That's exactly what Midway should be aiming for. Mortal Kombat is the perfect game for such a thing. Since they started out with real-life actors in 2D, they should begin the trend of using real-life actors in 3D!
I'm sure you've seen Baraka's and Nightwolf's, as well as other MK characters' fatalities. How cheesy do those look? Quite!
It's not just about fatalities, people. I've seen your argument many times before. You know the one:
"Eww, if you want to see real people killed, go rent a gore movie, or, you must need psychiatric help!"
This is not the point, people! The point is that MK was once the most realistic-LOOKING fighting game in all of the fighting genre. Since they went to 3D, that all changed very, very much. A three-dimensional MK brought about an MK cartoon fighting world.
Of course, you give them several years to get used to the world of 3D and perfect their 3D methods. However, I think it's time that we fans begin to push Midway more towards bringing back the realistic look that helped make MK popular in the beginning!

I think you're actually missing the point here Urban. I am not quite sure what beer goggles you had on while playing old school MK but it didn't look realistic to me. The closest they got was the million versions of MK3 they put out, and the background in the game gave it a corny feel. Midway isn't anywhere near the quality of other gaming companies such as SCEA, Nintendo, EA, Rockstar, or even one hit wonder Bungie (Halo was a Mac-Exclusive game until Microsoft bought the company). Your hopes are too high for a company who generally puts out shitty games.

Urbansmooth, It would be necessary that you understand that if MK become too realistic, it will be no doubt censored... And stop trying that MK needs to employ 3D digitized real life actors, this is just YOUR opinion, not the opinion of the majority...

Urban is hilarious, i think he's on commission from some impossible company in employing actors to star in a 3D computer game.
I hate to say it, but there are plenty of sound arguements to explain why this can't or shouldn't be done.
Sorry friend.

ahh so thats the problem. In that case everyone send 10 bucks to Ubrans paypal account to support the Actors/Actresses without representation in the video game world charity. So thats why he was trying to tell everyone we didn't know midways finances (didn't he know its federal law to make all that information available?)

first off i think you people actually should give Urban a break. hes actually trying to be civilized here. also i dont think he's psycho or anything, i think what he means is he just wants to see characters that are better proportioned. which would be interesting, but i think mk is headed in the right direction. 3d polygons are alot easier to use than image capture like methods, i also see what he's saying about the fatalities, if you're going to have them make them deccent, some of them are just so whacked out that even for a mk character (meaning ridiculously strong) they'd be impossible to do.

nah that would make the game look cheap thats old i dont think they will ever take that path with mortal kombat.i know that with the PS3 3D will look much more real just wait and see it looks great right now but just wait and see what the PS3 will have to offer.

Civilized? That's a laugh. I think what you meant to say is Urban is indeed more barbaric then civilized for wanting realistic death sequences to realistic people. He is a perfect example of the effects of a desensitized society. We play video games to have an enjoyable experience. Whether you enjoy a comical death sequence, or a realistic execution either way we are victims of someone with power deciding that simulating death was alright for us to experience. I know that I have been affected by it because I enjoy playing MK, Manhunt, and GTA. But the reason behind me enjoying them are I am able to separate myself from reality and partake in a fantasy experience. GTA is very comical on their approach, while Manhunt tries to disturb the viewer, which is probably why I thought the game was very shallow. In any case I am much happier that Boon and the gang are doing their best to separate MK from reality because its quite obvious there are people out there who couldn't do it on their own. Video Games are not the cause of all incidents of violence, but in some cases with fragile people they are.

FoDeah Wrote: first off i think you people actually should give Urban a break. hes actually trying to be civilized here. also i dont think he's psycho or anything, i think what he means is he just wants to see characters that are better proportioned. which would be interesting, but i think mk is headed in the right direction. 3d polygons are alot easier to use than image capture like methods, i also see what he's saying about the fatalities, if you're going to have them make them deccent, some of them are just so whacked out that even for a mk character (meaning ridiculously strong) they'd be impossible to do.

Sorry, i was a bit patronising, but seeing the words used at the beginning of the thread i dont feel too evil.
I guess i was just trying to state there is a line and crossing it isnt cool. Also the preaching about 3D characters is just getting a bit tired. More proportionate characters would be good, and MKD is looking better on that front. The ladies defiantely seem alot better this time around. Just be a bit more sensitive and respectful to others.

FoDeah Wrote: first off i think you people actually should give Urban a break. hes actually trying to be civilized here. also i dont think he's psycho or anything, i think what he means is he just wants to see characters that are better proportioned. which would be interesting, but i think mk is headed in the right direction. 3d polygons are alot easier to use than image capture like methods, i also see what he's saying about the fatalities, if you're going to have them make them deccent, some of them are just so whacked out that even for a mk character (meaning ridiculously strong) they'd be impossible to do.

I'm looking back to the first MK and thinking of the fatalities. Hmm none of them seem possible. You can't uppercut someone head off, or ripp their head and spine out with a single hand. I also don't believe you can incinerate someone by breathing fire or blowing a kiss. Also ripping someone's heart out would involve getting around that ribcage thing which protects it.
Now looking after the first MK, I realized the fatalities in the following games only get more over the top. What game have you all been playing to be convinced that MK was soo realistic?

Thanks for the input, guys. I think it's fair to say that the soldier guy has been too affected by his war experiences to accurately think about really wanting actual human beings in Mortal Kombat again.
The rest of you that agree with him, bah, you know what I think of you.
We all know that we want MK to become more realistic. Yes, MK is a game. So, why shouldn't MK be more realistic like it was when it first came out?
MK had several years to better itself at 3D worlds. Now it's time for realistic 3D action! I'm not saying that the characters should be realistic just because of fatalities. We already know that fatalities would look a lot better and would have a lot more shock value if they were performed by and on real human beings.
Soldier guy, if you get flashbacks, it's your own fault for joining the army, and then playing MK.
Real-life human beings would be awesome to look at in the fighting area and select screen area of MK! Also, think of the character endings. Midway could make live-action character endings movie clips! We all know this would be an awesome ground-breaking achievement.
I respect your input and opinions! Please add more.