"Stealing" is a perfectly valid word for having the same moves as another character who's been around a lot longer, especially when copied moves make up the majority of your list and you don't do...hmm, I was about to say "almost anything original"...but can I even use the word "almost"?

Lemme think...Human Sub's Freeze and Slide, Cyrax's Teleport and Bomb, Kung Lao's Dive Kick...

Oh wait no, he has the Ice Parry from MKvsDCU, doesn't he. So I guess that's one original move out of 6.
He does the same mid-match victory pose as Cyrax, too. It's a wonder he at least has his own Fatalities...

Here's another thought why they shouldn't gone with the whole Cyber Sub-Zero thing. If they had never done it, the fans wouldn't be so divided and arguing like this. Just a thought.

I dunno, I'm sure we'd just find something different to argue and be divided about. We argued about whether or not Shujinko sucked when Deception was out, we argued whether or not Taven and Daegon sucked when Armageddon was out, and these arguments are tame compared to the bitching during MKvsDCU just because so many people are obsessed with the idea that MK NEEDS to be dark and gritty and "mature" and that superheroes have no business being in it, even though most of MK's cast look and act like comic book characters and always have.

Hell, even if they give us nothing to talk about, we turn to wanting to choke each other to death over Jade's ethnicity.

Why would he give two shits about Jax? At this point he's still an evil(ish) assassin, who unlike his brother has a few anti-hero (at best) tendancies and isn't beyond redemption. He's not a boyscout like Liu Kang. He's not Superman, hell he's not even Batman at this point. If you want to compare him to an archetype from comics, try Deathstroke. Since your "merciful and heroic" figure is a guy who KILLS PEOPLE FOR MONEY. Of course we know he'll grow more heroic in time, but the Jax scene takes place early on in his story. It's called character development. There's nothing interesting or moving about a redemption story if the protagonist was a goody-two shoes to begin with.

Also, repenting after being cyborged is no different than repenting after the Lin Kuei tried to cyborg him and he got away. The only difference is this time, thanks to the cinematic medium of the game's story mode, we actually get to see it. When he tells Sektor that now his soul is cleansed, I don't think he's referring to being re-programmed. He means now he understands what kind of horrible people he was allied with and he's not having it anymore.

Just out of curiosity, what the hell exactly does he do in the old story that's so heroic to you? Getting stabbed in the back by Frost and having a bromance in the woods or whatever with Kenshi do not heroics make. And if you're so concerned with preserving his (horrible) storylines from the last gen games and repeating everything exactly even though this is a whole new universe...there's nothing he couldn't do now as a cyborg that he didn't before anyway.

What does this even mean? So what?

They could've never made an MK9 at all so we'd have nothing about it to disagree over too...your point?

Since I have no intention of giving a post as antagonistic and frankly, incorrect, as yours a serious answer, let me give a silly one:

Robots don't have dicks, so he can't have a romance sub-plot with Sareena like he was implied to in DA and Armageddon until he's human again.

I hate when people bring up the term "stealing" for this game. There's nothing stolen in this game if it was being made by people who knew what they were doing!!!

If they gave him similar moves to Cyrax, I don't see any similarities within Kung Lao's kick other than they're both dive kicks, they obviously didn't really have that much time to go into much depth and create him from scratch.

They gave him these moves because that was how he was designed. It's not stolen because I don't see how if you create something and then give one move to another character, it's officially declared as stealing.

Sure, they have the same moves, but aren't they varied to where it's actually his moves and not Cyrax's/Sub-Zero's? I mean, Cyrax's bombs just explode, his freezes. Sub-Zero's freeze isn't necessarily the same kind of ice Sub-Zero uses as you've mentioned that the same kind of smoke that surrounds Smoke when he's cyber is something else.

If they're varied to specifically fit that character, I see nothing stolen, just that they either ran out of ideas to create something different or, I hate to use this term, they got lazy.

Other than that, I don't get why you guys like to throw out the word "stolen" when they're planned out, well-designed characters... Honestly, I don't get it.

Either him being a copycat is uncreative and lazy or he's well-planned out. Pick one, can't be both.

Uh oh, the dickless robot can't hook up with the demon chick. The series is now ruined forever for me. Never mind that it plays like a dream compared to DA, Deception, and Armageddon...no sir, the franchise is dead.

Also, you (Razor) and many others have a real issue with taking your personal interpretations of these characters and trying to make them canon. There was no romance between Kuai Liang and Sareena, implied or otherwise. Now, BI-HAN in Mythologies, sure. But all Kuai did was take her in and give her shelter with his reformed Lin Kuei.

Now, we as the player know Sub-Zero is a legacy character and it's two different brothers under the blue mask. When we play as them, they're interchangable. I get that. Now, that shouldn't mean that IN-universe one is still the same as the other. In other words, if there were some sparks between Sareena and Bi-Han that doesn't mean it will (or should) happen again between her and his brother just because they shared a sprite. In fact, that's some downright grade-A horrible writing if it did (not that that's ever stopped them before, mind you).

If you really want to talk story potential about Sareena, I liked the contrast with her and Frost. The protege he thought he could trust turning on him, vs the demonic outsider who knew his brother who was seemingly untrustworthy, but who really did have his back in the end. That's decent writing, and they could explore a future rivalry of Frost and Sareena based on that. Maybe Sareena could save him from Frost and thereby earn his trust, as opposed to Frost's fail-takeover where she ends up frozen in a block of ice and "dies" in her very first appearance. (until that gets retconned in the very next game)

Sareena/Sub-Zero fanfiction made offical? Miss me with that...

The bottom quote you have wasn't about Cyber Sub-Zero, it was going out in general.

The top one was going out to Cyber. He can be well-designed in certain aspects and not be in others. Yes, I have said that his moves don't bother me, and they are varied moves from the characters that his moves have similarities to, it doesn't mean I have to also say that's well-designed.

But in the same aspects, that's how he was developed, and if that's how he was developed, then this move set has been planned for a long time, and there's nothing there that tells me he "stole" anything.

Well you said you don't see why we call it stealing when it's a well-designed character.

We call it stealing in Cyber-Sub's case precisely because his moves list is NOT that of a well-designed character and that's how we demonstrate it.

Don't use the word stealing if you like, call it copying or whatever you like instead, I don't like arguing semantics, defending a meaningless word choice bores me. But the fact is that he has moves other people have, even the ones with different properties are only barely any different...he's clearly a lazy, last-minute creation and that's not cool.

To be honest, if they ever manage to bring Frost back, which I hope they do because she had quite a background appearance in this game and I really do think she was a good character, I really hope that she isn't a villain of some sort this time.

Her story can literally go anywhere because of Liang's fate in the next game. She was a recruit by him in his newly reformed Lin Kuei. Now that his life has been altered, so has hers.

She can go anywhere, and like I said, I really hope she isn't towards the bad side either. Sure, a good rivalry between Sareena and Frost is something interesting, but... Meh, I'd like to see what the next game has to offer with the choice of characters they bring out.

I think even in the new timeline Frost is probably destined to end up evil because the characters they've introduced so far mostly all started out with the same personalities they originally had, and they then changed after their introduction because of taking different paths.

Well Frost was sort of introduced as villainous right from the get-go. See, she didn't turn bad because of Sub-Zero's training, she turned bad in spite of it. She was established to be a cold, self-centered bitch with hidden motives from the day she joined the Lin Kuei and Subbie tried but was unable to change her ways, probably because he vastly underestimated how treacherous she really was, he just thought she was egotistical and needed to learn humility. I'm not sure any other hero could do a better job of training her either. Especially not with most of them dead for the moment, leaving only Raiden, Cage, or Sonya to choose from.

I see it more like "copying, with style" sort of speak. I'm not arguing though about this, I'm trying to figure out exactly what's so confusing about using the word "steal" and associating it with created characters... Literally.

And I know that he wasn't a last minute creation. They wouldn't do something like that to a character that's outrageously popular at the last minute. Come on.

If his development wasn't last-minute, then why is he the ONLY non-DLC character in the game who didn't come with an alt costume?

Frost had a fairly solid story for the 3 games she was in. I have no problem just assuming Taven killed her in the Lin Kuei HQ and just never seeing her return in this timeline. I liked her, but there are other characters they should explore first.

While I do vastly prefer human sub zero, I'd say the only problem I have with Cyber Subbie is how his part of the story was done. It just seemed really goofy and forced, like much of the story for that matter.

But like i've read from others earlier on in this thread, I honestly believe that the NRS writing staff does not give a fuck about the quality of their work. You can argue that the NRS team puts in work to give their game the most back story out of any fighter, but that still doesn't say much because that bar isn't exactly set very high to begin with. So to me it seems like they shit out the bare minimum, cheese filled shit with each game because that's the easier thing to do. They're really not competing with any other fighting game as far as story is concerned and they have a fanbase that'll buy their product regardless of story quality, so what would be the point of producing a solid, well written story?

or dialogue in his ending and basically just copy paste moves from 4 people.


I have no problem with people liking him, but everything certainly indicates he was rushed and not original.

lol, I had actually forgotten his ending doesn't have any speech in it too. That's even worse than not having an alt.
Man, that shit is jarring. It's a good thing the pictures are so self-explanatory. Can you imagine trying to figure out what the fuck was going on without the picture of a see-thru green Kahn-spirit sucking into his body and possessing him? Like, what if the pictures in his ending were just random shots of violent things happening or figures standing around, like most of the other characters have?
But yeah, how close to deadline do you have to be, to not even have time to write and record some damn text for an ending? They could've at least put words up on the screen even if they didn't have time to get the voice actor in the booth to read them out loud.

Well that's the thing though, he would be violently separated from himself from the soulnado if my idea were to go anywhere, if most of the dark parts of his soul were imbued into Noob, I could see him being not necessarily a hero, but not evil either as he has saved Earth before and he'd be mostly good as opposed to evil.




I agree he's not at war with himself, just an idea that I've toyed around with as it gives us human subbie, Noob, and CSZ for the people who want him and it gives a purpose to Bi-Han becoming Sub-Zero again, just some brainstorming, which was inspired by Kuai Liang's MK4 bio as well, which hinted at Bi-Han perhaps having special knowledge that might be crucial in defeating Shinnok.





I suppose you could argue Scorpion is an anti-hero, but it's not like there's a ton of them. I guess I'm just kind of bored with Scorpion at this point.

Not 2-Face per se, two different, complete bodies was what I was thinking of to be honest.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting...but it sounds to me like you're saying the reason he has no alt costume, no words in his ending, and a list full of other people's moves and animations...is because NRS thought we'd be so shocked that the character even exists in the first place that we wouldn't notice or care that he's unfinished?

The undead characters will probably be unlockables...so other characters can get some lime light

Back on topic: I want Human Sub back god dammit! *Slams hand on table*

lol thankfully at least the picture are easy to follow.



When I first saw it I was like....what happened to my sound!? I thought I muted the TV at first





They better be playable lol.

I mean to be honest, it's not like they have to leave people out to give other characters shine, it's all about proper balance. If they want to give Tanya more prominence, tone down the presence of other characters to accomodate her..

It would be epic to see the roster grow at a steady pace like Tekken instead of removing all that unique gameplay and classics. Adding the MK4 cast plus Havik, Sareena, and Drahmin would be beautiful imo.

As a definite answer, no, it's an assumption and I have another one that could possibly be an answer.

The other is basically a cyborg costume for Sub-Zero as a human costume is to Cyrax and Sektor. Only, they decided to make his costume an actual character. Otherwise, we would have had two Sektors and two Cyraxs in this game.

Why would they do that? Well, going on with the whole "Sub-Zero can't be a cyborg..." They did, but because Sub-Zero has two costumes and doesn't have the cyborg moves, they decided to create an entirely different character. Just associating it with Sub-Zero.

Its how I look at things. Surely, most of you wouldn't look at this in this kind of direction, but honestly, it's at least worth a shot of thinking that it could be under the "what if" theories. It really doesn't hurt to think differently.