Kotal could do worse

What are the lines specifically?

The Kabal and Erron thing was stupid. Skarlet I didn't mind.

Jade and Kotal. Meh... I've never had any attachment or feelings towards either of them. I like the look of Jade in this game. But this isn't exactly a major change. I mean, it's not like some other part of her history would need to be dropped to accomodate this.

I didn't say Jade's was a retcon. Just some additional info :)

You can find these dialogues on youtube. There is even a compilation for all Jade dialogues, and it includes Skarlet and Kabal.

Link for Jade's intros: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwkapNmxlgM

A fair amount of story spoilers in here I'm really surprised they left them in the game.

The very first one says she defies Kotal. And a later one with Scorpion references the fight between Kotal and Shao. And then another mentions Kitana becoming the new Kahn of Outworld. Edenia cannot be separated this time for some reason.

Told you people Kittelsen will fuck it up.

Kabal's retcon was completely unnecessary.

Only way they could make this work with Kabal is if his human form was from the original timeline. Otherwise the continuity sounds completely fucked. Hope that isn't the case when Krisis in Infinite Realms drops.

I doubt it's retcon. There are multiple timelines, so you have Kabal who is BD folk, and he doesn't know Sub-Zero, for example. And then you also have Kabal who is Revenant as seen in the story trailer (not even counting his gameplay), and this one is continuation from MK2011-MKX timeline. Same for Liu, Kung, Jade, Kitana, Raiden, etc.

I'll wait till I see it in full context before I blow a gasket but I did find a piece of dialogue from Skarlet interesting to say the least.

Scorpion: You remind me of Quan Chi.

Skarlet: My power rivals his!

Uh, what? Excuse me? This lady has the power to manipulate Blood as if she were Sub-Zero and Quan Chi has power over the dead so again...wut?

@Scorpion1813

Like I keep saying. They want to streamline and simplify the MK universe as much as possible. I was always confused how Kitana managed to restore Edenia though. They kind of glossed over that in the old continuity.

The dialogues between Jade and Baraka were interesting. Also, Jade and Kotal? Wtf? But then Baraka praises her for defying Kotal.

Im very interested in Kitana’s dialogue’s with Shao Kahn, and Liu Kang.

Im also interested in what the f*** is going on with the story. Kotal and Shao Kahn are fighting for Outworld. Does Kitana become ruler of Outworld somehow? Then there’s past and present versions of some characters. What the hell is going on!? Lol

I’d like to see the Kitana and Liu Kang romance become slightly less subtle in this game though. It’s always been very subtle and very briefly hinted at. I’d like to see a little romance in an MK game for once.

You somehow FORGOT that this is REVENANT Kabal who drops this lines as if he was from the Old Chronology

Kabal has not been retconned, not necessarily

Kabal "I already tried to be a good guy and it didn't work", intro with Jade.

"I grew up poor" intro with Skarlet

My take is that Kronika/Black Dragon enlists Kabal by healing him of his Revenant status and burnt skin.

I think all the human forms of the revenant characters are from the past. That seems to hold true to Liu, Kung, Kitana, Jade - heck, even the 'good' Raiden seems to be the past version.

The problem with Kabal is his backstory was changed.... these are events from before the games... meaning before the time-travel. So time-travel can't be a reason for the change.
Originally he was a Black Dragon goon who went straight. Now he's a cop who was bribed by Kano. It's literally backwards.

How can they forget when you didn't actually quote any lines or link any videos?

Even if they are banned on youtube or google, there is still his bio, written right under his revenant picture. Those quotes adds nothing new to it, only confirms it, unfortunately.

All that is said in the original timeline is that Edenia was freed after Shao Kahn was defeated. I always assumed it had something to do with Sindel and/or Kitana. And, well, if the realms can be magically merged, why not separated too?! Even more so if you consider the realms were fractured to begin with.

One thing I've always wondered about realms is, are they the same planet, but exist in different dimentions or parrallel universes. Or are they different planets or something? I know it's not really important... I'm just curious.

Either way, I just want to explore Edenia more. And would love to see an Edenian uprising in Outworld to take back their home (which was kind of hinted at in MKX and why some characters chose to support Mileena).

I actually asked Vogel about this on twitter back in 2016 and he said to me "The way John Tobias explained it to me was that they were like alien planets".

Which I was kind of disappointed with.It kind of killed the fantasy element of the series just a little more and made it sound more like Mass Effect. But he did say The Netherrealm was an exception.

For all I know he could have just named dropped Tobias figuring it would shut up a lore nerd.

The reason I had an issue with the realms being as easily restored as they were merged was because you kind of got the sense that it was a complicated process that only one with immense power like Shao Kahn could pull off. Any other time someone restored their realm it was through some magical universe bending mcguffin so it made it more plausible to me. It's not a big deal really, just something that always stuck out.

Would have been nice if NRS remembered their own canon/lore and elaborated on this stuff instead of just tossing it into the garbage but oh well.

@Onaga

Hmm, well to me "alien" could encompass inter-dimentional beings too. But I suppose that wasn't his intention.

I get what you mean regarding splitting the realms. In a way it can be compared to them undoing character deaths... which I'm mostly against. And I don't think it really added much to the story anyway; Edenia was constantly at war with Outworld after the split.

They could always have some old Edenian ruins that crossed over in the merger, if they ever wanted to explore that. But I doubt it. It's all about Outworld vs Earthrealm and constantly reviving Shao Kahn.

Well, since Deception came along the answer to merging and unmerging realms is simply to fuse/unfuse their Kamidogu. But then we're stuck with the idea that the MK universe either only ever had six realms, or that every realm has one and Outworld ate most of them already (despite its Kamidogu looking pretty normal) and the "Big Six" are really just the last ones left. But if the Kamidogu are the only things keeping the universe in existence, why would the Elder Gods allow any merging of realms at all, Mortal Kombat rules or not? Shao Kahn should have been told NO MORE a longass time ago.

As much as I enjoyed Deception for its story and some of its standout characters, I'll also always remember it as the game that broke the fundamental laws of the MK universe. I can kinda sympathize with the current writing team for wanting to gloss over those parts like they never happened.

They really should do a prequel game about the Outworld/Edenia story. We could get some new characters. We’d finally get to see Jerrod. We could see young Sindel, Young Shao Kahn, baby Kitana, maybe baby Jade, maybe Jade’s parents, maybe Rain and Tanya thrown in there somewhere too.

I've always liked that as an idea for the movies. Instead of rebooting from MK1.... or skipping ahead in time and having to guess what parts of the game/movie timelines are canon... just do the Outworld invasion of Edenia.

I'm gonna post this here seeing as if I make a thread about in the MK media subforum it will likely never be seen/responded to (lol). I would get much more excited for a MK anime series on Netflix than for a live-action movie reboot. Just look at Castlevania on there.

An animated series would be awesome too!! In fact, I'd probs like that more as they're not bound by as strict time limits as movies have. Gives us chance to explore a lot more with multiple story arcs.

Of course MK Deception is the game that started MK downward spiral storywise. Also, why sympathize with the writing team? It has been almost 15 years and they HAVEN"T learned from the their mistakes. ALSO they are REHASHING their crappy story lines. In MK9 Raiden sends a mental message to himself to prevent MK Armageddon. NOW we have Knonika traveling in the past to recruit people to stop Raiden from screwing up . Here we go again. Like Raiden, did with his mental message why would Kronika get off her ass NOW after all this time to do this? Also , why didn't she just contact past Raiden directly or even stopping characters and or events that lead to Armageddon ? Like Raiden before her, why is she going to MK1 MK2, MK3 era or characters to recruit them, why not post MK4 and pre Deadly Alliance to stop Raiden?

This whole time bending thing is nothing more than the MK writing team trying to back peddle THEIR crappy ideas starting with MK Deception to MK X. To make things worse, they don't care about the lore , consistently in characters , they always retcon what ever they like, and now looks of the characters appearances are changing (Kitana). Keep in mind, MK9 had writers that didn't know or didn't care how the MK universe worked. At this point as much as a dislike Vogel as lead writer , he lost the majority of control starting with MK9 where people on the writing team could get out voted, as said during a Kombat Kast during the MK9 days.

17 years later, the MK series hasn't done anything new or important to expand the mythology. Everything new is just a variation of Tobias era ideas or NEW characters trying to do with OLD characters did in the PAST timeline. People wonder why John Tobias era is the most memorable and iconic era in MK history. Vogel era is fulled with pointless story lines, lame D tier new characters with boring origins that barley have anything with the story at all ( MK Deception's Order and Chaos Realm). Vogel era we are forced to follow a boring character in Konquest mode that is a C lister.

In MK9 , we see the worst interpretation of MK since MK Annihilation, filled with plot holes, massive errors in the overall story regardless of time travel, character assassination, lore breaking events, pointless shock value moments and countless retcons for the worst. To be fair as mention above, at this point I do think Vogel lost control. Now people who barely know anything about MK are now writing the story.

MKX like previous Vogel era MK games, we are forced to kombat kids wondering all the while what are the other more interesting characters are up to. John Tobias 's idea of telling a story then allowing the characters have their own subplot and ambitions that tie into the main story. THEN allow the player to choose which character to follow. To me, this is why Vogel era games are forgettable whereas Tobias's era, everyone had something to do and had personal steaks.

Two timelines combining into one, with this writing team is going to be a massive clusterf*ck with the writing team and series going toward. The current timeline already makes no sense for a "time travel" narrative. I wouldn't be surprised if a few characters from timeline B made it into timeline A, while timeline B is destroyed. O boy , and I hope timeline B is destroyed. MK needs either John Tobias back or a tried and true, storyteller for the series to make sense again and move forward.

I didn't forget anything. Let's use some examples and build on that, shall we?

Just as a thought - we have Sonya from MKX, and then we have Sonya from MK3 (most likely). They are from different timelines and surely MK3 Sonya from the past. The past that could have different story elements.

Look at Jade who is Revenant now, after MK9, and the young one, coming from the past and most likely from different timeline. Her dialogs with others are quite interesting.

Kabal was BD before he joined Forces of Light. So him still being BD and get sucked into present timeline by Kronika Co. has nothing controversial.

So I'd still stand by my observation that it's not retcon, it's different timelines. And some chars get bios for their MKX continuations, some for their alternate versions.