Absolutely loved this documentary! KI had a great story to tell and I think it was done justice here, without a doubt. It was also nice getting so many perspectives along the way, but mainly it was just wonderful seeing the reaction people had to the franchise’s return and what people ultimately thought of it by the end.
Of course, you can’t mention the end without mentioning the toxicity and what Keits essentially learned along the way with regards to community interaction. I still consider that to be an absolute black mark on the community; people that honestly felt harassing developers was acceptable so long as they got their point across or simply ranted at them because they weren’t making things the way they would’ve done it.
Part of me will never forgive some of those people, because to me, they really ruined a good thing for all of the community. It was awesome to have actual developers come in and explain things and answer questions or tell you that they were working on fixing an issue, or simply ding Q&As.
As someone that’s been a fan of Mortal Kombat since the beginning, I’ve always felt that there’s been somewhat of a wall between the players and the developers and in many ways, I think they’re right to do that. Ed Boon can’t post about anything without getting yelled at for characters or any number of things people want, or don’t like, or whatever.
Here, we had actual developers wanting our feedback, wanting to talk to us and hear our ideas and answer our questions, and it feels like some in this community squandered that opportunity because they couldn’t stop being rude or toxic or invading the space of developers.
As for the downer at the end; the impression given that there’s no KI planned or in development right now, I have to admit that I’m at somewhat of a loss as to what MS is doing with their IPs.
Phil Spencer already mentioned that sequels for Crimson Skies and MechAssault, two of his favorite IPs are not in development. We already know that they’re making a Fable game and almost assuredly a Perfect Dark game and a Forza game. But they have so many solid IPs; stuff that did well, or at the very least scored well on the original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Killer Instinct scored well out of the gate and only got better as it went along. Why would they not want another game in this series to help build out their portfolio? The last one couldn’t have been THAT expensive and I’d have to think it did relatively well financially.
I dunno. I’m holding off judgment until I see their July showcase. I’ve always preferred Xbox to Playstation in terms of their controller and UI, and I also dig Game Pass and their backward compatibility, but there are new exclusives that I want on PS5 and that kinda beats everything else. Hopefully MS can answer the bell.