Oh yeah, I forgot that there was a hint that they might be hiding who you're picking during online matches. Never mind then.

Trolling again and never staying on topic anyway i like shang ability to morph, kinda reminds me of mystique or morph from xmen,

whats with everybody saying that morphing isn't a part of shang's 'identity' ?
they might not have had the technology to make him morph in recent games, but he's ALWAYS morphed in cutscenes/canon. along with his soul-steal, morphing is shang's defining trait (fireballs and teleports are hardly unique)

So true!
Not to mention half of his moves from DA on existed solely to hit people who tried to sidestep projectiles. With that mechanic gone, he would make for a *very* boring character w/ no morphs.
IMO, including him as he was in DA or A is no better than adding a character like Daegon or Shujinko to the cast (ie- wrong place, wrong time)

I can see a small handful of scenarios happening... IF he morphs (and I'm not saying he definately will) it will be under one of these circumstances...

Morphing Shang Tsung, if he can morph into ANY character... will be an unplayable boss. He will morph into several characters throughout the fight, but his morphs won't be randomized, and will happen at pre-determined intervals in the fight.

Another possibility, similar to the first scenario but more limited, is that he will morph into a very small pool of pre-determined characters, ala MK: Shaolin Monks. In Shaolin Monks he just went Sub-Zero>Cage>Reptile, Sub-Zero>Cage>Reptile. I could see something similar happening here. Now, one possibility is, since he's a boss, that this predetermined set of say, 3... might change based on the character you play as. Similar to the "Fight your rival" matches in Street Fighter IV. Shang might morph into 2 or 3 preetermined characters that are relevent to your fighter's story.

In any/all of the above scenarios, the morphs may likely happen via a pre-rendered cutscene to initiate the morphs. (IE. They aren't really happening in the fight on the fly) Think Abyss from Marvel vs Capcom 2. Ya'know how you fought him in 3 stages? He essentially morphed into three different fights between rounds, but none of those morphs actually took place DURING the fight. Kinda like that. Not exactly like that, but kinda like that. Once you beat him to a certain point, the fight would briefly pause, and then resume with a "new" character.

Now, as for PLAYABLE Shang Tsung...

He won't morph. At least not the way he used too (IE. The way people want him too). Period. Bezou seems to grasp why. It amazes me how many people don't.

The ONLY scenario I could possibly envision for a playable Tsung morphing, is if he morphs into the character he's fighting, and ONLY that character.

What I think is most likely is, Old Man Shang Tsung will be a boss character for the early MK1 portion of story mode, with a few morphs in one of scenarios I described. And Young Shang will be the playable, stripped down version.

But that's just me making an educated guess. *Shrug*

PS. As for his morph in the Liu Kang video... yeah... that wasn't in-game graphics... that was just adobe after effects dorking around with the in-game models. The in-game graphics stop at the point it says "finish him" and the screen freezes. It's a cutscene. It shouldn't be taken as an "in game" indicator.

If you mean that it would require loading times to read off the disc, I think you're wrong. In MK3 on the original playstation, that was true because the PS1 didn't have a hard drive. The PS3 and XBox do have hard drives allowing instant retrieval of data.

At least I think that's how it works. I am not good with computer. So I could be wrong. (Awesome stuff on your deviant art page BTW)

I really doubt they'd include something in a cut-scene/trailer if they had no intention of puttintg it in the final game.

Shang Tsung from Deadly Alliance and Armageddon's intros says, "Hi!"

And they do so looking *much* better than the transition we see here.
Why wouldn't they want to make this one look that good, if it's a pre-rendered effect?
The only explanation I can come up with is that that is how it looks in game, and they don't want to set players' expectations falsely high as to how awesome it will look, aesthetically.

No... no...

In Deadly Alliance it's far cheaper, actually. Shang Tsung disguised as Kung Lao approaches Liu Kang, the camera uses Liu Kang to obstruct your view of him, and after the camera passes Kang, he's transformed back to himself. (When in reality, all they did was swap the models behind Liu)

Armageddon I'll give you, looks better, but I still think your logic is flawed. I mean really BREAK DOWN what you're saying here. "It looks bad, so that PROVES it will be in-game!" Not exactly logical.

The reason Armageddon looks better is because it's ONE awesomely rendered intro cinematic. Those typically... always look better than anything else you see in any video game. They're expected to look good.

The Liu Kang video however, is not that. It's a promo video that for all we know may not even be in the actual game. I believe NRS has implied every character will have one eventually though, so I assume it is in game, but even still, you can't expect individualized character cutscenes to have the same kind of budget or production value as an intro cinematic. In this, or ANY other game. It looks cheap because the video, ultimately, isn't as important to the overall game.

And again I say, the in-game footage stops when the video freezes at "finish him". Everything after that is fudging of screenshots with adobe after effects.

I'd say that's a pretty damn strong case that he CAN'T morph. If the in-game graphics supported a transition from Reptile to Shang, there's no reason they wouldn't show THAT off. It would be easier, cheaper, and would show people, "HEY! SHANG CAN MORPH AGAIN! ISN'T THAT AWESOME!?"

But that's not what they did. Instead they fudged together a cheap after effects animation using stills.

I never said anything proves anything- only why I believe what I believe.
And you have a point about showing an actual in-game transition for undeniable proof, but I still feel confident they made the transition look like it does for a reason. I actually work on 3D FX for a living, and at no job I've ever worked would they tolerate such a shoddy effect, even for something made quickly, unless they had a good reason to. Their reputation as artists is at stake. They could have made it look better than that with literally 10 minutes of extra work, which they surely could have afforded. Yet they stop short of something more impressive.
I'm inclined to believe it's for consistency's sake.
But again, I never said anything proves anything.
I *believe* Shang will morph in this game, but you will never catch me saying "He WON'T morph" or "He WILL morph" until it's absolutely confirmed.

Wellllll...

I respect the fact that you're not saying you guarantee anything, just what you believe based on your work as a 3D effects artist...

But I've worked as a 3D artist/animator close to the game industry... and I don't know how similar or different my job was from your job... but based on what I know, I AM confidant enough to say that there's no way a playable Shang Tsung will morph the same way he did in MK2 & MK3.

I'm not disagreeing that the effect in the promo video looked cheap, but I think you're reading into WHY it looked cheap far too much. Drawing conclusions I wouldn't agree with, in any event.

The reasons Shang's morphs didn't work in MKT, MKDA and MKA haven't changed. Consoles have gotten more advanced. Graphics have gotten prettier. But the fact that we're playing this game on a disc based console has not changed.

I know some people have retorted "But you can install the game to a hard drive!" Yeah, you can, but that still presents no solution for players who don't or can't install the game. (Yes. They exist.)

I doubt very highly if NRS answer to these players will be "Sorry, you guys just don't get to play as this character"

Furthermore, I'm not even 100% convinced that would solve the problem. 3D models with unique internal organs and skeletal systems are a -tad- more complex than 2D sprites. Assuming the game could call up any random character's data instantly (and I'm not saying it could) the actual physical transformation would be much much MUCH more work (for the developers and for the hardware) than 2D Shang ever was. Your average sprite sheet is what? A couple kb? Maybe a couple mb? Your average xbox 360 quality model is... well over a few hundred mb. If not gigabytes.

Essentially... what I'm saying is...

This almost worked in MKT, when the hardware was disc-based and the software was sprite based.

This didn't work in MKDA & MKA, when the hardware was disc-based and the software was last-gen quality 3D models.

This didn't work in MKvsDC, when the hardware was disc-based and the software was current-gen quality 3D models.

But now... for some reason... with this game... people think something has changed. And I can't wrap my head around where they're getting this pipe-dream.

The only way he'll ever transform is in one of the scenarios I described in my first post. He will not, nay CAN not transform the way he did in MK1, 2 & 3. Not in THIS game on THESE consoles anyhow.

The complexities of the software have outpaced the capabilities of the hardware. This was true 4 or 5 games ago, and hasn't changed.

I never used the morph thing, if I wanted to play as another character I'd pick them instead, it's too much to worry about changing back and forth between other characters. Shang has been just fine without it, if they put it in then that's fine but I wouldn't use it.

That is quite a lot, please forgive me if I don't address it all!
Anyway... not sure what 3D models you've worked with which are in the gigabytes. That would max the game out at 9 characters or less for the 9GB Xbox max.
I work with movie and commercial quality assets, which are *much* heavier than game assets,
and the heaviest model I've ever seen, rigging and all, was less than a quarter of a gigabyte.
I've only barely worked in games (Halo cinematics), but I know the assets are quite a bit lighter- more on the order of 100MB or less.
The textures are what really weigh things down- I would expect texture data to be the largest chunk of the total, but most of that will be devoted to stages.

What I'm trying to say is, the models are light enough and the systems are strong enough to support the swapping of Shang with another character-
*at least* into your opponent, quite possibly as one or two pre-selections a'la MKT.
I myself doubt he will be able to freely morph into anyone, anytime.
But with data installs to access models and textures faster,
the potential increases. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if doing the install *does* grant a tangible improvement to his morphing powers.
They've even hinted at the morphing with this very video, and at least one "official" Tweet.
And at the core of it all, Shang was a polymorph in MK1-MK3.
Omitting that ability entirely is hardly different from including a character completely inappropriate for this game, like, say, Dairou.
And I don't think that's what they're giving us.
I believe they've done the work to make this happen-
they know fans want to see it, and they don't want to disappoint.

I myself have faith that Shang will have his morphs in-game, one way or another

His morphing ability isn't entirely impossible in the disc games - he morphed into various characters during his fight in Shaolin Monks. However, he isn't able to morph into any character out of a 20+ options currently. He could morph into his opponent, Goro and Shao Kahn. Wouldn't it be cool if he performed a special move as Goro?

Someone already mentioned it, but a partial hard drive install would fix the morphing issue and make it usable in-game.

You can't force players to do a hard drive install in order to play the game though, can you? As long as it's just optional, then they can't allow the AI to use the morphing mandatorily.
Though for the record, morphing into the opponent already existed in MKvsDCU. He only did it in his winpose and one Fatality, but still, it was there.

If shang were to morph make it use a 2 super bars or something like that

How does that fix loading times/lag?

It doesn't

Consider this. No current generation fighting game on a disc-loading platform has incorporated character morphs to this point.

Do you think that's because they're afraid of being accused of ripping off Mortal Kombat or because they've realized it isn't feasible?

Then why did you suggest it?

Morphing is not an exceptionally powerful move, so why would it use super bar? You're trying to solve something that's not a problem, while ignoring something that is preventing morphing from being in the game.

Consider this- no current-gen fighting game has the same motivation to produce a morphing character as this one. I would argue that Shang is the most famous morphing character in the world of fighting games. NRS knows this, and they know morphing more or less defined Shang during the era we're revisiting. They have *every reason* to try and make it work this time, even if it didn't before. I'm not saying they will pull it off, but I strongly believe they are at least trying to.

Actually, they *can* force you to- see Devil May Cry 4, among others. But I don't believe they will force us- just give us a heavy incentive to by speeding up the game, and possibly making Shang's morphs more usable.
Also- I suggest this thread be renamed to something like "Official Shang Tsung Morph Debate" or something like that- it seems like a topic several people have an opinion on.

Pasting post from other Shang morph thread into here.

EDIT: Please note that the super-morph I have proposed would load only one character per match, this being the reason why I think it could fix the lag problem.

I'm not entirely certain they will give Shang a "super" morph, but if they do, I could see that being an option, for sure.
I could also see it lasting longer, or granting invincibility during the morph in and morph out.

Either way, thanks for joining with this thread!
I enjoy this debate, and it would be nice if it lived in a single thread