Honestly, I hate fan bias, and this list reeks of it.
Rain: Yeah, it's a stupid joke, but I liked his Kitana-esque story that ends with a one man crusade against Shao Kahn; they could've easily twisted that into him leading an underground rebellion against the emperor. I hated that they decided to ditch that and make him the half-brother of Taven and Daegon; you'd think that a god whose wife could SEE INTO THE FUTURE would be a little more cautious with committing adultery...
Bo' Rai Cho: As many people stated, they clearly ignored his status as Liu Kang's teacher...but then again, so did NRS. I hated that they ended up emphasizing his drunkenness and bad manners more than his fighting ability; toilet humor is never funny, in my opinion, and I don't find the appeal of vomit in any capacity - hell, it's one of the few sexual fetishes that I CAN'T understand the appeal of, so that should go a long way to show how little it makes sense to me as an attack.
Shujinko: Yeah, I hated that he took Liu Kang's place as the protagonist, but I disagree with people's assessment that his storyline was "stupid", or that he was an idiot; we clearly see him mature and start questioning the wisdom of what Damashi asks of him, and while he still does it, regardless, that's only because he still believes he's on a mission from the Elder Gods, and it wouldn't be fruitful to question them for long. It's clear that, even though he never truly grasps that his mission was a ruse until the very end, he DOES grasp that something is wrong with the mission, the more he continues it, if only because of the more and more questionable tasks he's asked to perform. Basically, it's less "Am I sure this is really what the gods want me to do" than it is "Am I sure this is really the BEST way of doing what the gods want me to do". That makes him less stupid and more sad, in my opinion.
Stryker: Hoo, boy, this is one of the big ones. I do like Stryker's role as the everyman of the series, someone without any powers or experience with magic or other worlds that is forced to be witness to and a part of an interdimensional war. It gives another perspective on how Earthrealm would handle this outside of the forces of light, how the general populace - ignorant of Shao Kahn, Outworld or the tournament - would react to the invasion. I do agree, however, that they made him too much of a Wesley; they made him too broken in UMK3 and beyond, and their attempts to make him appeal to the fans flopped once before (I'm sorry, I just don't feel his MKA version). MK9...I'm torn; on the one hand, he's badass and looks the part, but on the other, he's still a Wesley; he's way too genre savvy for his own good, is able to take down Reptile, Mileena, Kintaro AND Ermac on his own, and to top it all off, they ended up making KABAL the butt monkey in that part of the story, almost to make Stryker seem more badass and competent. Let's look at what happens to them:
Kabal questions who Reptile is, Stryker opens fire on him without question.
Kabal gets his ass knocked back by Reptile, Stryker kicks Reptile's ass.
Kabal questions the logic of going down to ground level, Stryker overrules him.
Kabal hesitates to call Mileena a foe, Stryker sees her for what she is right off the bat.
Kabal does nothing to help in the fight against Mileena, Stryker kicks Mileena's ass yet again.
Kabal gets barbequed by Kintaro, Stryker kicks the tabby's ass.
Y'see? In the entire sequence, Kabal winds up looking like an ineffectual idiot while Stryker is the one getting all of the awesomeness injected into him. It's only AFTER he gets his signature look that Kabal starts showing some backbone. As awesome as Stryker is, now, they tried way too hard to "fix" him.
Motaro: Okay, I'll admit it: I love MKA Motaro. Yeah, I wished he was in his full centaur glory, too, but it's understandable why they didn't do that, I loved the storyline they came up to explain it (especially if they had managed to tie it in with Sheeva or Goro or something, which they sadly didn't), and I have a blast fighting as him. I've always maintained that, if they had to go back to the two-legged model to make him playable in MK9, that's fine, if they did what they did to him in MKA. Hell, my two MK fanfics are based around his MKA storyline (one about an attempt to find the source of the curse, one using it as part of Motaro's fallout with NRS and Midway in a "behind the scenes" like story).
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