Group 1: Vipehr
Group 2: Neuros
Group 3: Wei-Lu
Group 4: Kira
Baraka407 Wrote:
I'm up for a beatdown on Dead Soul if you've got the time.
Set your clocks to stun, it's time for a
Full-Kontact Character Beatdown! DEAD SOUL Name: "Dead Soul" is a little iffy for an MK name. On the one hand, it uses the "characters named after things" pattern, which is okay, and we later learn that this name was
given to him by his master, so the name is also an important story point. But on the other hand, "Dead Soul" also sounds like a name for a throwaway NPC fighter, like "Monster," "Tarkatan General," or Johnny Cage's "Director" and "Stunt Man." So judging by the name alone (with name and appearance being the very first impressions a player experiences in the game) we're not sure whether or not we can take Dead Soul seriously as a
main character.
Appearance: The Shadow Priest is one of those character types that makes us want to scream,
"Why the hell hasn't MK made use of this before? It's RIGHT THERE in front of you!" His outfit has an ominous mystique, very dark and shrouded in mystery. But it's almost too plain for an MK character; while the lantern weapon helps to distinguish this particular faceless Shadow Priest from all the other faceless Shadow Priests, that's really the
only detail that makes this one feel special. He's an enemy you might encounter in MK Shaolin Monks; after killing five or ten ordinary Shadow Priests, you have to fight this one mini-boss-level Shadow Priest that wields a special weapon. Beat him, and the gate to the next dungeon opens up.
Part of the problem is his hood. Completely hiding his face under a hood makes him feel less like an individual person with goals and a backstory, and more like any other random Shadow Priest. Showing some face -- even just a little bit like
Ezio Auditore does -- would make him feel more like a real guy with a real story.
Looking at the bio we learn that he hasn't even
been a Shadow Priest for several hundred years, after being booted from his order. This makes the call for a more unique and personal character design even more important, because after centuries of wandering free he would certainly have developed his own style of Priest garb.
Story: Dead Soul has a strong and intriguing bio as a fallen Shadow Priest, banished for his failure to defeat the Great Kung Lao many centuries ago. Shang Tsung's scathing dismissal -- pretty much saying, "Your soul is
worthless!" -- packs surprising emotional power. Shang devours souls the way
Takeru Kobayashi devours hot dogs, and anyone who is damnable enough to make Shang skip breakfast has to be pretty damn
damned.
After a long exile, Shang's "Dead Soul" returns to the tournament with new powers and a mysterious purpose. Did he train for ages to regain his lost honor and prove his worth to his master, to whom he remains solemnly devoted despite his harsh treatment? Or is he simply out for revenge, just like every other jerk in MK who gets crossed by some other jerk in MK?
Sadly, a shining opportunity to tell a compelling "outcast apprentice trains hard and proves his worth" story is lost, and Dead Soul gets his revenge. And he also does it in some of the most character-breaking ways imaginable: For no given reason, Shang Tsung is
pleased that his pupil betrayed Outworld and killed its current champion. And somehow, throwing the tournament away and creating an unstoppable threat to Earth
and Outworld was Shao Kahn's plan all along. Forget the mystery of whose side Dead Soul is on -- we don't know what side
anyone is on. We're not even sure if anyone is even on
their own side.
His story does make one thing certain, though: in the end, all shall "find their reckoning at the hands of his mother's son" -- who in a shocking twist is also his brother's brother, and his uncle's nephew.
Gameplay: His unique wrestling-based fighting style definitely fills a void in the roster. But as much as he keeps slamming opponents to the ground, it would be difficult to impossible to set up the long juggle combos that other characters can do. This isn't entirely bad because it would give him a different feel from the rest of the fighters... but it also drastically limits creative combo-building, relying instead on using the same basic combo-throws and counter-throws with little room to play around. If some of the takedowns resulted in popups, allowing the player to experiment with some juggles, it would fit in better with the spirit of MK gameplay.
His special moves are nicely varied and make good use of his magic and his lantern weapon. Floatation makes an awesome signature ability for a Shadow Priest, and since Ermac lost his hover-stance attacks for MK9 the niche is open to be filled. (We don't count Sindel, whose flight is not only mostly useless but dangerous to use, so we rarely see her actually using it.) On the downside, Fire Breath and Fire Vapor are so similar that they might as well be the same move, with Vapor being an enhanced version of Breath with more power and reach.
The first Fatality gets pretty intense, with the cloak-in-your-face and slithery chain being especially sinister. It's more clever and truly chilling than many actual MK Fatalities, but it encounters a serious fault in arenas like the Desert and Living Forest where there are no walls to utilize. Fatality 2 is a great concept, but putting down the chains and stepping around the opponent then kneeling to pray before anything happens seems like a little too much setup -- even though the payoff is fantastic. Simplifying the setup would make this one really pop -- maybe he could just toss the lantern up in the air, and it comes to life as he prays. The same Priestly mysticism comes through, without laboring over every step of his arcane rituals.
Personality: When we first meet our banished Shadow Priest his true character is a mystery. When the ending comes we finally get a feel for his motivations (his tired, overused, revengey motivations) yet even so, we really don't know him any better than we did at the start. His stage presence is powerful and scary, but not very personal; he feels more like a living cloak or some other "thing" than a full-fledged character, like
Blaze in MKDA. Playing him through the Arcade ladder, it would be hard to imagine him fighting through the tournament as the hero of his own story, but rather an obstacle that everyone else has to get past. Now you can arguably say the same thing about Goro and Kintaro -- in the ladder, they're just obstacles. But they're obstacles who live to kick everyone's ass for the Emperor and to glorify their race, and they have a hell of a good time doing it. For Dead Soul... it's more like a fighter has randomly encountered a cloaked and hooded "dead soul" in the Challenge Tower who is there because it showed up, and they need to kill it so they can move on with their quest. The entry and victory poses are usually the nuances that fix this sort of thing, but even these seem to only reinforce the issue.
In a lot of ways, it's the same problem that zombie Liu Kang has: fun to play, but in the end it's just the mindless remains of someone who used to be a character. Liu Kang's disembodied soul is much more
interesting because he has
personal drama and a
clear reason to fight. The same seems true of Dead Soul: he was much more interesting before his exile than after.
Conclusion: Despite having a somewhat un-catchy name, Dead Soul turns out to have a pretty strong foundation for a character. His story and costume design fall a little short of their grand potential, but he seems very fun to play and he fills in several missing pieces in the MK roster. With a little character work he'd be a Flawless fit for MK.
Beatdown Lineup: Blizzard, Eastwind, Ekimaru
art by fear-sAs
big thanks to flameshang for the sig. 
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