morphing is part of what made him awesome.disappointed its only the character your face but also if hes facing someone he's at a disadvantage against,morphing will even the odds. no character has an advantage over themselves.atleast i hope not in this game.

I also like how he shoots the skulls, nice detail.

Crossing my fingers for a Motaro morph fatality, like in the old days with Kintaro!

Point taken. If space limitations are the reason he can't morph into more than just his opponent, then I would rather that limitation than the devs leave out something else...I guess. Ultimately, I don't really care. If I play as Tsung, then I'm fine with only morphing into the opponent.

That's what they said about lag and online play for the PS2. And IDK about you, but my MK:Deception experience online wasn't too bad.

I would think with the ability to put game data on the hard drive, they should be able to let Shang morph into anyone.

Also, in the challenge tower vid, when the character was randomly selected in test your luck, they appeared immediately. unless the random slots aren't really random. That would imply that they could bring up character data immediately.

I'm not even going to bother with Melonk anymore. You're a cool guy, we stand in awe of the awesome inside information you have and all wish we were you. Happy now?

Great video and I for one don't care if he can only morph into the person he's fighting its a whole lot more then we've had in the past.
Finaly Shang tsung feels like hes old self once more

Okay both of you guys, no offense but please SHUT UP! Its soo annoying when half of every thread is made up of people being retarded and yelling and getting mad at eachother. PM EACHOTHER AND DO IT.

Back on topic.. I like the fatality quite a bit. Its evil. Im going to nitpick his old form though... I would have prefered his blue and gold costume from mk1. I dont know why but since deadly alliance it seems Boon and Co. Have decided that Shangs costumes must be red.

As for the Morphs... whoever said that Shang must perform his soul suck move so he can morph into you.. Im gunna have to dissagree. That wouldnt make any sense when Shang starts his intro morphed into you before you even start the fight.

Im hoping for a better soul steal fatality from him in this game, much like mk2 when you turn into a rotten petrified corpse. :)

I still want younger Shang to sport that outfit, mainly because I'm no fan of the old man look. But anyways...

Very nice vignette. I like the whole "Shang Tsung is magically bound to Shao Kahn" which makes him some sort of slave character. Of course, most of Kahn's minions are slaves, if not all of them, but I do like that Shang is bound to Kahn's will so he can't just escape or betray him after having learned all that powerful magic.

As for his fatality - I love it! Shang Tsung possessing the opponent like in MK2 is just awesome!

Thats one I'm hoping to see too its a perfect example where you dont need lots of hacking and blood to have a fantastic fatality

We know the game can load up to 5 characters at once due to the leaked details about the Endgame match (plus we already knew 4 at once were possible due to Tag mode, and I think I actually vaguely recall Boon saying it could load up to 6 at once).

That would mean Test Your Luck could put 4-5 (6 if one can be a mirror match) random charactes on the slot reel and still instantly load them (as long as it's not Tag mode).

Loading all 27+ characters at once though is completely infeasible with today's technology. At least with these high quality models. Especially since it would get even worse every time DLC is released.

Back to Shang Tsung though, I had a few random musings about his morphing:

1. His morphing capability doubles in tag mode because he can soul steal either opponent.

2. It would be cool if Tag mode made it so that Shang Tsung didn't tag out and instead just morphed into his ally (and switched health bars). I know the characters all have custom tag out animations, though not certain they would actually do this.

3. This is the first game Shang Tsung can morph where the characters can have alternate costumes. Since the morph is part of Soul Steal now, I wonder if when he is in a mirror match he could use Soul Steal to temporarily change costumes (ie. if young Shang Tsung soul steals old Shang Tsung, would they both be old Shang Tsung temporarily, or would he just not morph because he will never morph into himself?).

4. Will soul steal work on bosses? If it does, then that would pretty much confirm they are playable (provided they have inputs for the special moves and such when Shang Tsung morphs into them).

Love the video. This creepy style and the voice fits the older Shang alot better than the younger one to me.

Fatality is A++

Still wish they had him in something a bit more flamboiant but, I see some of his moves are shared with Liu Kang (jump-kick for example) so it almost makes up for it....

Great! Love the fatality...can't wait for the combo vid

I for one am very happy Shang Tsung can't morph into everyone.

Shangs one of MK's best characters, in my opinion, and being able to turn into anybody takes away a lot from him. He stops being about Shang Tsung and becomes "The guy who can be everybody". He loses his identity.

Finally his name is pronounced "sung". Lets keep it like that

@wombat,
I don't know what they said about lag or online play on ps2. But thats not even the same ballpark.

the data can be accessed one of two ways, on the fly or precached (ram).

On the fly is impossible. If (hypothetically) it takes 2 minutes to get two characters from character select screen to in battle, that would mean every on the fly new morph would take as much (if not more) time. Until you see a fighting game with an instantaneous jump between character select and in game, consider it an impossibility.

Cached is possible, but still technically unsatisfactory. It could be done, presuming both platforms have enough memory lying around free after loading everything else going on (music, stage, netplay, you name it) but it would still require the load as mentioned above. Essentially adding an incredible amount of loading time onto any shang match.

As far as the challenge tower goes, you can bet your ass that code wise the game has decided your opponent long before that wheel pops up. It can certainly be random (or appear to be) but that doesn't mean it didn't pick who you're fighting when you selected challenge #75 from the menu screen. Just because it looks like its picking on the fly in game doesn't mean it is, thats why you don't see it "flipping" through characters, your opponent just pops up because they were pre loaded.

The only reason free morphs to everyone was possible in the olden days was because the drive access on carts (or arcade eproms) is a trillion times faster than cd roms we use now, this is why N64 MKT shang could morph at lightning speed, and PSX/Sat MKT shang morphed like a jackass. You ever wonder why every PS3 game has a mandatory drive install now? Its because blu ray drive access is nightmarishly slow and developers just dont' want to deal with the hassle.

That said, with a hard drive install the problem /could/ be alleviated. But that would mean writing the code to detect wether the game is installed or not, compensate, and then dealing with the MKT problem of well, it works like shit for some users and not for others. That may seem okay to you, but thankfully not to anyone who matters.

Regardless, if Shang had free morph you can bet their ass it would be front and center in any video he was in. To not show it would be like having a video of scorpion without throwing his spear.

I disagree. In every single one of the original games, that was his identity and made him unique and, somewhat paradoxically, different from the other characters. It wasn't until the 3d faggotry and games on discs that he started to be just another character with his own special moves. And since this game is recreating those three, it should be his identity again.
@Fenix, couldn't they just require a hard drive install like you say other games do? Then it would work fine for everyone.

Shang wins Hara-Kiri

That was a boring identity. His whole ability was a big gimmick back then.

With 3d Shang Tsung stopped being a gimmick, and started becoming his own character with his own moves. Being able to morph into who he's fighting preserves his old school gimmick, but he still maintains his individuality by not being everybody.

I want to use Shang Tsung. Not every other character in the game.

Badass video. I am definitely liking Shang Tsung. Can't help but to think his fatality being a rip-off of Liu Kang's Deception fatality. Looks pretty cool, though. I hope he has his MK2 soul steal fatality as fatality 2.

Minor detail about the vignette, they used Kahn's render from MKvsDCU and mixed it with Kahns new head and left shoulder (check 0:43). This looks very bad and its easily noticable.

Cool, I too like that he can't morph to everyone. It made him into a sort of gimmicky character. Now they can focus on his own fighting style more.

At first I thought that was an unfortunate thing how he shows up as the opponent only to have to resort to a soul steal later to morph into them. It didn't make very much sense.

But then I got to thinking, maybe he can just mirror their appearance by looking at them, but needs to soul steal in order to use their moves and fatality? I'd like to think this is how his powers worked.

Personally, I prefer Shang Tsung having powers of his own than his morphing ability. I think what they have done in this game is a fair compromise. Reminds me of Spinal from Killer Instinct Gold where he could turn into the opponent in a ghostlike form when performing certain combos. That was rather cool.

I remember back when I played MK3, my Playstation would always freeze up if I used the morphing ability with Shang Tsung for a moment before he actually morphed. It was so frustrating and it really slowed down the pace of the fighting.

Instead of risking something like that again with a game that has ALOT better and higher graphics than MK3, they chose to give shang the ability to turn into an already loaded character - the opponent. That way, the game won't suffer alot when loading another character every time Shang is morphing.

And no, pre-installing won't help that much. The game still have to load a new character every time he does the move. It might not take as long, but it would still make the game suffer and kill the pace of the game.

TOLD YOU the Soul Steal Fatality would cause dismemberment!
That was such a hard thing to guess!
Oh well, at least it's not *exactly* the same...

Don't jump to conclusions.

I don't think it's the same fatality. The wallpaper looks different than the fatality they showed. It's still a good fatality IMO

Reminds me a bit of his fatality in MK2 when he goes inside your body and causes it to explode.

Well your wrong my friend because that fatality has nothing to do with a soul steal at at.

LOVE his intro and morph!