I think they pourposly made him stupid in this game. And plus, you couldn't do any better in his situation.

He had a lot of stuff to deal with. He was stressed. He made some bad decisions because of that. But you didn't need to call him a dumbass.

You hurt his little Thunder God feelings. :(

I actually think Raiden was better written than ever.

He's desperate, and the game makes that very clear. He understands that he has to change something, but doesn't know how, and he's scared and frustrated. This is the first time I've been able to relate to Raiden throughout all of Mortal Kombat.

I thought Raiden's actions were questionable in story mode. In the end he did get everybody destroyed to save Earth realm. Only a handful of characters made it. It was Armageddon's ending, but a sort of happier ending....?????

I think we are supposed to believe he prevented Armageddon. That was the point of the amulet being restored. But at the same time, it seems like certain things are unavoidable, such as Liu Kang winning the first two tournaments, a final showdown between Raiden and Shao Kahn, and Shinnok's uprising.

In a way, he was successful. It's rough that all those characters died, but I think it's pretty clear that they will be used by Quan Chi and Shinnok. That was their whole stake in the first three tournaments. They didn't want the souls of the fallen to put in a museum, they'll be back. Resurrecting the dead is as simple as making breakfast in the MK universe.

This.

Raiden is ignorant for not knowing the rules to mortal kombat.

LOL...LOL... Good one...LOL

I think Raiden wasn't as bad as people make him out to be in this one. He was getting confusing visions at kind of random times, so he was doing his best to figure them out. After all, I doubt he would expect "he must win" to be referring to Kahn especially when Raiden's been trying to stop him for hundreds of years from taking over earthrealm. I liked how desperate he got until finally he had to place his faith back in the elder gods to help him out. It seemed after he visited them he kind of lost his faith. Besides THEY are the eternal wise beings...Raiden is more of a lower level god when you take the elder gods into account. As for not saving Sub..yea I think that was done just to automate him for shits and giggles. It really didn't serve the story a whole lot except open up his "we're both corrupted" line to noob. I think the whole sympathetic cyborg role could have been filled by Cyrax pretty well...especailly after his misgivings about it were established early on and then just abandoned...Its almost like they wrote that before they thought up CSZ and just switched roles without re-writing Cryax's chapter 1 story. But anyway...I think Raiden's conclusions were logical in the context of the story even if they were wrong. Besides, if his future self had said "Kahn must win" he still wouldn't have expected the invasion of earthrealm and known it referred to that...he may have let him win MK2 and then it would be perfectly legal to merge the realms for Kahn. I don't think Raiden had time to say "he must lose, he must lose then he must win"

LOL

Actually,kinda this. I really felt for the guy towards the end.

Except the part where he not only just fucking stood by and let Sub-Zero get captured by the Lin Kuei,but actually PREVENTED SMOKE FROM GOING TO HELP HIM.

So he gets a vision of Smoke becoming a robot that has no real bearing on future events,but when Kuai Liang gets dragged off by the cyborgs,he didn't get a vision of him potentially becoming one of Earthrealm's most powerful defenders and one of Raiden's most trusted allies? He couldn't have seen that in one of his hotflashes?

Fucking unforgivable.

PS: What was the deal with him offering his own soul to Quan Chi? How the fuck would that even work? He's god,he doesn't have a soul,he only has godly essence. That's different.

Despite the misdeeds and as much as I don't WANT to defend Raiden, most of his deeds were correct. I don't know how CSZ and human Smoke have any bearing on the future, but I do know that saving Johnny Cage from Motaro is what caused the Sindel Mass Murder (it will go down in history).

I think that mass murder is going to be necessary for a future plot, and the heroes WILL be back eventually.

At the same time however, fuck you Raiden for attempting to give the souls to Quan Chi.

"I wasn't there to defend them. Might as well give them away." Ass.

waitwhat

I must've missed something. How does that work?

Godly essence, soul..... it is not explicitly stated that Gods do not have souls in the MK verse.

Besides, the original MK1 had Raiden invited so that Shang could steal his soul and gain eternal life to halt his aging.

Well,both Deception and Armageddon saying "gods can't really die,because when their physical avatar is destroyed,their energies just reform in their home realm" sounds pretty explicit to me.


lolwut

That actually happened?

Man,between this and having the characters' statues mounted up in the Warrior's Shrine before they even set foot on the island,Shang was so fucking cocky that it's awesome.

Bi-Han did not teach Frost. Thats was Kuai Liang and he did a lot more then just take Frost as his pupil. You should check up on your history. Just saying.

On the contrary, I feel Raiden was written extremely well in this game.

Sub-Zero was raped though. I don't like how they did that too him. I like cyber Sub-Zero, but that doesn't change how I feel about what they did to human Sub-Zero.

Basically since Motaro got turned into road kill Sindel offers to go back and "finish Motaro's work", thus leading to Shang's soul being transplated into Sindel which multiplied her power over 9000.

So if Motaro hadn't died and he did kill Johnny Cage, he probably would have gone to the temple instead of Sindel which means that maybe a quarter of the cast would still be alive and kicking.

Nemesis got it. Thank you. That's exactly my point.

Oh God. You know I was really feeling for Raiden having to make split second decisions based on sometimes vague glimpses. It's not like he had months to collect these mental images, think how to interpret them, and act on them accordingly. He got the images in the middle of battle half the time. All you can do at that point is just try to make the best decisions possible. That's all.

But I also got a little sick inside when he decided to gravel at Quan Chi's feet, AND offer the souls of his fallen warriors. What a desperate and douche thing to do. I appreciated some of his decisions, I didn't like others, but I detested that he went to the length to barter with Quan Chi. I think I can appreciate to an extent that it shows how devoted he is to seeing Earthrealm win, but at this point he was being a bit unwieldy with his position.


Bingo. Too bad Raiden didn't get a vision before killing Motaro. There's no way Raiden would have known killing Motaro at that very moment would lead to an onslaught of many earthrealm warriors. Because a super-powered Sindel would have to finish Motaro's work. Killing many others in the process.

OVER 9000!!!!

Sindel fucked everybody up. I was LOL'ing hard when she ripped Jade's stomach out xD

Then again, if Raiden hadn't ditched everybody and only took Liu Kang to the Elder Gods, maybe it wouldn't have happened.

wow, you are a complete moron. What's your IQ equal you to? Your shoe size? Raiden is one of the best characters in the series, with the best story and most developed personality. I think he should return.

1. Sorry I keep getting the 2 subs mixed together

2. He didn't do much anything that would cause Armageddon that smoke staying human wouldn't have changed.

FYI this post will have major spoilers but I'm not going to spoiler tag it since the game is already out. If you dodn't want to know it you shouldn't be in a thread talking about the outcome of it.

I didn't feel pity for Raiden at all. He seemed to take a very "Aw shucks" approach to the whole thing. I get it, he did what he did for earth realm, he just didn't seem to care much for the people fighting with him.

He knew from the get go that it was the earth realm warriors who were key to stopping Kahn, and got so far up his own ass trying to change the final outcome that he got them all killed. Also he did all this in pursuit of a vague three word message from a psychotic version of himself in the future.

List of people Raiden screwed over

Liu Kang- Yeah that was a banner idea. Shock him unconscious from behind or set him on fire. Tough choice.

Kung Lao- "Hmm well lets give this a shot. I mean he's not Liu so maybe...." *Snap* "Whoops, my bad, your turn Liu"

Motaro- Yeah he saved Cage, who proceeded to do almost nothing for the rest of the game and still survived, but unfortunately it came at the cost of the rest of the good guys. So rather than one dead movie star who would've come back anyways since the heavens were blocked, we ended with 8 or 9 dead good guys who had their souls stripped and sent to the nether realm doomed to spend the rest of eternity with the giant douche bag that is Quan chi. Go team Raiden! /venturebrosref

Kitana- Robbed of life and her ability to reconnect with her mother after a few thousand years of her being dead.

Sindel- Instead of being freed from Shao Kahn's control and being able to fight for the side of good, she's dead again. things look grim.

Nightwolf- Well his elder god abandoned him and forced his hand into having to kamikaze a crazy person. Which would've been simple to avoid if he used some of his godly powers to simply move the earth warriors out of danger. Also all of this was pointless since in the end Raiden figures out Shao kahn should've just won. So simply doing nothing would've been better than anything he actually did.

Smoke- What's worse, being a cyborg or being dead? It's a good thing Smoke didn't have a choice in any of this of course, Raiden knows best after all.

Sub-zero- Oh wait, no he doesn't. Not only does Subby get the cyborg disease, he kicks it. Talk about kicking a guy when he's down.

Shang tsung- Even the bad guys weren't safe from Raidens idiocracy. Granted this pretty much erases the events of MKDA and MKD, but Shang went out like a joke. He didn't even get a chance to fight, he was insta dead. It was kind of pathetic, and once again our sakkat wearing thunder god was behind it.

Jax- Not only are his arms no longer optional because of Raiden, he's also dead as a door nail because Raiden decided to take a quick coffee break to talk to his bosses.

Stryker- Would've been better off left fighting the outworlders on the street then in the company of Raiden and co. In fact most of these people would still be alive if they didn't fall for Raiden's "I'm a god you can trust me" shtick

Kabal- Infinite wisdom and glimpses of the future and you still couldn't see him getting torched? All that time pulling wings off flies and this seemed like a good one to let slide? Didn't get saved from torching and is prematurely deceased. Aces.

Jade- Another pointless mass casualty. Died saving a realm that she's not even from from someone who shouldn't have ben super powered in the first place.

Noob Saibot- For a god, he sure sucks at saving people. I would be more impressed if he set out to get all these people killed instead of just stumbling into it. This wouldn't have happened if Sub-zero hadn't been screwed over.

Ermac- As far as we know, assuming the story mode is canon, Ermac is still evil. Raiden cost him self an ally and still has a potential threat walking around with almost no one left to fight for him. That's the biggest problem, yeah good job 'saving' earth realm from Shao kahn. The problem being there's no one left to stop the next threat except Sonya and Cage.

The only person that this clusterfuck helped was Sheeva seeing as she was one of the few who died at the end of MK3 is now one of the few that lived.

So no, I don't even know how he can be considered a god of any kind. Gods are either omnipotent or merciful, he was neither. It's like he stabbed the time line and then tried to fix it to death. I'd assume gods aren't supposed to be this Barney Fifeish. With a leader like Raiden, who needs an enemy. If I were Sonya or Cage I'd go into hiding knowing how expendable I am to the protector of my realm.

I think your assuming Raiden knew about all the character's fate in the old timeline...I think they make it clear that he didn't. Just had flashes like Cage getting killed, liu beating Kahn in mk2, etc. So it isn't like he KNEW what would happen if he didn't save Cage etc. As for killing Liu, I think he was so desperate to change the future and protect mankind that he went overboard to let Kahn win without thinking.