I liked Kronika. She played the God role perfectly. Underestimated humans - her time warping was brilliant too. So glad she is unplayable as you can't translate that to a playable character.

While part of me would love to see an Edenian or Great Kung Lao based MK, I think you are right. Start afresh. Kitana Kahn and Lord Liu Kang guiding the forces of light. Get the chaos realm onboard perhaps - a fresh Earth slate can be tainted by Havik's magic.

I think it would be cool to see more of the titans and learn more about their origins and lore.

You had me at Havik

Honestly, I’ve given up on trying to speculate where MK will go story wise. They always go in some random ass direction that leaves me befuddled.

Personally, I think it could be kind of cool to abandon any kind of a single continuity between games at this point and go sort of an Archer route. For those who don't know, Archer, the animated TV series, for the past few seasons has pretty much just been plopping the characters into a completely new setting and story, playing around with themes and almost like what-if scenarios for each separate season. For example, one season is set in a 1940s kind of classic Film Noir setting, the another season is more of a classic pulp adventure type of setting, the upcoming season looks like it'll be Sci-Fi. And every season, the slate is wiped clean and it's like the characters are meeting for the first time.

Since we've established this idea of rewinding timelines and trying new timelines, I think it would be cool for MK to basically just make every single game its own mini-reboot, set in a different timeline. So, let's say, in the next game, maybe it takes place during the MK1 tournament, except this time, we have a different roster, maybe Liu Kang is serving as God and Protector of Earth and it's Johnny Cage, or someone else, who defeats Shang Tsung, and things just go from there, until some other kind of new threat or conflict emerges. And then by the end of the story mode, it's all wrapped up. Then in the following MK, the setting and roster, and character interrelations could be completely different. Basically, each game, from here on out, is its own timeline, whether it's a timeline crafted by Liu Kang, or one of the past ones crafted by Kronika. The character backstories, their interrelations, their motivations could vary from game to game.

That way, the developers could have more freedom to play around with the roster, and the actual character designs, and the plots could get more imaginative without committing to multiple games for any single story arc. Also, this way, characters could actually die without having to come up with a reason for why they're back in the next one. I would love for something like that.

I clocked the intention the moment the story began, and the ending was right on the money. This story was an excuse for the developers to write whatever they want.

It is clear telling a cohesive story is not what they want anymore. It's roster first, story second. It's also clear they want to make it canon which characters exist and which don't and I guarantee you Ed Boon will say "I this new timeline Hsu Hao and Drahmin do not exist." It's a copout. A cheap way to avoid actually accounting for what they've created. I wish John Vogel was writing the story again.

Hell if I know. Not even going to try and guess at this point. Why bother with how bad the story telling has become, and how rampant the retcons are now. I don't care, there's no point in getting invested anymore when continuity means fuck all.

Hard to say. At this point everything we know as gospel has been wiped away. I can’t decide if I’m good with this or not.

As sad as it is, I'm beginning to agree with this sentiment. The lore and storyline are a big reason why I still support this series but it's gone down the toilet since the first reboot. I don't know what can or needs to be done to fix it, either.

Yeah, I agree.

I fear what MK12 might be like due to MK11's ending. There's no telling what kind of mess they might come up with. Hell, they might even redo the first three games again, which I am not about to deal with for a third time.

These new writers are terrible. I don't think I can take it anymore.

I'll give a short breakdown of what I think will happen:

1 - There will be some flimsy intro to MK12's story beginning with Liu Kang and Raiden. Possibly Kitana too, but who knows since we got two different story endings. Nothing will be explained well or really thought out properly.
2 - We're gonna get more of the same in terms of playable characters. If there's one thing we've learned from these last three games, it's that WB and/or NRS are afraid of fresh ideas with their rosters and would rather shove the same 10-12 characters down our throats (with 10-12 more from the "once every 2 games" category) because they think that's what makes them money. We'll probably never see any of the 3 new characters from 11 again, if we do I'm guessing it'll be just Cetrion and it won't happen for years.
3 - Any character that either of us might have liked from MKDA or MKD that hasn't appeared this timeline will once again be brushed aside or relegated to appearing in a tower ending. I've been saying that they should bring back characters like Havik and Sareena until I'm out of breath. I'm done trying.
4 - Whatever rules are established through the writing of the early parts of MK12's story will get changed or forgotten when the writers need something to happen and don't know how to do it.
5 - No matter what side of the aisle it occurs on, I don't think we're done with the agenda pushing. Frankly I'm just tired of it all and I'm only harping on this because they couldn't even write those parts in 11 well, but I'd be rolling my eyes even if the political leanings were more my flavor. I'd just rather not have those two worlds cross again.

You know, at this point I wouldn't even be against MK12 being the final game in the series. It won't happen now that they've committed to yet another reboot, but I really don't know how to salvage a cohesive story anymore.

People have a problem with the writers? Seriously?

It was actually a refreshing story and well told. Bit like Star Wars, I feel that a lot of people are crying because no Mileena and no Rain, and the new story means there might not be a future for either (Mileena more so). So rather than look at the cost of trolls and abuse over those two (meaning Ed will not reward bad behaviour and so leave them out), people are sooking about anything.

The story fleshed out all characters - not just one or two - characters like Jax, Jade, Kotal and Cassie, they actually gave a real reason to care about the characters and invest in them. Kronika had the ultimate power. Every movie has it - Westworld, Avengers - re-writing history. It is the close to a chapter.

I enjoyed the story mode and it had great moments.

I loved Vogel's style of writing more than the new fellas in the post MKA era and my main problem is that they don't understand the lore of the realms fully. The 3D era gave much ambience and story to the realms and places that they felt like characters in their own.

Using the timeline for exercise is fine.. I don't know why the team.should held accountable for.shitty characters. Like Has Hai or Drahmin...

Next, the series should.go back to the great Kung Lao era, with sub and Scorp ancestors.

Which was all promptly undone by time rewinding back to the very beginning. The end.

And if you thought that storyline was cohesive, idk what to tell you because there were drawbacks for days to that narrative.

Basically all that can be done to fix it is to retcon the retcons. Pick up the pieces from the Tobias and Vogel years and reapply them onto the series and revise whatever new lore came about around them.

But that aint gonna happen. And now NRS are going the marvel comics route and forcing politics into MK. I just wanted some fantasy escapism. Like you said don't care which side it's coming from I don't want it in MK.

@ErmaSco What makes Drahmin or Hsu Hao shitty characters? What makes Jacqui , Cassie, Kotal or Kung Jin anymore compelling than them? Why are these characters getting support but Hsu Hao and Drahmin are instant shit? Hsu Hao was a cybernetic double agent of the red dragon who successfully pushed the Special Forces shit in. Not to mention he comes from a clan dabbling in gene splicing with Dragon DNA.

Drahmin was a war lord turned into an oni through a millennium of torture. A fate which ended up turning him into one of the fiercest demons of the Netherrealm. What about any of that is less compelling than two daddies girls and Kotal Everyone Just Get Along Kahn?

NRS is accountable for these characters because they are their creations. They found them valid enough at the time to implement into the mythos so they are obligated to stand by their decision and make these characters work.

That they can't make Drahmin and Hsu Hao work speaks volumes about how creatively bankrupt NRS is.

Okay, so anyone who's paying enough attention to the lore would know that the big problems actually started in Deception, which totally rewrote the rules for what the realms are and how they work, as well as butchering the timeline of past events in the Konquest mode. Armageddon broke the timeline further with Taven's backstory; there's no way he should have remembered Shao Kahn's war with Edenia but not known of Shinnok's fall from grace millions of years earlier. (Take note, Vogel worshippers: his work was hardly flawless.)

They wrote themselves into a corner, took a break to do the DC crossover, and tried to reboot the series with a fresh continuity in MK9. I believe that in MK9, their intention was to set up a whole new continuity that takes the story in a new direction, with updated backstories for the characters that didn't necessarily match the old continuity (like Mileena's, for instance). But they knew they couldn't just ignore Armageddon and leave questions about what happened there unanswered. No one would forgive them for that. So they thought it would be cool to tie in the reboot to the Armageddon ending.

This was a critical mistake. Instead of having a true reboot in a brand new universe where they had full control over the continuity going forward, fans now expected elements from the old continuity to still be in play. But since they were already reinventing the story, the differences between continuities were impossible to reconcile. "Mistakes" kept popping up that wouldn't have been mistakes if people would just ignore what came before and accept that the new story is official now -- which is a bit too much to ask, given the setup.

MKX tried to continue straddling the line between running a new storyline while making callbacks to the old one in the character endings, but this made matters worse. It cemented the idea that the old history was still fully valid in the new timeline, even though by design, it can't be.

By attaching the new timeline to the old one the way they did, they gave up a lot of creative freedom to try new things and opened up a bunch of plot holes between continuities. There was no way forward without making even more mistakes; they'd either be forced to retread over old territory with Onaga and Blaze, or plow ahead without them with fans wondering why they're not around when they should be.

As much as it pains me to see them do another reboot so quickly after the first one, resetting all of history was the only way to bring this plot under control after it started going wonky four games ago. MK11 feels like it's designed to admit that the continuity has gotten screwy, and hang a lampshade on it by blaming a higher power who outranks the Elder Gods and has been silently pulling the strings, making mistake after mistake trying to get the story right, and doing things a little differently every time. Kronika is a stand-in for the writers themselves over the series' history, the ending is a thorough wiping of the slate, and the fall of Raiden and the rise of Lord Liu Kang is a promise to do better next time.

MK11 was an opportunity to give some of these characters a satisfying conclusion to their arc in this universe before we explore a wholly new universe in the next game -- a privilege that they missed out on in Armageddon -- and MK12 will be the proper reboot game that MK9 should have been.

I don't think anyone would insist that John Vogel's work was flawless (I mean he basically made Bi-Han older than Shujinko in the Konquest Mode), but what makes people prefer Vogel is the consistency of the lore.

The 3D era presented a generally coherent storyline that remained constant throughout the games. Even with MKDA leaving a lot of MK4 behind, the progress was still there, and even now, Shinnok's amulet remains the biggest plot device of the series. Even more so, the shift fron MKDA to Deception was absolutely excellent. You can tell the developers planned ahead and had a story to tell that expanded more than just one game. That is what made the 3D era's story so memorable.

As I've stated in another thread, while Armageddon was ultimately made the way it was because Midway was falling on hard times, I strongly feel the story itself would have still been there if Midway was doing well, just not as quickly. There's no telling how extensive the story could have gotten had they possessed the time and money.

MK9 was, to me, not just a reboot, but a rather faithful continuation of the series. It restarted the story without abandoning the past, which I was very grateful for. I was prepared to acknowledge MK9 as the start of the new lore, and I was excited to compare the old timeline to the new one. Then MKX came.

The game shot so far into the future, it made MK9 pointless. This is where they truly screwed up. It is clear Ed Boon and team did not want to revisit the story of the 3D era - likely because he didn't want to bring back those characters - and decided he could skip it by pushing the game 25 years into the future. The mistake he made was forgetting they'd have to account for those 25 years, and the comic was not enough. It was too much time to keep track of, and inconsistencies came immediately.

MK11 was specifically crafted to do away with that mistake. There really wasn't a story to be told. There was no real development. It was just Kronika working on her hourglass and Raiden's troupe trying to stop her. The story could have been told in a single Power Rangers episode.

Now that the slate has been wiped clean, the developers will relish in their confidence of being able to write whatever they want, and what this really means is they can have whatever roster they want and the story will technically make sense. This also means they can permanently remove whatever characters they want from the series, by insisting that in this new timeline these characters don't exist. I don't think this will solve their problem, but only create a new one.

Until the writers start planning ahead, the way John Vogel did, there will always be a massive mistake waiting for them.

Of the three endings, I actually like the Liu Kang and Raiden one best and hope it'll be the official ending.

The Kronika decapitating Liu Kang ending didn't have an official ending to me. First, the player can restart the match after it. And second, well the classic baddie never wins scenario. Then again NRS surprise me when they had Shao Kahn won Armageddon.

The Liu Kang and Kitana seems too open-ended and too finality of it all for me. While I like the possibility of exploring new territory, I like to have an idea where they may be going with the next game, this one left endless of possibilities; too much to focus on. And since Liu Kang and Kitana seems to start everything from the beginning again, it seems the very end of everything we knew and Liu Kang has happily ever after with Kitana.

The Liu Kang and Raiden provides there is a possibility that they can try restore the timeline, without completely restarting completely anew. So next adventure could be they trying to restore the timeline.

Who knows, maybe none of the three are canon. I mean like Armageddon, we thought Taven defeated Blaze with the end of Konquest mode, only to find out Shao Kahn won.

That's just my opinion.

I liked the the story except the ending. The ending was terrible. It pretty much erases everything that has come before it. I just hated it.

After playing the story mode to completion I loved it hands down the best one yet! Still not completely sold on the ending though I mean it was good and it made sense in the end but now essentially the lore and backstory built up over the course of the franchise is gone and the next game will be a new start a fresh slate, no Scorpion/sub zero back story, no edenian invasion etc.

One good thing from that ending though if they stick to this story arc Liu and Kitana should not be playable for the first time in forever which would be awesome as it will free up two roster slots and allow someone else to take up the spotlight, however as exciting as this prospect is to me I am sure they will include those two somehow!

For real. I'm okay with cliffhanger endings that leave us having no damn clue about what's going to happen next, but erasing everything wasn't the way.

The thing I took away from the idea of multiple timelines is that those things could still very well happen. In fact, to me, establishing multiple timelines like this kind of made it seem like almost an explanation for why there have been so many inconsistencies with story, character designs, etc, maybe all of those things happen in separate, slightly different timelines. It pretty much could validate every single piece of MK media (the movies, the web series, etc.) as canon, in its own timeline. Which I thought was really cool.

So the next time around, the timeline could still be similar, but reimagined in a new way, and that kind of an idea excites me.

I know, these types of endings are very bittersweet, and make a lot of major plot details seem inconsequential, like, if it's been undone, then what was it all for? And I'm not typically a huge fan of stuff like that, but at least we do have Liu Kang still in existence, and he's aware of the world that Kronika had undone, so he could still construct history in such a way that the good things about the timeline he lived in still come to pass.

I don't know, we'll see, but it was a much better way to end the story arc than Armageddon, IMO.

One of the things MK11 left out is the One Being in all of this. From what we saw in previous games, One Being used to feed off the Elder gods until they shattered the One Being consciousness. In MK11 we were introduced to Kronika, a Titan, mother of at least two Elder gods, and more powerful than an Elder god. We don't know her exact relationship with One Being. Did Kronika aid her children war against One Being? Is One Being a Titan too or more powerful? All this reflects the question, what exactly is Liu Kang now? The last chapter he became Fire and Thunder God. But by controlling the sand of time and being from the beginning of time, is he now a Titan too? Or is he may even be the One Being reimagined? I said reimagined because maybe in the new timeline, Liu as One Being is a benevolent being who sought to do good for the realms, and the Elder gods who sought to destroy him is the actual evil ones. It was a bit ironic, both Elder gods we were introduced to in the series so far turns out the evil one. If Liu is not One Being and just Titan, and the next game takes place in Ancient time, I think his first conflict will be with the One Being.

well fighting titans for sure, more gods is possible, but with kang controlling time he can bring in all the warriros from previous games.....so maybe we can get more monster type characters to go along with the various human types