Exactly, thus why it makes sense lots of sense. You see Kabal's roots(if you remember in MK3 bio) WERE that of a criminal, before he was a Chosen Warrior and used to be good, he was once bad/evil prior to that. He left the Clan and wanted to fight in justice, not evil...

In MKD, they had the choice to bring back another Chosen Warrior or bring back a Former Chosen Warrior taking him back to his roots of the Black Dragon.

I'm mildly alarmed by the fact that this thread is still open. Usually, when bad info gets posted, a mod comes in and says they were talking to folks at Midway and this is all bullshit and then they lock the topic.

Hurry up, guys.

Maybe its not bullshit?

I think they tried to do the best they could with Kabal in Deception, and that's about all that can be said. Kabal really didn't have that many awesome possibilities waiting for him when he returned, nor did he ever show any signs of hidden potential that had yet to be fully explored.

Personally, Kabal's return was, story-wise, annoying. I really didn't want the whole Black Dragon thing to get back up again. Fans of MK in general, I believe, were getting tired of the same ol' same ol' with the Dragon clans. The introduction of the Red Dragon spiced that up a little bit, but then you those Sonya fans who, like me, want her to move on to something else. No matter what, if the Black Dragon and the Red Dragon are around, Sonya's bound to get dragged into it one way or another, and that, to me, is like a chain binding her to the same spot. I just wish the representatives of these clans could've stayed dead in the last gen, thus why Kabal's return just doesn't thrill me one bit.

I think you're confusing a character's backstory with their roots as a character, which is something different.

For example, Cyrax's roots as a character is a robotic Lin Kuei assassin hunting for Sub-Zero. His backstory would be he was a human who once served amongst the Lin Kuei clan. If you were to take Cyrax back to his roots it would be back to when he was first introduced, which would be his Lin Kuei mission to assassinate Sub-Zero.

You're applying roots in-universe which is very strange to me.

Not at all, in fact his roots actually are very appropriate with his "character"

Ever hear the phrase "Once a theif, always a theif" orginally he was "evil" then became good, then decided to go back to his roots, the way he originally was. Lived the life of crime.

In Kabal's case it makes sense, now Cyrax since I'm a huge fan of him it's a bit different. For one, he was programmed, thus had no choice being programmed to obey what is asked of him until Sonya and Jax helped him find his "soul"

Now, Sektor is different because he likes being evil, dark and literally has no soul....he's lost and corrupted while Cyrax isn't.

So, although I see what you're trying to say here Cyrax and Kabal are two characters nothing a like really.

@ leo, I hear what you're saying but I kind of feel the same way about Sonya among a few other characters.....she was very interesting early on but now really does nothing for me. She's one of those "predictable" characters more then not. You know what she's about, you can anticipate what she's going to do. She's all about hunting one of the "evil" characters taking charge....not saying I hate the character, I don't she just isn't that all appealing to me.

On Kabal, well I liked his story in MKD. Personally, I enjoy his "older true self" comes out. Being that his old clan was literally "dead" or just not organized, so being that Kabal was an original member of the Black Dragon I felt it was very appropriate for someone like him to take charge and become the new leader personally, getting new additions Kobra, Kira and older characters like Kano etc to rejoin him once again.

I enjoyed his bio honestly, initially I was a little sad to see him become evil again but then I thought. Kabal was cool in MK3, but let's face it out of the "good guys" Kabal isn't even near the top.

Well, I never did say outright that Kabal was unappealing to me as a character. He was pretty interesting in MK3, but like I said, not many things could be done with him for future games; he just wasn't the type of character who you could think up a bunch of possibilities for. That's partially why I dread his return in the next MK games, though my main reason is because I fear he's gonna bring the Black Dragon clan thing back with him. The Black Dragon is the only thing he still has going for him, which isn't the case for Sonya, who can and should be moving onto other situations. I'm just saying, I hope he doesn't drag her down and keep her in the same spot we're used to; if he does indeed come back, he needs to find himself another enemy, and not the predictable one. And you as a Kabal fan should feel the same way. If Kabal gets himself involved with Sonya as is probable, he's just gonna become some sort of next-gen Kano. If you ask me, this is the most likely path for someone like Kabal who hasn't shown much in the past, but IMO, the worst path for where Sonya's at and where she needs to go.

I do see where you're coming from when you say Sonya's a predictable character, after all, it's true that we all already know what she's about and how she's likely to react in a given situation. But that's pretty much the same for almost every other character in the game. The only exceptions are people like Raiden, who have just recently been completely changed up. I definitely don't want anything so drastic happening to Sonya just so she can be "spiced up", but I do think that she needs to be set on a new path, challenged in a new way, forced to act in more surprising ways story-wise; again, something Kabal won't allow her to do if he keeps coming with this Black Dragon thing.

I once came up with a possible scenario out of the top of my head for Sonya in future games on another thread. It wasn't hard at all. The type of character she is makes it easy to open new doors for her and place her in different scenarios. Not only that, but Sonya just happens to have one of the highest number of possible enemies among the MK characters if you stop to think about it. It's not a good idea for me to get deep into that in a thread like this (for the sake of not digressing too much), but it's here if you wanna see: http://www.mortalkombatonline.com/content/forum/showmessage.cds?id=107482&page;=3

This is just to kinda show what I'm talking about. It's nothing against Kabal - I don't like him that much, but I also don't hate him... as long as he doesn't negatively affect others who do need to move on from the kind of storyline he's still stuck in.

Or maybe Midway isn't returning MKO's calls anymore. :P

Based from WHO It came from... I really don't think its bs

thus playing the "no comment" card. hmmm...

I personally think, the list of characters is getting too "iconic" from both sides.
One there definitely aren't enough villains from either sides, some of which are more iconic than many of the characters listed here (at least for the MK side). I was hoping that while they were deciding on what characters would make the cut, they wouldnt base it off of "who has been in the game longer" but more off of "who has the most interesting possibilities, and popularity" obviously scorpion/sub-zero, superman/batman were obvious choices but characters like Kabal...In my opinion he is just taking up space for a much worthier character such as Noob, Reptile or Baraka. (I will admit i am biased against him because I personally don't like his character and never have). He just seems like one of those characters who will never escape his past roles, and then continually bore me with his same non-interesting story.

I'm not really a fan who has ever bent more towards the "heroes/Good Guys" so having so many good guys, and not many confirmed villians yet is a disappointment. But who knows, Mileena may show up.

I was also wondering where is Taven at? since he basically brought all of this on

Despite all of this i am still optimistic haha and going to pray for the return of Shao Kahn!

Well, personally I think that's Sonya's choice whether or not she decides to get mixed up with Kabal....given the fact that she's been obsessed with Kano all these years and hope to hear she did indeed kill him, she has a few choices. Go back to her headquarters and help out there, look for Jax, hunt the Tekunin, hunt the Black Dragon and Kabal, hunt the Red Dragon which she did and said in MKA's konquest mode....so Sonya realy has a few options and no doubt will choose one of them. That's why I feel she's a bit predictable now. I respect her overall characters, it's just characters that are "goody two shoe" good guys like Sonya, Superman for example are very predictable so that can kill some anticipation. Because you know Superman will never kill anyone unless he has to, and Sonya won't either unless she feels there's a huge threat and would just lock them up, shut them down...know what I mean?

Kabal was factually one of the more popular MK3 era characters, as was Ermac, Cyrax and Sektor but I still don't believe he had no future really. I mean, the "fans" afterall were the ones who wanted him back so that has to tell you something. And midway did just that in MKD, with Kabal, Ermac, Sindel, Baraka, Mileena, Noob and Smoke. Characters we haven't really seen in quite some time prior to that game. Kabal I still like his story revamping the Black Dragon and becoming the new Leader.

I don't think he'll make it his priority to hunt down Sonya or care that much for her forces unless he feels he's being hunted down by her, then I can't blame him for getting involved with her. It's like I said earlier, it's Sonya's choice. If she gets mixed up with the Black Dragon, she'll be bumping heads with Kabal at some point. I actually wouldn't mind it too much speaking as how they were both on the same side at one point(MK3) Kano and Sonya is old already, Kabal and Sonya now they don't have a "history" other then fighting for good in MK3, so if you think about it. It might be a little interesting to see how Kabal reacts to see one of his former allies hunt him down.

Personally though, you'd have to ask does Sonya care that much about Jax to find him and find out where he is, what's happening to him giving his ending or go after the Black and Red Dragon clans?

What? Why would Taven be in the game?

Presumably he's inferring the very simple segue Armageddon provides for a game like this. As much as I'd hate to concede one of the few available slots to Taven Affleck, it sure wouldn't hurt the flow of the story!...

Taven won't be in. He was in for one hardly canon game.

That and since Taven's new, he's hardly iconic. He'll most likely be in MK9 or something

Sorry, but this statement is unfounded.

MK3: Kabal was a criminal reformed into a moral vagabond.

MKD: Kabal was ordained a priest of chaos.

His stories were neither the same nor uninteresting. Although I will admit that turning him into a villain was a bad move and made little sense.

I would say you're right about Kahn, though. Both iconic and fan-loved.

In regard to Kabal and his roots...I didn't really mind his switching to being an anarchist. When MK3 came out, Kabal was frequently described as this crazy, nomadic, unpredictable wild man. I think the problem is, when his ending suggested he became a crime fighter, a lot of people assumed that meant he became this noble and altruistic "hero" hero....when it's entirely possible his brand of vigilantism was borderline psychotic.

So with that in mind, I don't think it's that big a leap to imagine him becoming an anarchist. But I DO think having him reform the Black Dragon was a bad idea though.


As for this supposed list....IF it's true.....

Raiden, Kitana, and Sonya are no surprise. I'm actually not that surprised by Jax. He's pretty much MK's token black guy and a huge guy with metal arms is somewhat memorable. I am a little surprised by Kabal, but if they want to not just include MK1 and MK2 characters, he's a good choice as he was MK3's top guy.

On DC's side, I'm disappointed it's going to be mostly heroes. I would've preferred more of a balance between heroes & villains. I think Black Canary is a good addition and I don't mind Hawkman. I do think Robin is a waste of a spot though, and...although I've nothing against Power Girl...I think there are better choices than her. Between Superman and Wonder Woman, I think she'd be rather redundant.

I definitely fell into that trap. I think at that point it was still very easy to think of MK as following the conventions of the heroes winning; ala Liu Kang's victories.

... Then we never got the Smoke happy ending, and Liu Kang's neck snapped. Yays!

Although I think your description of Kabal applies at some level, there's nothing stated in his MK3 bio or ending that says he was unstable or psychotic. The closest thing I could find to it was this:

"Kabal had led a life of crime. He was once a member of the Back Dragon along with Kano. Now Kabal devotes his life to fighting injustice. He gives crime's inner circle something to fear."

Even the fact that he's a vigilante is only implied. It doesn't say he's going to fight injustice strictly alone by his own standard of ethics. And even in MKD, we don't see someone who is crazy and unpredictable; we see a leader who's cautious and meticulous.

I realize there is a sad deficit of decent villains in MK3, but doing a quick fix on Kabal's character to beef up the villain roster is a sign of low artistic integrity. A character can become good; a character can turn evil; very rarely is it logical that a character will convert to good then back to evil. I've never seen three-dimensional conversions done well, and even two-dimensional conversions aren't cakewalks.

Now someone is probably going to reply, "but Kabal wasn't evil, Kabal was Neutral. He was an anarchist!" I'll concur that anarchy isn't intrinsically evil (though a lot of people don't know what anarchy really means; it's a philosophical belief that the phenomenon of authority is an illusion of the social contract), but the form that Kabal adopted was clearly evil. Kabal was essentially a nihilist, and a self-serving one for that matter. Nihilists do not believe moral truth, and therefore act strictly upon the Nietzschean "will to power." Anyone who does believe in an objective good could not call this anything less than evil.

I liked his transition back to evil in MKD, I know some people didn't like it but I felt it was rather appropriate for Kabal.

He was offered power, controlling his old Clan. Kind of tough to turn down....I see more potential for him in the future if anything now that he actually has "more meaning for something" as oppose to just being a former Chosen Warrior(follower)

I guess we have to ask ourselves "what would the MK Team do?" I think that if the Black Dragon is somehow involved in the/one of the next storylines and Sonya didn't bump heads with them as you said, some people would think that was outrageous (the fact that she didn't care to destroy the last remnants). This is why I fear Kabal's return might cause - it's likely to play on Sonya's predictability as a character and make it the biggest influence for her new storyline rather than allow her to be placed into different situations.

That's partially why I liked Jax's disappearence and possible involvement with the Tekunin. Although it was kinda sad in a way to see Jax turn to the "dark side", I couldn't help but realize that this would be one of those possible scenarios that would challenge Sonya in new ways and allow her to show different sides of her persona, I.E.: the colder, less "goody-2-shoes" side of her we've only really seen when she's faced with an enemy.

I guess a good solution for this would be if Kabal's revival of the Black Dragon became a subtle event rather than outright public such as when Kano was the leader. This subtlety would stop the clan's revival from reaching every pair of ears on Earth, two of those belonging to Sonya. I guess this could allow her to go through some necessary changes before she gets dragged into the clan story arch again (if it must be so), in which case she would most likely deal with the problem in a much more different and hopefully surprising way. Or, just give the job for hunting down the BD to someone else - Sonya's got a lot of enemies, but she's also got a lot of allies. Why not "promote" Sonya (in a manner of speaking) and put someone like Johnny, who also would welcome a change, in her place? Just some random thoughts... One more thing: I also see what you're saying that a rivalry between Sonya and Kabal would be more interesting than Kano given their past alliance, but that also makes me a bit hesitant because the MK Team might have Sonya become reluctant to take down Kabal. I (and I think a lot of other people) don't wanna see Sonya become nicer - the opposite sounds much more appealing.



I once considered Taven's "talents" as a new lead hero, but I wasn't too happy about it. Taven just seems like he'd turn into a Liu Kang with a more interesting personality. I think maybe he'd do much more well as a side hero, and in a future, canon-for-sure MK game. Him being Edenian and Edenia's probable protector are likely to make him favor that realm, anyhow, and I don't think we can have a lead hero concerned with Edenia more than Earthrealm.

I really liked MK:A, but they need to establish if it's deffinetly canon or if we'll get an actual sequel to Deception. Or if Armegeddon's ending will be linked to Deception in some way.

I'm saying Fake. Boon said all 20-22 Characters would be icons and instantly recognizable.