You're hysterical, this made me laugh out loud. Good job.

I stopped because this was going off-topic, but you can think that if you wish, however, let's try and stay on-topic and talk about character development instead of talking down at eachother. That isn't going to solve anything.

Actually it is since sexual orientation has been on topic.

Stryker (MK9) has the nicest butt, of all the guys in the game.. AND he's a pretty cool character..

Also I'm a bit miffed that this has become the GAY thread, that was 1 of the Character Development scenarios that I observed. I also made several other observations, that everybody is completely ignoring!!

I apologize that my first comment about it apparently had people being pissy about Smoke's sexuality and had to ruin your thread with it.

Yeah, I'm totally pissed off at this moment right now... don't assume what doesn't exist, because obviously people can't really talk to you.

No character development needs to be included, it's a fighting game more so than a book.

Now see, I know you have interest in the story side of the franchise so why would you say that?
Besides, it's not just a fighting game, it's movies and cartoons and TV shows and comic books all telling variations of the same tale with the same characters. Mortal Kombat HAS had a book. Why can't it have another one, a good one that follows the plot of the games better but explores the characters more? And why can't some, or even all, of that character exploration then be reflected back into the games like how MK9 borrowed the Johnny/Sonya subplot from the movie?
This tale can be told in any format, and all stories should have a certain amount of depth and detail. The categories don't really matter, they're artificial, we put them in our minds so we'll feel less bad about a disappointing or shallow story by saying "well you can't hold A to the same standard as B", but really, a story is a story, the standards and possibilities apply equally to ALL forms. Why can't the cutscenes in a fighting game have character development? Halo has a good story and it's a goddamn shooter. And there's nothing stopping them from making a Mortal Kombat RPG, y'know. They like doing spinoff games, and even Mario has RPGs.

Excellent Input!! Why do different standards, apply not only to different media but to different genres too??

I mean you always hear the phrase "Trashy Romance Novel", but you never hear the phrase "Trashy Auto-Biography".

Even when that auto-biography was ghost-written, for some brainless 25 year old glamour model. Who slept their way to fame, by screwing the entire England football squad and who's gotten married and divorced so many times, that they'll be planning their next divorce on their next wedding day..

I know I'd rather read the Trashy Romance novel!!

But why can't we apply the same standards of storytelling to every story. If we did, we'd have interesting stories in every genre. 25 year olds who've never done anything worthwhile wouldn't have 3 different "auto-biographies" on bookshop shelves and the Kardashians probably wouldn't be famous, for doing F*** all!!

If they made an RPG for Mortal Kombat AND have Stryker be playable, I would just die happy. Stryker, Sub-Zero, and Kitana, all day, every day.

About MK story, it's kind of a battle. Every game doesn't NEED story. But after everything MK has gone through...

-Giving us a massively well-performed story in MK9.
-Creating a huge world filled with characters loved by many.
-Having immense drama in not just one, but nearly every game in the series.

To turn around and say, "Well, no more stories in the series" is really unthinkable and unfair.

That's not to say I wouldn't mind the fighting games having focus on tournament play, while MK RPGs/action games/books/movies handle the story. Ultimately, I just want a story that has been given a lot of love and effort.

Hm. To be honest, all the new story mode did was show me that maybe they aren't so capable of character development... They're experts at character derailment, however. Best way they can prove otherwise? Fix Mileena.

Maybe Mileena's childishness/sluttiness is a reflection on the fact, that in MK9 storyline she's just been born.. Her cold, calculating, ruthless, power hungry side has yet to develop..

If NRS has any sense, that's the approach they'll take..

I refuse to acknowledge a majority of things in this story, except the deaths of characters I don't like. Screw development, fuck them. :D

Well yes her personality makes sense for a newborn, the problem is that she shouldn't be a newborn, Mileena's whole character for twenty years was "jealous of her "sister"" and now they weren't raised as sisters and Mileena has nothing to be jealous of, so the only thing about her that makes her "Mileena" is her looks. It's like creating a Batman whose parents aren't dead. That's just a guy in a bat costume.

One of the major reasons that make Halo's story fascinating is the subtle references to the Holy Bible. I wish that NeRdS would consider doing that (a bit) more extensively. There's Satan in the Mortal Kombat mythology...
The new "trilogy" of Halo won't likely be as good as the original trio, but I'm confident that it will be decent if 343i will utilize the same ingredients as before. For fun, I sent a thought-out story suggestion to Bungie, four years ago, of where Halo 4 would begin from. It involved lost never-before-seen Spartans and added depth in Master Chief. It was about the survival of the strongest. If we'll see that happening, I'm dumbstruck. I also digress.
It's nice to talk about something else than Mortal Kombat for once, LOL.

Forgive me for that last sentence, I wasn't aware of how much time I had to write all what I wanted to say so I shortened it although I really shouldn't have bothered writing that part at all if I wasn't going to explain myself.

Yes, I am interested in the story, but I do not care for details that have NOTHING to do with the story. If I want to know a character's sexual orientation or anything as minor as that, I'd ask an employee of the team rather than interpret something that doesn't exist.

All of that has NOTHING to do with the story whatsoever, and if something isn't even appearing in the story, how can anyone say it's there when there's not?

If I want to know a character's personal life and how they came to be, that's something I'd be intrigued by, not by things that don't hold any significance throughout the story or something that doesn't even exist.

Whether or not people are entitled by their opinions, still, if something doesn't play a huge part of/doesn't even exist in the game, it's not relevant nor is it there. If a character has a conflicting past that made them who they are right now, I'd rather see that.

The whole Sub-Zero/Scorpion story was beautifully told, granted that Sub-Zero is wielding an ordinary sword. THAT'S the kind of character development I'm talking about. Show the past, show the issue, just anything that holds minor significance shouldn't even be present in the game.

That's all I really meant. That stuff isn't what I'd want to read in a book, getting more into depth about someone's history is.

I agree with what was said about Mileena being just a guy in a bat suit above, hehehe, and also that they should take (and might already have taken) the path that she is still growing and learning. Doesn't change that she was derailed in the first place. If, in the next game she becomes a real character, not boobs with teeth, then I'll applaud them for recreating her from scratch to separate her from Kitana. If she returns wearing nothing but pasties and a string of pearls up her ass with the same personality and teeth on her vag... *shrugs*

It might seem like I'm exaggerating, but I'm just saying I wouldn't be surprised if she was just totally nude in all future appearances. Of course, shameless nudity is still classier than duct tape.

Regarding "Smoke being gay."

.... they are like brothers. Being like brothers is nothing like being gay for one another. Smoke running to Sub-Zero would be like an older/younger brother being protective of his sibling. If you grew up with someone, were close enough to consider yourselves siblings, wouldn't you be a bit distraught when he's captured?

Regarding character development, and what's relevant to the game.

I think the biggest mistake MK9 did for character development was the lack of it. Yes, it's a fighting game, and yes that means we need to find all sorts of ways for characters to fight. And the story mode did a good job of doing that. Hell, it was a nice cliffnotes version of the first three games. Or to put it this way: I felt like I was watching clips from three separate seasons of a TV show that were thus combined to make a three hour movie.

I'd have liked to see more with Liu/Kitana.
I'd have liked to see more with Cage/Sonya, or the animosity between Kitana/Mileena, the awkward position Jade is in, the hatred of Scorpion, the integration of the LK and so on.

The problem, was that while the execution of what we had was good, it wasn't "flawless."

The moment in which Sindel goes all sorts of asskicking on the Kombatants would have been 10X more effective if instead of 2 hours of cameos, we had meaningful time spent with our heroes.

If we had more say, character development of Nightwolf, a few hours of his story alone, I'd have felt more in awe of what he tried to do. If we had more time spent with the Liu Kang/Kitana budding romance, I might have actually felt sad at what was an effective goodbye scene. If the brotherhood between the LK had been further elaborated on, I might have felt betrayed, and then joyful, and then angry.

I loved what we had in the story mode, and it was kind of a fun three hour movie with playing the fight scenes. But honestly? Because of the lack of development compared to what could have been, I didn't feel the emotion one should in a /story/ mode.

Character development is good, but to be honest I'm starting to think all the MK characters should either be asexual or not show a romantic side during the actual events. The story is fighting for the fate of the world so it doesn't make much sense that t the characters would have time for side-romance.

If there are any relationships, they should start during peace time; I'm sure at least a little bit of time passes between each big issue. Didn't ten years go by between MK1 and Deadly alliance? That would mean that there were gaps between MK1-4, or one really big gap between MK4 and Deadly Alliance. Those gaps are when it might be apropriate for some characters to get romantically involved.

That's not to say that other types of character development can't happen during the story's main events. Characters could make serious transformations; take Kitana chaging sides for example. She realizes that Outworld is evil and that Shao Kahn killed her mother and (in the new storyline) made a replacement for her (Mileena) and so she turned good. It's that kind of development that results from the violence and urgency of the situations the characters are put in that makes good character development.

Relationships develop, usually under the most unlikely of circumstances. Also if not for the Mortal Kombat tournaments Johnny Cage wouldn't have met Sonya and Liu Kang definitely wouldn't have met Kitana..

But I take your point that there's more than 1 kind of character development.

I just wish people wouldn't be so quick to write-off, what they perceive as being irrelevant to the story..

Characters falling in love in the middle of fighting for the fate of the world is exactly what happens in almost every action movie ever made.

Let's have a Mortal Kombat game that plays like Fire Emblem. Character supports all day long. =3

I agree completely, but it still doesn't seem realistic to me. All the action movies where that happens, it's all fine and dandy; it doesn't kill the movie or anything, but to me it makes it less realsitic.

Maybe I'm the only one here, but if I went outside and saw the world ending right before my eyes, I wouldn't be too focused on the girl next door; I'd mainly be focuesd on surviving or stopping it. Even if that's not the case, I still think it would be cool for Mortal Kombat to have something other than a "Save the world, beat the bad guy, and get the girl" storyline.

I dunno, you ever see Speed? There's a quick gag in there where Sandra Bullock's character sums up how romance-in-the-middle-of-life-or-death-situations happens that makes perfect sense, but also points out that the moment the tension is gone, the relationship would probably fall apart because the constant danger is what's turning them on to each other in the first place.

And then later Keanu brings her words back up to her and she says "Well we'll have to base it on the sex instead."

In regards to sexuality and love in MK, I don't think it's a factor considering the character are fighting constantly for the safety of realms so love doesn't matter. But I can see friendships and rivalries in MK.