Story hard to take seriously anymore

It’s widely said that Mortal Kombat is not as good now as it used to be. I’m still a fan and got some mild enjoyment from Armageddon despite its horrible shortcomings. However, I would seriously claim that at least in terms of story, Mortal Kombat has lost a great deal of its touch. It was so much more coherent in the earlier games. Just look at the first three games; each character’s ending specifically stated that he or she defeated the boss of the game. In Mortal Kombat I, every character defeated Shang Tsung in his or her ending, and in Mortal Kombat II and III, every character is stated to have defeated Shao Kahn in his or her ending. If a warrior on the side of Shao Kahn defeated him, a reason was always given for that warrior turning against him, some of which were quite interesting. From Mortal Kombat IV-VI, it’s rarely ever stated in character endings that the character actually defeated the boss of the game. It just shows some events that could have happened whenever.

So many things in the story of the later games just don’t make sense. Let’s just look at some of the characters. Apparently around the time of MK 5, Sareena took asylum in the Lin Kuei because Sub-Zero was grateful to her for helping his brother. Ok… just HOW exactly did Sub-Zero find out that she REALLY helped his brother? Did she just walk up to him and say “Oh hi! I helped your brother! Please let me in!” Did Sub-Zero say back “Oh, thank you! Sure you can come in!”? Wish I knew. Looking at other characters, since MKA still does not have all the bios, we still know neither how nor why Kabal and Mavado both have the hookswords, and I’m honestly not expecting a good reason given the poor quality of the story lately. Another good one, Rain was supposed to be the son of an Edenian general killed by Shao Kahn according to his MK Trilogy ending. Now all of the sudden he’s a son of Argus?? This identity confusion is never completely or satisfactorily cleared up; not in his Armageddon bio, not in his ending, nor in anything in Konquest. If he’s ever back he might very well be the son of someone else because they won’t be able to think of anything else to make his appearance interesting. Rain’s appearance in MK Trilogy might as well not even be considered canon. Last, got to point to Bo’ Rai Cho. Honestly, I think this is one of the worst MK ideas. Mortal Kombat always stuck out for not having ridiculous slob characters like this. Now maybe he’s a good character to use in combat; I don’t know since I never used him much. However, putting aside my disapproval about his physique and mannerisms, I feel that he also weakens the story. Suddenly with him we find out that all along Kung Lao and Liu Kang had some fat slob drunkard for a teacher?? John Vogel said in Bo’ Rai Cho’s character card that he liked the idea of Mortal Kombat now having a teacher. Um, you mean to say that Kung Lao and Liu Kang NEVER had any other teachers before some moron threw Bo’ Rai Cho on the drawing board?? Pretty pathetic.

Yeah Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was supposed to bring back every character, but even before Armageddon they had killed off and brought back too many characters. It’s gotten WAY out of hand by now, and some of the returns are accompanied by the LAMEST reasons imaginable! Characters being dead was cool in the beginning with Scorpion being killed by Sub-Zero and coming back. I also really like Noob Saibot being the first Sub-Zero, a revelation that should have been in MK4 and likely would have been if they had not foolishly decided to replace Noob Saibot with Reiko, a character even the creators can’t stand now. Mileena being resurrected for Mortal Kombat Trilogy was even tolerable, but the problem is that by now, with so many characters, they’ve practically eliminated the borders between who’s dead and who’s not, making it very difficult to take anything in the Mortal Kombat universe seriously anymore. Example, all the people getting killed by the Deadly Alliance, getting resurrected by the Dragon King, being freed from his control, and back fighting in certain versions of Deception, seem like a poorly thought chain of events too drastic to happen so suddenly. The same could be said for Rayden’s suicide and new form, and maybe even for Liu Kang’s new zombie form. I admittedly was never Liu Kang’s biggest fan. I hated him with a passion both in the movie and the games, and I enjoyed every time I killed him in the games. So while Liu Kang being dead is not upsetting, I just feel that the zombie business continues to devolve the story of Mortal Kombat to a joke. Another good one has got to be Jarek. He’s alive because he “thrust his weapon into the cliff to slow his descent.” Three games after his last appearance, that seems like a lame reason for him to still be alive. More like, “Ok, we never planned on bringing you back, but now that we have to, we can’t think of any good reason!” However, my reward for the worst goes to Shao Kahn. He’s killed off in Mortal Kombat V, then back in VI (Game Cube version). The reason? Oh, Shang Tsung and Quan Chi only killed a clone. Are you serious?? A thirteen-year-old could probably come up with something better than that! They must have been thinking “Oops, we gotta bring’em back! Let’s see... yeah! Making a clone sounds good! Sound good? Yup! Sounds good! Ok! A clone it is!” If Quan Chi and Shang Tsung are such powerful sorcerers, shouldn’t they have KNOWN that they only killed a clone?! How lame can you get?! The sad part is, as more Armageddon bios come out, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shao Kahn's story gets surpassed in terms of lameness. I highly doubt they would even be putting any bios out if they didn’t get so much heat. It's almost nine months since the game came out, and only around fifteen bios or less are up now. This makes it quite clear that they never at any point cared much about the story and continue to not care.

Call me pessimistic, but I don’t think the future of Mortal Kombat looks good. I might be able to pardon the deterioration of the story if Armageddon had classic fatalities, but given their omission and the horrible story, I see little reason to be optimistic about the future. They need a new story director badly. If Armageddon was really supposed to be a final farewell to many of the characters until now, it was a very insulting one. I think Midway blew the only chance they will likely have for a long time to make Mortal Kombat recapture its former glory.