We could have had an epic retelling of MK4 with a few new twists and turns and instead we got that.

The story based on retcons has far smaller chance to be entertaining and all the continuity problems (in the end) almost guarantee it will suck ass.

atm I have a feeling the whole time-travelling scenario is here to mask the inability of developers to learn their own lore and to make the chance of mistake as small as possible (but it obviously CAN"T get rid of it completely).

Bingo.

They don't remember their shit but they know there's a legion of hardcore nuts out there who have studied every ounce of the lore and text surrounding the franchise and are all sitting there with bright red pens in their hands ready to call them out- so they try to avoid it as much as possible with all this time-traveling and time-altering bullshit and it wouldn't surprise me if they're already struggling to keep track of whatever changes this game has made.

They've been half-assing it for over a decade. I don't understand why people around here still care so much.

Umm, no.

Not like that, at all.

Can somebody briefly tell me what "retcon" is, and also, is it always frowned upon?

I don't know I think it means to change a previously established story thing (probably), I'm curious if it's always a bad thing. Like Star Wars, they said in the original you could learn to have the Force, and then in the prequels, they say you are born with it.

My perspective is it's probably mostly laziness/lack of research coupled with confusion (if you establish something, and later contradict it, that's confusion).

Retcon (in a film, television series, or other fictional work) a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events, typically used to facilitate a dramatic plot shift or account for an inconsistency.

This is what our best friend Google says.

Basically, this topic is about karakters' bios published on the official site, where some of those look like retcon (e.g. Kabal).

"RETroactive CONtinuity"

Ka-Tra

Not quite a retcon, but oddly enough, Liu is the only revenant in the roaster (on the main webpage) to be in his human form. Weird.

Also, I'm not sure how to feel about D'Vorah being responsible for Kitana's dad's death...

So, Skarlet being completely retconned CONFIRMED:

Kitana: "You were a decent person once." Skarlet: "But I was miserably poor and hungry." Kitana: "To fix that you gave up your soul."

Couldn't figure out Erron though. And didn't care much about Kabal, his retcon could be explained through time-travelling stuff, so whatever.

Kabal's is the worst actually. We can explain Skarlet just fine cause her MK9 story was just 3 rows in abio, so it wasn't really the whole story.

Erron....this one's hard. Any info in the ending is non-canon, but the background info should be correct. Is he still 200 years old and cursed by Shang Tsung? Doesn't seem like it, but I guess it could be.

But Kabal........there is just no way to explain that he was a police officer in MK9 who says to Kano that he's out of the Black Dragon life. And now, being pulled to the future during MK2 events, he's a Black Dragon listening to Kano.

What are they trying to say? That he has always been a dirty cop? He was secretly infiltrated in the Police Force, but actually a Black Dragon? He literally was an honest cop in MK9, said he doesn;t want a crime life anymore

God, they really do not know what to do with their own lore. Here, Ed's interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0giRCGA6FDk

Starting from 26:58 it's about Skarlet. And there, AGAIN, retcon is retconned :D She is artificial being created from the blood of dead warriors AGAIN :D Lol NRS

Stupid ass bitches. Sindel's bio confirms she has been retconned as well. Of course, it is only confirmation - the retcon is perfectly recognizable in her dialogues. These people should be banned from making games for ignoring the LORE. They went so far with these retcons they don't even know themselves which story is true (remember Boon in his interview tells the "old" Skarlet's story and seems unaware of the retcon made by his team?). What a shame. Fuck them.

They could have done more with the good Kabal story arc before tossing it aside. Give it a bit more repercussions but some characters just get the generic treatment and get thrown aside onto the scrapheap: still at least Kabal got a badass non-canon arcade ending.

With how flippant they are with the lore, I don't see the point in being invested in the story anymore. I don't see why it was necessary to change the character of Sindel from the roots. She willingly joins the side of Shao Kahn, so clearly she didn't detest him so why would she kill herself? Why go this far? She was brought back via Quan Chi's sorcery and it was clearly controlling her so why not just have her story revolve around her being a revenant still?

Whatever. I'd say who cares but the gutting reality is, it's only us. The creators don't, and new fans don't know any better, this new garbage is what they know if they take the time to know it at all.

MK was my main escapist fantasy outlet. Some people have Star Trek others have X-Men but MK was mine and now, just like a lot of the old fans of those, I feel like there's nothing left for me here because it's all being demented and ruined and those behind it are telling me they don't want me around.

Man, Kabal is just the cringiest shit in this game. Why did they feel like it was appropriate to turn him into such a, for lack of a better term, dude?

The guy sounds like Sonic and that's just not Kabal. He's always been a stoic character, in here he's boomer quipping and throwing out annoying bro catchphrases every minute. He's more of a bro than Johnny.