I wouldn't mind sticking to the usual endings.

Canon endings

I prefer narrated. I didn't like the videos in MK4.

A) Half of them sucked and didn't develop much of the character or story at all, most of them were just "Surprise my old rival! You're dead now! Victory is mine!" and then someone got thrown in a hole or out a window. Or blown up with an amulet.

B) They were too open-ended and left too much room for confusion. I'm looking at you Reiko.

Narrated endings give a clearer picture of story intent. The narrator spells out what's happening for us.

Canonical epilogues instead of corny ill conceived what if scenarios.

I can see the appeal of all arcade endings being canon but I feel it would be nearly impossible to implement and unsatisfactory if it was even possible. In MKX for example, Mileenas canon ending would be "she didnt do anything because she died days ago". Any character who didnt survive the story or who ended happily ever after would basically just be them sitting around either in a grave or in an ER.

Just make them somewhat plausible for future games. Ermac’s and Liu Kang’s ending of MKX for example. Sub-Zero on flying dragons or Erron Black murdering special forces are examples of ones I could do without!

Ya'know what's a caveat I'd like to stress here...

I don't like endings that hinge on the idea the character defeated the main boss. This was the problem with endings in Armageddon & MK9, for instance, in my eyes. Every ending built off of beating Blaze or Kahn, so literally all but one of them had to be non-canon by default, and thus it made very few of them feel intriguing, because when Baraka's ending starts with him killing Shao Kahn you already KNOW Baraka didn't kill Shao Kahn (or even Shang Tsung, as the plot twist in Baraka's MK9 ending goes on, lol)...

You could easily dismiss every ending in MK9, because none of them aligned with the events of story mode, and while playing MK9 it made none of them feel important.

Sure, some of them are still semi-canon in the long run, but I don't like SEMI-CANON endings like that. I like the idea of believing every ending COULD be canon, and waiting until the next game to see which ones stick. I'm sure we'll never have a game where EVERY ending sticks, because NRS likely makes changes and decisions during development, and they don't want to paint themselves into a corner for MK12 when they haven't even started on it yet. But yes... I like the idea they all COULD be canon. Let them decide which concepts to keep later.

Don't make every ending hinge on the character beating Kronika, meaning we instantly know most of them aren't valid.

MKX actually did a better job of this than MK9, as some of the endings in MKX actually aren't built directly off defeating Shinnok. But still, some are. I'm pretty confident a lot of these characters didn't defeat Shinnok.

I mentioned in a thread the other day that I really liked Nitara, Cyrax & Reptile's endings in MKDA, because they were a self-contained little story for those 3 characters (a story that really didn't have jack-all to do with the actual Deadly Alliance, or defeating them), and as it turns out, this was the canon series of endings that led directly into setting up Deception.

When the ending doesn't hinge on the character defeating the big bad, it's easier to maintain it going into the next game. Because obviously only 1 character can beat the big bad.

@NathanMThom

Now we know that's not true. Death is never an ending for anyone in the MK universe and is either just a fork in the road or a path to a new beginning. Like I said make them epilogues. Something that either gives us a glimpse of where the character is and what to expect from them next or at the very least a expository ending on where the character is now personally.

Kitana did next to nothing in MKX but curb stomp Raiden. Yet her ending in the game is easily the best with her catching a glimpse of the life in the prime timeline which Raiden has robbed her of.

Smoke could have still had his ending in MK9 even with him dying because of his supernatural nature, he could have realized what he was upon death and simply reformed. No biggy. Smoke's in the next game.

Milleena died yes. But so what? You could go in any direction with that. Go with the idea that she does wake up in the body of a discarded aborted version of herself in the flesh pits due to the actions of an illusive Shang Tsung.

Or have her wake up in the netherrealm, escape from the prison of souls and form an alliance with Ashrah.

Or have a mix of them both. Have her go to the netherrealm upon death, see what has become of Kitana, and because they no longer have this bitter hatred of each other that they did in the previous time line, when she is ripped from the Netherrealm due to Shang, she embarks on a quest to try and free her sister.

I'm done with these what if, hypothetical endings that are just an exercise in pointlessness because we know so and so didn't beat Shinnok, or so and so never even went toe to toe with Shao Kahn. I don't know why they started going in this direction with Armageddon.

Honestly most endings we get these days would have constituted as bios in a game before Armageddon. It's only in some of these we actually get a glimpse of certain characters motives in the game.

Double Post.

I would also prefer the "as canonical as possible" approach with few to no "joke" endings like Kitana forming an all-girl sailor scout team or Sheeva being given Australia because apparently "F*k Australia"??? Scorpion and Sub teaming up as a new deadly alliance gets my hopes up to much damnit.

Dont alot of MK X,s endings link up in some way so the broad strokes could be used

Raiden becomes violent and decides to attack Outworld before it can attack him

In scorpions ending his clan is used as footsoldiers in said attack

Kotal Kahn is smashed apart and beseeches the elder gods to create a new tournament

Ermac is manipluated by Shang into reviving him

Mileena wakes up in a cloned body as part of a plan constructed by the reborn shang

I would love the clone-mileena thing to be true, BUT, I don't want an army of MIleena clones active at one time, I just want reincarnation, one clone at a time is ressurected with MIleena's soul in it.

Also Ermac should stay evil, and maybe a powerful puppet for Shang Tsung, which leaves only few souls in ERmac.

But that's just it. Take out the guess work now. So instead of each ending being after Raiden defeated Shinnok, or after Kotal did. Just go with the old approaches to endings seen from MK4 to Decetion. Only like I said, work that brain to make them all canon so you don't have to sift through them all and cherry pick details to work into canon later.

Not that Canon matters anymore. No one at the MK team seems to remember what's been established and what has not.

I disagree with a previous poster here regarding MK4's FMV endings, those were awesome. Most of them.

I'll name a few characters with cool endings: Scorpion (who has a canon ending), Quan Chi, Johnny Cage, Tanya. Also worth noting, the Jax/Jerek/Sonya endings are funny af. Especially when Jarek is thrown of the cliff, that's comedy gold.

As for MK11, they don't care to put in the effort to make FMV endings, they haven't done it since MK4. It'll be the same as MKX, MK9 etc., a slideshow with some text. Oh boy.

After reading some of your responses, I think this is the one time they can really nail all of the arcade endings. As a couple of you have mentioned the endings got more canon than in MK9 but was still only partly canon.

I think the best way to do it is to make them all purely canon but find a way to end it on a high note for the target character. Time Travel could make this easier.

Every character doesn't have to beat Kronika, but every character can get a satisfactory canon ending in which the story ends with their "win." Every ending doesn't have to be at the end of the MK11 timeline. The story endings can be used to develop the character and give the jobbers like Baraka a solid win at the end of the day.

For a super brief example, lets say in the MK11 story mode Baraka is a jobber as he usually is and ends up being imprisoned by SF shortly before the final fight. As the final fight is happening, Baraka takes that opportunity to break out of jail and go back to his old Tarkatan stomping grounds. He finds some little bitch tried to take his spot on the Tarkatan streets and is being disrespected by his old gang. He brutally murders the gang leader, takes his wife and lives happily ever after, slowly accumulating a Tarkatan army for future plans.

Granted I'm no great story teller, but I think that kinda gets the point across of how I would like to see the endings. I prefer endings are Canon and they could be done very well.

I think you can very easily do canon endings that provide supplemental information about what happened with characters during the duration of the story mode and I’ve wanted to see them go this route pretty much since MK2. You could even take the Twisted Metal approach and have an intro, a middle scene and an ending for each character.

But if that’s too much, at the very least, canon endings would be amazing. For the Mileena ending, they could show a flashback to her taking over for Shao Khan, something to do with Baraka and perhaps provide a nod to how she might possibly return in the future. There are several possibilities.

I just don’t want pointless “what if” endings that have no baring on any story, don’t overly come to fruition... I mean what’s the point? Why go to the trouble of hiring a narrator, creating the artwork and writing the script for something that’s basically fan fic for your own story when you can actually do something that conveys real information to the player?

While I wouldn’t mind seeing a sort of vignette that looks similar to story mode cutscenes for arcade endings, I think having the sort of narrated motion comic style allows for a bit more storytelling in a smaller amount of time, so I’d still probably go that route.

I care less about the presentation of the endings and more about the content. I want the endings to be canon wherever possible, and something that could work with the story, if a canon ending for the character is not satisfying.

Basically, I want something more like what MK Deadly Alliance and Deception had. I did not care for what MK9 and MKX had because they were all pretty out there and none ended up being canon.

As far as the motion-comic ending styles go, they're alright and I'd be find with that presentation.

I really liked the slideshow endings from MK9 and MKX, and in my opinion NRS should continue with them. Maybe one or two extra story pictures per ending, but overall I am pretty happy.