To each their own. I am a true MK head. I know the story front and back, MK1 through Armageddon, and back through MK9 to MKX. All characters, all lore threads. Like I said in my first post here, I love this stuff.
I did the same thing for SF back in the day too, but yeah, there really isn’t / wasn’t that much to dive into. MK is a totally different world on that front compared to SF. You can pick any character that was in MK1 and follow their progression up through MK Armageddon and be in for a wild ride…that is, if you are open to it, and can get into it. It was crazy, unbelievable, and sometime cliché, but to me it was fun and enjoyable.
To be fair though, SF never put any effort into it, at least not how MK did.
Yeah, keep updating! I haven’t updated the details of Aganos’ timeline from his backstory yet. I will though when I get time.
With the S2 stuff in general, do your best to poke holes in my chronology. I’m not 100% convinced that I have it all in order, so any feedback on that would be great too.
Seems like your more of an MK head than a SF head so you can’t really see the story they’ve built and even expanded on in other forms of media.
Ryu and Kens training alone can be a story ark. Ryu’s corruption can be another. Akuma’s and Ryu’s master relationship is another ark. Akuma’s relationship with Ryu is another ark. Ken return to America and his progression spreading his knowledge to other characters is an ark along with the family he formed. Guile’s pursuit of Shadowloo could be an overarching story with imput from characters like Chun Li and Cammy. Not only that but the death of Guile’s friend is another form of growth for the character. I haven’t even scratched the Sagat and Ryu story. There is a lot going on and all of it can be expanded upon on a MK9 level story and keep them all relatively young.
Awesome thread. I am a huge lore nerd when it comes to KI (and MK) so this thread is perfect
Oh and to the person who asked about Spinal and Kan-Ra, their backstories do seem to be connected. Kan-Ra is implied to have hired Spinal and his network of bandits to do something to the King’s city’s flow of resources.
What would be great is if someone on here that’s a good writer took all of the existing back stories , trailers and any official bio info and make a much longer more detail story.
Yeah I don’t think omen will be good or work with the heroes at all. In his story he pretty much wanted to torture them all and send jagos soul into the depths of darkness for all eternity however he might end up pulling a starscream on gargos and usurp him when he’s weakened. He just wants the simple things in life.
That’s not true. Especially in KI which in the last two story modes no one has died… Not only that but Bison has died plenty of times. Even in MK fatalities are disabled in the story mode, you fight people multiple times and no one dies until they want the character to die. The only around three characters died in MKX. MKX is the only one that has had perma death and even then they sort of dance around it and bring people back to life.
The problem with this is that people generally don’t like it when their characters die. I’m willing to take it if the character has a successor, but it’s bad for marketing over all.
SF story has always been about demonstrating fighting competition in a positive manner, as a way of life. True it does not progress enough, but I can appreciate SF’s motives for self improvement, good sportsmanship and having people with any destructive intent branded as villains or fools.
There is no better or worse here… except for the point that SF is too slow paced XD
Remember that SF3 despite its fame in the FGC was a massive financial failure, and Capcom made several years worth of non-cannon story in crossover games before returning to SF4(basically the MK9 of street fighter)
I am more of an MK guy than an SF guy for the reasons stated above, that being said, I know SF lore just as well as I know MK lore.
You cited a lot of arcs there for SF that are compelling pieces of lore, the thing you didn’t acknowledge though is that much/all of that lore wasn’t present back in the 90’s when those games were being released. Ryu/Ken’s training, Charlie/Guile’s mission, Akuma’s relationship with Ryu, none of that was fleshed out in the 90’s…it all came into play in the early / mid 2000’s with the Udon comics.
Back in the 90’s there were only the games, the SF2 animated movie, and the SF2 V anime series…and only the games were canon, as the movie / anime were just licensed adaptations. In the official canon of the games, there were a lot holes in the lore, and even to this day there are things we just don’t know…like what happened at the end of SF2? Or how the story progressed to 3…let alone what officially happened at the end of 3. And none of the EX stuff is canon; and though SF4 has been out for 7 years, we still don’t know how that story ties in with the OG games either, though SF5 is said to be the game that bridges some of those gaps…I repeat, SOME of them.
MK on the other hand, like I said earlier, has a through line with all the games. There is a story there, a clear one, that connects just about all the characters to the main plot and gives them some purpose. Sure there are muddy parts in the OG MK timeline still to this day, but nothing like in the SF universe when it comes to official canon.
It is true that this new KI has somewhat neutered the characters. At the same time though, they are still pretty hard edged.
TJ killed Riptor back in the OG KI game, which is why in KI2 he had all those scars and the eye patch, but in this new KI, TJ killed a bunch of “Stalkers,” and though he may have faced off against Riptor in the story, she wasn’t killed.
Jago “killed” Fulgore in the OG game, that is why there was a Fulgore MK2 in the KI2, but in this new KI Jago has killed some monk at his temple, which was the catalyst for his transition into a hermit. That being said, when Jago became Shago, “he” killed a bunch of people, but they were all no names, so…whatever.
All the other characters from the OG games got through the first KI relatively unscathed iirc, even though Thunder and Cinder were not present in KI2. In MK, the story is much like that, but more death, and there is also just way more lore there.
Before I get into MK lore though, I have to say when you talk about MK and KI lore, you seem to only talk/know about the present games. MK9, similar to the new KI, retconned a lot of stuff from the OG games…
MK1…Subzero was killed, Shang Tsung was killed, and Goro was presumed dead at the end of the game. All the other mortal characters (Kano, Sonya, Liu, and Cage) “survived” the first game, though Kano and Sonya were captured and not playable in MK2. If you are keeping count, that is 2 deaths, and 1 “death”.
MK2…Shang was revived by Kahn and given a second chance, and OG Subzero, Noob Saibot, made his first appearance here having been brought back by “the Netherrealm”. But Mileena was killed by Kitana in this game, which set up her story going forward in MK3. So yeah, only 1 character died here, but there was a lot more going on story wise, that I won’t get into here.
MK3…Mileena was brought back by Kahn as one of his minions, but officially Cage died in this game, and Kano was presumed killed by Sonya after she stage fatality’d him off a roof. Kahn also was presumed killed in this game, killed by Liu after Kahn had killed Kung Lao. And this doesn’t even take into account the “death” of human Smoke, and all the other characters that were lost/defeated in this game. Still with me? That’s 4 characters dead in MK3, and a ton more that wouldn’t be seen for years due to…reasons."
But yeah, there is a lot of growth and character development here, where death happened and meant something, which led to new things happening down the line. I’m not going to go into MK4 though Armageddon, but just now that just from MK1 through MK3 I left a TON of details out for the sake of brevity. The lore from there just gets deeper, and deeper, and deeper, as the game’s progress.
But again, keep in mind that all this info IS FROM THE GAMES. Not licensed comics, or 3rd party films, but in game lore that was written and disseminated through the actual text of the games. SF didn’t do that, at least not to the depth that MK did.
I get that people don’t like to loose there characters, and that has been a point of contention in a few of the MK games over the years…the biggest one being Scorpion not being present in MK3. All in all though, from MK1 through Armageddon, all the characters were brought back in some form or another, and they changed / grew / evolved all the way through. Like I wrote above, Mileena died in the original MK2, but was brought back in MK3 with a story that took her death into account. That event in the lore added character to her. And a more recent example of this would be Cyber Subzero in MKX, as that character officially ceased to exist after MK9 in the lore, but here he is in MKX, with a fresh story, and a similar, but completely refreshed gameplay design.
I don’t agree though that doing this a bad for marketing. MK, though is fell off for years after arcades died, stayed relevant to much of the fan base through all these years. FG’s these days are going through a new renaissance, but their popularity is for a wholly different reason now than they were back in the day.
I can appreciate it too, but to a point. Ryu’s story is compelling (once you take into account all the lore surrounding the game’s canon), but when you really look at it in perspective, at least when I do, I get salty realizing that over the course of 25 years Ryu hasn’t really progressed much on his “journey”. Ryu is still the same “world warrior” that he became in SF2, essentially just as skilled as he was back then, as he is now in SFV. (I should mention that Ryu having the Denjin Hadouken in SFV is a progression, and there may be more to come in the coming SFV story mode. I have a lot of hopes riding on the story mode if you couldn’t tell.)
It is all subjective. Some people prefer MK, some prefer SF, and some don’t care for either. Personally, I like/love them both, even though I’ve play way more MK over the years than SF.
And finally, I don’t even want to get into a sales discussion about these franchises. They are both awesome in their own way, and I try to enjoy them both as best I can. I hope others do the same.
It’s not about sales comparison, its that your saying SF hasn’t progressed much in 25 years, but its been more like 12 due to the main franchise completely halting. Thats like saying “Gee KI hasn’t progressed much since their previous title 18 years ago; Jago is STILL fighting against Gargos’s corruption of him.”
SF4 was essentially a “partial reboot” of the series; its why they went back to a bunch of old story elements rather than continuing on from 3rd strike. (hence why I called it the MK9 of SF, and yes I am aware MK9 technically starts at the end of MK Armageddon then goes back in time).
If we were to subtract the years that the SF games were dormant (8 years) that would be about 17 years of games with little to no character development. But honestly that isn’t even a fair statement as during all those years where there were no SF games, Udon was making comics, so the lore never died / halted…err…rather it did as they never moved on from Alpha and the SF2 era games. So no, it’s not the same thing as KI and it’s 18 year hiatus; KI didn’t have nearly as many games, nor a high profile a comic, let alone a comic that spanned years monthly releases regardless if it was canon or not. The universe just never moved forward.
We all know this but to recap…lore wise KI had 2 games in the series and a non-canon comic, then it halted, but SF had SF1 and the Alpha series, the SF2 series, the SF3 series, and the EX series (though EX is non-canon due to property rights and whatever). All those official series spanned years, as each had between 3 and 5 games within them. Throughout all those iterations however, the story barely progressed if at all, and so like I said, Ryu is essentially the same caliber fighter / character that he was in SF2, really the same as he was in the Alpha series, that he is right now in SFV.
By comparison, as I outlined above, throughout MK’s first 3 games, all the characters had some sort of character development, and the overall story progressed. If you compare the 2 universes over the course of the same time span on that front (SF3 and MK4 were released like a year apart), lore wise it isn’t even close how far MK’s story telling had come vs. SF. Liu Kang alone went from champ, to mourning monk, to champ again but having lost many friends along to the way, to teacher training the new gen of earth fighters…then he died…and then a whole new arc started for him…and this is BEFORE the MK9 redux.
And SF4 is a “reboot” in the sense that it reintroduced the game to the masses. The game officially takes place after SF2, though they don’t officially ties the games together. Capcom could have gone back and retold the OG story if they wanted to like NRS did, but they didn’t. So SF3 was just left out in the wind for more than a decade as a some strange stand alone thing…but then SF4 doesn’t even address how things progressed into SF3. SFV is said to be the connective tissue between SF2 and SF3, so yeah, their story telling is all over the place, in a league all to themselves.
What do you guys think would have happened had Eyedol not been weakened after being pulled out of limbo in KI1? I read that he was in the middle of a battle with Gargos when he was pulled into the real world and was in a weakened state, and that is why he was able to be defeated by Orchid. Do you think the good guys still could have one if he was at his best?
Also, who do you think is stronger lore wise, Eyedol or Gargos?
If Eyedol was in his weakened state and not ready for a real battle, then Eyedol will be the strongest, since Gargos was manipulating Jago and waiting for the right moment to attack, but was defeated anyway…
So:
Eyedol - Weakened: Defeated by Orchid
Gargos - Maximum Power: Defeated by Jago and Orchid
Yeah I think it would be pretty close since they are implied to have been in a stalemate of sorts for years. Though based strictly on their original selves, I would be rooting for Lord Eyedol
Also, does anybody know where I can read all of the KI comics and in order? There is no comic book store near where I live and even if there was the chances of them having those comics is probably not high, can anyone help me out?
Anybody else trying to dig into the new ARIA backstory? I’ve already found a plot hole(s) from the rival mode and this, but I think the bigger deal may be trying to reconcile a few dates and day totals.
I kind of have ARIA’s “awakening” tied down in late 1967, and her reveal in 1989 happening in around December of that year.
FYI: As much as I like this one, it doesn’t square with some of what was already here.
For one, ARIA didn’t get into her body until 2011 AFTER she lured Glacius in and recovered his fold core. That means ARIA retained Sadira before she was in her prototype body, which means her Rivals mode story isn’t accurate.
