thats a good point.

I'll admit that I didn't read all the way through the OP. I resigned myself to my general tl;dr about anything story related:

If you have a low bullshit tolerance, the MK storyline is not for you.

However, you raised a ton of good points, Garlador. All this meddling that Raiden is doing just because he can or because he doesn't like what happens can't sit well with anyone. I mean, if he wanted to, he could've just won the MK tournaments and not Liu Kang. I think the better question here is that if Raiden has this power, why did he allow things to unfold the way they did in the first place?

Yea...

They made him out to be a loopy idiot God this time around.... I'm really just holding out to see what, of the mess, will actually make any sense.

The questions in your first post Garlador, are similar if not the same questions I've been asking since he went all dark on everyone.

*digresses for now*

Oh yeah, I forgot. You're Razor. Your opinions of how to interpret this moddled fluster-cluck of a story are the only ones that matter. Because Everything you say is Mortal Kombat law, and everyone else is a moron.

It's not like EVERYONE ELSE ON THIS DAMN FORUM PLAYED THE SAME GAME AND READ THE SAME BIOS, which have little to nothing to do with the question you just dodged, which I ask again: How exactly do you KNOW Delia's vision for Armageddon wouldn't have happened if her and Argus stayed uninvolved. YOU DON'T. Had Blaze never been created, you can't say that the world wouldn't have ended anymore than anyone else can.

Again, Armageddon's intro tells us EXACT WORDS, "ages of Mortal Kombat have begun to tear the fabric of the realms." Before the damned prophecy even enters into the picture. It is not up to YOU to say "Pft! That never would have happened." You don't have that kind of fictional insight.



But again... The prophecy was never that Shao Kahn would destroy the realms (and frankly we don't even know that he did... we just know that he killed all the kombatants) The prophecy was that the realms would be torn apart as the power and number of kombatants grew increasingly unchecked.



They never state that the realms won't be trashed if the kombatants never gather in one spot, just that the kombatants kombat is going to trash the realms one way or another, and yeah, Taven points out that all that kombat in that one spot probably isn't good, so he'd better do something about it pretty quick.

Blaze's exact words: "Your mother, my creator, forsaw the coming Armageddon; that through Mortal Kombat, warriors would unknowingly tap into the very forces that make reality possible." "This crater will be the origin of the Apocalypse unless something is done to prevent it. The Elder Gods had ordered your father to orchestrate a solution."

This implies that not only Delia and Argus, but the ELDER GODS recognized the fact that the shit was going to hit the fan regardless... and something needed to be done about it. They didn't know when or where it would happen, which is why Blaze was sent to monitor things. Unfortunately Onaga derailed him for the period all the way between MK2 and MKDA/MKDish, and by the time he woke up "Oh Shit! Looks like it's about to hit the fan!"

But that aside... for WHATEVER reason... Kahn, Taven, Hornbuckle... doesn't matter... the gods plan to do something about it backfired, and we traded Delia's Armageddon for Kahn's victory. (Which again, isn't even necissarily Armageddon, just an ending that works out real shitty for Raiden and the other protagonists.)

It wasn't a self-fufilling prophecy. It was just a prophecy gone wrong.

You really think it's their mere existence, and not the fact that they gathered in one place to fight? That's just deliberately ignoring stuff, man.

Delia's vision was literally what happens in Armageddon, she saw the armies of kombatants fighting in that specific canyon. Argus says in story mode that's the whole reason they built the pyramid there, because that's where they knew the battle that would endanger the realms was going to occur.

Well that just turns into a chicken or the egg arguement. Did they build the pyramid there because that's where the battle took place, or did the battle take place there because that's where they built the pyramid. I'll give you, yeah, that's a little self-fufilling prophecy esque.

Still doesn't mean that had The Elder Gods not commanded Argus and Delia to devise a plan, the Kombat wouldn't have torn the realms apart anyway.

Still doesn't mean that just because they did devise a plan they were the end all be all utter and complete CAUSE of Kahn's ultimate victory, which again, we don't even know necissarily lead to any sort of Armageddon.

You are aware that Kahn's goal in life is to merge all realms?

Which would, y'know, destroy the entire universe by awakening the One Being?

And hell, just for shits and giggles, let's say you're right that Armageddon would have occurred anyway if there was no Blaze and Prize to provide the motivation for the gathering...

...what you are then suggesting is that the realms will be ended by the mere existence of superpowers and the only way to prevent Armageddon is to eliminate them or everyone who has them.

This is an impossible task. Superpowers in the MK universe are not some rare thing that only happens when you get bit by a radioactive spider. Magic and chi are god damned commonplace. There's gotta be enough gods in the realms and sorcerers in the Shadow Priests and Brotherhood and Onaga's holy men and Edenians to add up to 60 guys. All living beings have the potential to gain powers or learn spellcasting through training, and the MK universe has had hundreds of thousands of powered individuals over hundreds of thousands of years.

Why is the idea of "too many at once" all of a sudden only a threat NOW if not because they gathered in one place? Why is the present day the first, last, and only time it could possibly happen, if not for the fact that Blaze's Prize is the only power in the realms worth causing a gathering and battle that big? It just doesn't make sense.

And here's the awesome thing about your theory: it means Armageddon can't BE prevented. If Blaze's existence isn't the source of the problem, then the source of the problem is the cast of Mortal Kombat and the message Raiden SHOULD send to his past self is "kill everyone you meet", lol.

And even that won't work 'cause even if you kill or depower the whole cast of MKA, one day, that many powered people will just appear again, and THAT group could tear apart the realms. Or you could kill them and, once again, some bad guy ruling Hell could simply resurrect them all.

Either way, the solution to the Armageddon problem will never be "Kill Shao Kahn" because that neither prevents Armageddon nor does it even prevent him from winning it 'cause he'll just come back from the dead. (He even does so already in Quan Chi's arcade mode ending) And so the plot of MK9 is just one long exercise in making Raiden look like an incompetent who can't do anything right and has worsened the lives of all his allies.
And I can only ask...why do that? How is that good for the franchise? Can anything they do in MK10 really make up for what MK9 does to the characters, or have they cursed Raiden to now be thought of in the same light everyone thinks of Shujinko in?

Raiden did it because NRS told him to, there really isn't a complex explanation to this. Applying the laws of physics to a sci fi game does not work.

Yeah, I also know there are plenty of instances where the story has suggested nothing will happen if the realms are merged, including but not limited to Shao Kahn's Armageddon ending.

You don't have to be a genius to realize this franchise’s story has a tendency to contradict itself. It oftentimes presents us with endings that never happened, events that contradict things we know DID happen, alternative versions of what might have happened, and any number of smaller inconsistencies that the general gaming public outside this forum would never even pick up on... and it often leaves us with no shortage of plot holes, some of which can be filled in with information from other areas of the story, and some of which just remain plot holes. As Moseph said earlier, "If you have a low bullshit tolerance, the MK storyline is not for you."

What always annoys the bejesus out of me when talking to you about the story is, you have a tendency to pick and choose the bits and pieces you think make the best story, and cement them as a canon and immutable timeline... dismissing the interpretations of anyone who comes along and contradicts you as utter poppycock. At times berating what you perceive to be their lack of knowledge about the MK plot until it’s no wonder an argument starts.

Take this thread for instance...

You said you see the outcome of Armageddon as Delia and Argus' fault in so many words...

I replied that I see it as indirectly Onaga's fault in so many words...

Your response... the very FIRST thing you said, exact quote, "That's a bunch of bullshit"

And after that it devolved into a big long argument between the two of us. We both quoted alot of crap from Armageddon's konquest mode with a bunch of "if" "then" "why" and "how?" interjected in between, none of which I believe made much more or less sense than the rest... on either side. I made points you ignored, you made points I ignored... it mostly just seemed to serve as a way to prolong the arguing.

And honest to god, now I find myself... for at least the third time on this forum in the past few months, to the point where I’m just saying to myself, "This is friggin' pointless. Why do I bother to keep responding to him?" and feel it would be better to back down and leave the thread. Because I KNOW if I actually take the time to write out a lengthy counter-point to everything you just said, you'd just do the same in response to me, and so on it would go... and we'd have achieved absolutely nothing. Except the annoyance of everyone else here trying to have a discussion.

So that’s what I’m doing. Walking away. Again. With you. The only person on this forum I never seem to be able to come to an amicable outcome of discussion with.

Make absolutely NO freakin' mistake though... this is not an acknowledgement on my part that I believe you're correct on this or any other matter we've argued. I don’t. Nor is it happening because I feel I don't have more points to argue. I do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say I think my own interpretations are necessarily 100% correct... just that I think they’re, generally speaking, no more or less valid than yours. Much like you, I pride myself on having a vast and detailed knowledge of this game’s story, and I assure you, I read your last post in its entirety... and part of me DID want to dissect it into several quotes and pick it apart in response... just like all the previous ones...

But at the end of the day I guess my bullshit tolerance is just a -little- bit thinner than yours... so I’m walking away. Don’t expect any more posts from me in this thread in direct response to you.

All the same, feel free to respond to this post as you will. You have several options. Claim there was never any substance to my arguements in the first place, and I only backed down for lack of something further to say on the matter, even though I’ve already made an honest attempt to state plainly that’s not what's happening here. Dismiss everything I’ve said about Mortal Kombat and/or you as irrelevant and make fun of me. Say next to nothing and pretend you’re the one that took the high road here, because you exited on a short & sweet post and I exited on a lengthy detailed one. Here’s my favorite: Do like you did in our first argument, go back and edit all your posts to seem overall less confrontational and antagonistic, and then claim you were never arguing with me at all, and it was just me attacking you all along. Or ya’know... mix it up... pick a response I haven’t predicted and show everyone how clever you are for once again getting the better of me.

Hell, shock everyone. Don’t respond to it at all.

Don’t really care anymore. I’m out.

I just find this crap... with you... AGAIN... tiresome...

Unless the gathering of the 60 plus warriors itself is preordained. Perhaps they have opted for a controlled burn scenario.

Even IF the realms merged (and this doesn't even seem to happen), and IF the One Being awakens... this is a fighting game, right? Couldn't we just, you know, fight the one Being? I can't be the only person disappointed the big, huge, end-all-be-all boss the entire MK saga led up to was, in fact, Blaze....

No.

The One Being is not a person, it is the sum of existence.

In essentially it recollects itself into a gestalt of everything, meaning there would not be ANYONE to remain to fight him aside the Elder Gods. Everyone and EVERYTHING will become PART of the One Being. From Scorpion to the Kolliseum, from Kitana to the Rooftops all part of a singular being.

This is just a amature take on this...

Could Raiden have had more agenda involved with this? Revenge for losing to his most hated Foe?

I mean him and Shao Kahn have aways battle amongst each other through the Tournament... And when Raiden loses to Kahn... his pride is destroyed and Shao Kahn is victor of the prize.. So were lead to believe that Raiden is only desperate to save earth realm... but could revenge be a factor. A blinding one? Which is why he choice to ignore other possiblities
I mean this DARK Raiden

1. Deception
Shujinko the is the first factor.. his blindness cause the birth of Dark Raiden
him getting the Kamidogu's is what almost lead to REAL armageddon.

2. Armageddon
Dalia is the second factor... Her visions are what gave rise to armageddon. She instructed Argus to built the pyramid and bestowe his god powers on to Blaze should he grant it to the victor of the contest.
Could she have been link with the One Being unknowingly? Could the One Being be the one deceiving her into thinking that if she does this.. she prevent Armageddon.

Now here is the odd part

Shao Kahn's Armageddon Ending says he conqurs and merges all realms and goes mad of borden. But it doesn't say that merging all the realms cause the One Being to resurrected. Did i miss something here?

I wanna know the link between Shao Kahn and the One Being.... I still think Shao Kahn is being used a tool. And Raiden has no idea what the REAL threat is... and i wonder if Raiden himself could be influence by the One Being without knowing it...

But there one question i have to ask... i can't because its spoiler.... Darn you Vogal and your complex story telling

Then that's bad conceptualization. In games like Castlevania where you can fight the personification of Death, slay the essence of non-existence in Final Fantasy 9, and in some games kill God and Satan themselves, hyping up a great evil you can in no way interact with, only vaguely mention, and then ultimately never reveal or face off against is an insanely poor decision for a fighting game franchise that is, foremost, a fighting game franchise.

It could even have been something simple, some ex machina where the One Being awakens and only a select few remain that are unabsorbed and have to return the status quo to normal by killing the most godly creature to ever exist, something that would make Raiden tremble in fear.

But, alas, I digress. This game doesn't mention, or hasn't mentioned, the One Being, only Kahn's victory and the fact that he's free to go back to conquering the realms.

Whose to say that there aren't an infinite number of realms to conquer? I know Deception showed us a few for each Kamidogu, but couldn't there be more? Even then, would the Elder Gods even allow the realms to merge at all if it meant endangering their entire existence? You'd think they'd just outright prohibit this if it meant all the realms existing or Kahn not having a tantrum.

And, yes, regardless of that, killing Kahn wouldn't end the problems of Armageddon. Someone else would just take his place. As someone mentioned, if the realms were tearing apart because of "too much power", then maybe a GOD like Raiden shouldn't intervene or he should just kill anybody, regardless of alignment, if they get too powerful... including the gods themselves, I guess, since Fujin was rather active in the battles as well.

All this time travel stuff I feel is postponing the issues of Armageddon, addressing that they happened but never explaining what exactly DID happen, what the stakes actually were, what the outcome following Raiden's defeat would be, and how going back in time would negate this if the remainder of the game utterly avoids any and all connects to the very reason for going back to begin with.

My prediction is that Raiden will warn his past self on a few more occasions:

1) He realizes the MK franchise's storyline gets ruined every 20 years and therefore need to return to MK1 everytime a next generation console is released.

2) He needs to warn Smoke about how he cuts his hair as this will offend alot of Lin Kuei fans (myself included)

3) He will ask Kintaro to get a nose job

4) He will tell Rain to stop wearing purple as the people of Earth are still wondering why a ninja would wear purple. He will also warn him that this will lead to him being expelled from future games.

6) Furthermore, I predict above all else he will go back into time at regular intervals until the children of the 90 s are all dead and the franchise will die out. But hopefully by the time that happens, I would have been able to see Liu Kang fight Ryu.

Why do you people care so much about a story in a fighting game??? This is blowing my mind.

Because it is one of the main things that seperate MK from all the others. I love SF and VF, however the lack of story annoys, considering it has alot of potential.

Agreed. On pretty much all counts.

That first paragraph is actually pretty much exactly how I've always felt about The One Being. I was originally going to say something similar in my last post, but as you might have noticed I ended up going in a bit of a different direction with it.

I think what it boils down to is the MK team doesn't really seem to have a concrete plan for the next game's story when they finish the game they're working on's story... they have a few loose plot ideas that they pepper into the endings, but not much that can't be changed. That's not to say I think they NEVER have any idea of where the next game might go I just... don't think they make it a priority.

So then when they do get to the next game, and decide what they want to do with it... they figure out how to tie it into the previous game with varying degrees of success... and it ends up that chapter 3 flows into chapter 4 okay, or chapter 6 flows into chapter 7 okay...

But when you try to step back and read the entire book on the whole it's a big old mess. With lots of unresolved plot threads, what if scenarios that go nowhere, and things in later parts that contradict things from early parts.

Real easy example: Does anyone REALLY have a clue how many times Johnny Cage has died? Because the answer seems to vary greatly depending upon which game's story you get your information from. Falls anywhere from several to none.

But yeah, the scenario in this game does bring us back to the issue that... Delia's vision of Armageddon should still ultimately be inevitable, and we've just postponed things.

But I honestly don't think they'll ever address it. Like the One Being... it will probably be a mostly if not entirely forgotten plot thread by the next game, never again brought up in an MK game... as the reboot continuity moves into new and more drastically varying plots that differ from the original timeline. I keep seeing people assume they'll remake MK4, MKDA, MKD and ultimately MKA... and I think that's... extremely unlikely. What sense would it make to remake games that aren't (generally speaking) remembered nearly as favorably as the original 3? They'll probably remake MK4, as they've set up in this game... maybe steal some of their favoriter characters and plots from MKDA and MKD and roll them into it... but for the most part... plow new territory with this new canon...

Because that tends to be the whole point of a reboot. NOT being shoehorned into doing the same things you did in the first go around. Hehe...

Perhaps Garlador you are right in a sense that as in a fighting game that is a missed possibility of a boss.

Bear in mind however that the games you made are primarily Japanese made. Japanese and that part of the orient isn't as absolutistic as mostly monotheistic western civilizations.

They can also throw around western concepts more lightly. Slaying something as final as death in a Japanese game does not strike me as having such a great consequential charge for example. Not sure how to express this.

It is a bit analogous to the god figures of the west and east. In the east for example a God is a spirit. In the west, it is the absolute principle over everything (all monoteistic religions nowadays). You can slay the chief god of Japanese shintoist mythology, you cannot slay the Lord God, Adonai, Jesus Christ whichever denomination you belong to.

I pesonally think it is quite good. One Being wakes up, end of story, everything goes back into the primordial point. That has a stake, basically analogous to the primordial singularity before the Big Bang.

This is basically a theistic and intercultural debate, not belonging to the MKO forums.

No there aren't and no Armageddon ending is canon.

Your "you're picking and choosing" argument doesn't work. There are things that are canon and there are things which are not. Sometimes there are grays, and sometimes things are black and white. I didn't decide what those things are, I merely report it and I'm not the only person on this board who does so, what I am is the most angered by people who spread false info, which is why I act the way I do.

When I deal in speculation and theory, I make such clear and I respect alternatives.

Here's an example: You brought up "how many times has Johnny died?" Well IN THEORY, Johnny Cage has either died twice and come back three times (his return in Trilogy was temporary so by coming back in MK4, he came back from the same death twice), or he has only died and come back just the once in Deception. This is because whether or not his MK3 death was retconned in DA is not actually concretely known. Some believe Vogel intended his bio to literally mean he's never died, others interpret it as a joke that says he's just in denial about the fact that he died. There's no bottom line on that one, you can believe whichever option you wish. But by contrast, the fact that merging every realm in the universe would awaken the One Being IS concrete canon and is not speculative.
Right now, I am not dealing in theory and speculation. I am dealing in fact and when your facts are wrong I will point such out. If this offends you, that is not my problem.
I try to help people around here who don't know the canon learn it, to answer questions and correct misconceptions. That's a large portion of the reason I come to this site, to be helpful and informative. And apparently, my help is somewhat appreciated since I often see people ask for me by name when they want something they don't know clarified. So that's why whenever there's someone like you spreading misinformation, of course I'm gonna treat 'em like a jerk. They're doing the exact damn opposite of helping anyone. "Kahn's endgame wouldn't bring back the One Being" is as much trolling as far as I'm concerned as telling someone that Master Chief has been confirmed as the 360 Exclusive Character, or that there really is a code to play as Ermac in MK1, or that Dan Forden is saying "Whoopsie". Maybe when a person does that, they actually believe it, maybe they themselves heard it somewhere unreliable and it's just part of a bad game of telephone...maybe they're just lying to trick people...the reason doesn't matter. What matters to me is, some poor sap will inevitably fall for that shit, and that's just wrong. The truth matters. You're just giving them a hard time and giving me who tries to help them a hard time.

Since it was Dark Raiden coming up with the plan, I think it's possible he did plan for someone else to take Shao Kahn's place...Raiden himself.
The last two alive at Armageddon were Shao Kahn and Raiden. If you take Shao Kahn out of the equation, then Raiden is the winner who gets the power of Blaze. This would further his goal of saving Earthrealm at any cost. Plus most or all of the other kombatants would be dead by this point, so crisis averted.

Edit the quote.

Well, while we're at that: What's the deal with the Gods and their ability to die? I admit, I'm not that well versed in the lore, but I remember something about the other Earthrealm Gods that represented fire, water, etc. being killed during Shinnoks's war. Now, If that's true, then why couldn't they reform like Raiden did in MK:D? Does it have something to do with Raiden specifically taking his own life, rather than him actually being killed by someone else? And for that matter, what does that make Kahn? If he used to be an adviser in the same way as Raiden was, could he simply reform himself after death, or did he pretty much lose his godhood when he became a conqueror, and if he can't recreate himself, does his soul just go to the Netherrealm, just begging to be resurrected by some crazy bastard like Havik in MK:D?