Microsoft on the hunt for team to work on Killer Instinct | PC Games Insider
Well, this is somewhat encouraging news. I just hope that the next one doesn’t take another twenty years.
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I hope this team is good at listening.
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“I will just say, [Xbox Game Studios head] Matt [Booty] and I have discussed many times KI and where we would like to go with it and it’s not out of our minds that—it might be out of our minds—but it’s in our hearts and in our minds that we want to continue to do something with KI," Spencer said.
“It’s about finding the right team and the right opportunity, but it is not due to any kind of lack of desire on our part that we’re not doing more with KI because we love the franchise and the community response.” - head of Xbox Phil Spencer
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“We loved working on Killer Instinct, and we had a great time supporting that community. They still ask us to update that experience every day on social media and we really appreciate the enduring enthusiasm. Like any other opportunity that comes our way, if KI ever presented itself again, we’d consider it.” - Iron Galaxy
It feels like Xbox & Iron Galaxy should come together to make more Killer Instinct like:
Right? 
-Zenek
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I agree, Iorn Galaxy did such an amazing job. They should continue. I only hope that next group does listen to fans.
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Same here.
Not really. I’d rather a different dev, ideally a better one that can do a better art style and story. IG’s largely felt uninspired in both departments, even downright contradictory.
I wouldn’t say that they did an “amazing” job. I’d say “good”, but “amazing” is kind of stretching it.
Just my opinion bud no worries.
Honestly, same.
120% agree with this. KI has a gigantic potential both story and art wise and it’d be the best thing ever if we got a team who’d do those right.
Other than those, I’d love a nice big upgrade on the graphics, like what Maximilian said in one of his videos on KI and more voice overed, cinematic interactions. Current KI lacks those just as much.
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obviously we can’t expect a new KI to come out so soon. if they are going to do a team they need to do it right. Honestly we can still get a sequel if we demand for it.
Indeed. That said, however, the best thing we can do as fans is to show our passion for the series through our creativity, be it through writing, drawing, animation, etc. I’d love to see more fan works, especially things like mods and/or custom games from the KI community.
I would love IG to do another KI. They are one of the few developers in the US that know fighting games. Any shortcomings they had were due to the budget given them by Microsoft, which were the same problems that Double Helix had. The end product has been a very well balanced game that is fun to play.
Hopefully things open up in a few years for IG or a developer of a similar mindset. 10 years is a long time to wait, but better than almost 20.
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Some of it can be attributed to budget, but in other ways there’s very much a difference in quality and consistency. Like, alright, to be fair to IG, they had to pick up from where DH left off and work with an engine they had no experience in whatsoever in a short amount of time, and they had been improving, but by the same token, though, there were some parts that felt sloppy, if not kind of amateurish, especially in terms of the animations, some character designs and story. With DH, there was a sense of ambition and that they really were passionate about KI but were limited by both time and budget, but with IG, it just felt, well, good enough. I get the sense that they weren’t KI fans, or if they were, not on the same spectrum as DH, that they were just glad to be doing a fighting game of their own.
I don’t know about it being “balanced” per se.
But by the same token, it’s not an ideal, let alone healthy, way for growing a franchise, especially a moribund title that just came out from a twenty-year coma.
I strongly disagree. IG clearly was passionate about their work on KI and went out of their way to communicate with fans about all changes – a process that ended up wearing them out because of fan entitlement.
They addressed numerous gameplay problems that were left over from the first season (to be fair, DH would have likely fixed those had they stayed on), drastically expanded the meta and interaction between characters, improved the UI, and brought in new character archetypes.
I mean, if you think the character designs were amateurish, then I have no idea what to tell you. You can go play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter if you want a dozen varieties of ninja and gi outfits. If you want bad/stiff animations, then you can go play Mortal Kombat or KoF.
And if you don’t think the game is balanced, I don’t know how to help you either. There isn’t anything I can convince you on that. EVERY character is viable in this game for tournament play. And every character plays differently. Infil, when he was still active here, could have gone on and on about this. In fact, his website has a change list throughout all versions of the game – reminding you of such things as Sabrewulf’s 0-frame cross-up dash, Sadira’s spin-to-win, and prevalence of one-chance combos.
I saw in another thread some guy made a comment on how the character in seasons 2 and 3 made the original cast no longer viable. I have no idea what he is on because all S1 characters were incredibly powerful. They continued to show up actively in tournaments alongside the rest of the cast.
I mean, if you think the game was mediocre and are only a fan because of the game’s lost potential, why are you here? You’re talking about all the nebulous qualities about why DH did a better job than IG, but you haven’t really argued for why that is the case. In another thread, you posted a bunch of random art for Riptor that hardly made any sense. I gave up reading that before I could even respond.
yeah, and considering the success it had, maybe MS is confident enough to give a bigger budget this time. But even with a bigger budget it still takes effort.
I could also give my list on a roster but I’ll save that for another topic.
Not to the same extent as DH. It doesn’t exactly help matters that Keits and some members of staff were downright antagonistic to people on the forums and on Twitter, at times encouraging trolling/bully behavior.
At least with MK and SF they are consistent and try to do new things with existing designs, largely improving upon what they had. Sure, there’s the odd slip-up or design that isn’t so great, but by the same token, they’re largely faithful to the characters. The animations for T.J., Maya, Riptor and at times Cinder are pretty stiff and amateurish, especially during Super moves. T.J. Combo, the flashiest and most over the top character in the original games, and the best they could do was make him look like an even more generic version of Balrog, if not less interesting? Or the Ultimates? You’re seriously going to defend those and say they’re great, let alone good? Come on! Don’t kid yourself. IG did some things well like Maya, Tusk, Kim Wu, Hisako, Aganos, Kan-Ra, General Raam and Eyedol, but to say that everything they did was perfect would be insulting.
Because I am a fan of the series, not IG. As a fan I like talking with the people on this site and sharing ideas, encouraging creativity and expressing our enthusiasm for the series in different ways, be it through art or writing. I like sharing that experience, especially with people just getting into KI. While I may disapprove or disagree about something a dev did or some aspects about the game or its story, there are some that I do like. It’s not hating for the sake of hating like you seem to believe. I may be a fan, but I am sure as hell no sycophantic yes man who thinks IG can do no wrong. And they have done wrong on occasions, and it’s fine to call them out on such things.
In terms of IG, a lot of times they added in mechanics and stuff that seemed extremely bloated and at times ridiculously unnecessary, so much so that they had to go back and add stuff to characters from previous characters in order to compensate, fundamentally changing how they had played, giving them tools that at times doesn’t seem to be much better. Like, I get the game was being developed as a result of a seasonal model, that there’s bound to be changes for a season, but by the same token, what’s the point of learning a character if it’s going to be changed in a future season/patch? And don’t just say “git gud”. No fighting game is ever “balanced” - you’re always going to find something that’s broken. There have been some broken things in KI as well.
In terms of Riptor, if you had bothered reading what I was saying, IG’s take was an uninspired generic bastardization of the character when the character already had a distinctive look that made her identifiably Riptor. They could have just called it “Stalker” rather than as Riptor (I mean, they’ve already done it. But then they added that stupid thing about calling the leader “Riptor”.). Nothing about the character in how it looks, moves or gameplay is at all like Riptor (it has the tail flip and is a rushdown like the original, but that’s about it). The snake aspect was a huge part of Riptor’s identity, especially in terms of its look and gameplay (one of the moves in the original was acid spit). Even if one wants to remove the snake aspect entirely and make it into a raptor, the rule of distinction always applies in terms of designing characters, and what IG did, they just made a less interesting version of Talon or the JP3 raptors but added gridlines, painted the claws blue and gave her Dinobot’s spinning tail. If you were to compare the design with every raptor design featured in cartoons, comics, movies, video games, concept art (even ones for canceled projects), stuff on Deviantart, etc, it’s not going to be among the best designed raptors/raptor characters, let alone cyberraptors. Hell, even her roar and theme is a joke - you’re seriously going to tell me, a HUGE Riptor fan, that the new roar and theme are better than her old ones?
Riptor is my number 1 favorite. I pretty much said time and time again that I love each of them in their own way. Yes, they did remove the snake aspect which I did love about the original design (sense the snake and raptor are my two favorite animals) But, I have a theory on why they did this.
Exhibit A: The lore
They opened up the lore with the drawbacks of the fulgore and cinder project. Sense Riptor was designed to adapt to any environment, she could handle anything without any trouble. They just had to use some things from both of these projects to make her more effective especially when dealing with warriors like jago who is no ordinary human.
On the other hand, this doesn’t necessarily mean it would be impossible for them to use the more KI-1 riptor they could do that design, add some of the features and still make it work.
That being said, I do still love the design of the KI-1 design. Even when I hadn’t touched ki in years the design still stuck with me to this day and may have inspired some of my own human sized monsters which have not yet been seen or made.
Heck I still enjoy the design.
2: The scientific aspect of it.
Now when it comes to fictional beasts I’m against realism most of the time, because it tends to be hindrance to the fun of making these creatures. They argued that the cyber enhancements of her design allows riptor to use her tail and breath fire sense raptors never did that.
though they still added the human genes which automatically makes that impossible sense human and animal dna isn’t compatible. That’s why you wouldn’t someone like the Lizard from spider-man possible in the real world. I guess this was a way to explain why Riptor could do these things the way that they do.
Now even with these reasons, you can still agree to disagree. Heck I still love both designs of Riptor and I will continue to support her for the future KI and she will always make the list.
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In the original games, she was actually older than Fulgore (four years old), a preceding project to Fulgore, with the latter being built up by Ultratech. I’m not quite crazy about the reversal here, just because it kind of makes Fulgore less special. I guess an argument could be made that like Fulgore himself this version of Riptor is only one of several different versions of existing models, kind of like how there are varying models of cars in the automobile industry where newer cars contain different features. I can kind of forgive on that basis, but at the same time imo, I’d rather the 2014 “RINO” be its own thing as “Stalker”, just because it feels, well…emasculated. The original was a pretty big character, seven feet tall, with a very robust and muscled frame, but it’s like when the announcement came that Riptor was a female that she ended up being neutered physically in this game by becoming smaller and less muscled. It’s a different character to Riptor imo.
I like the idea of the cybernetic implants, don’t get me wrong, it’s just how it’s done that I find kind of irritating. Surely a better way could have been done rather than just paint her claws blue and add grid lines and Dinobot’s tail to indicate something cybernetic. I mean, the aesthetic doesn’t even seem consistent with Fulgore’s, who looks like something that could be built, let alone doesn’t have all that wavy gridline crap all over its body. The breathing fire…I know that Riptor in the original had a move called “Dragon’s breath”, but it wasn’t really a flame. The detail about implanting “flame injectors” seemed incredibly redundant and detrimental, even stupid. At least with the original Riptor it kind of made sense (it’s a snake, hence it spits venom like a cobra).
There is a way to integrate that aspect, if not explain it successfully, though - they could always explain it as the result of using Sabrewulf’s genes and that they had replaced the wolf parts with reptilian in a human embryo or something.
As a huge Riptor fan, she’ll always be on my list of favorite characters in KI, and she’ll always be a character that I’ll advocate for inclusion on any future KI project. I just hope that they do her better in future games and that her snake-like appearance is included.
Yeah Riptor falls in that catahory that make she respecialy dangerous and a force to be reckoned with like fulgore.
Aeon form soul Calibur is like that as well. He was the leader of the cult’s lizardmen because of his superiors fighting skills.
Plus the upside this new lore is if Riptor somehow dies we could always expect another stalker to have the name so it means that a Riptor could come back in form and not get left out of sequels. Because heaving your favorite left out of a game is disappointing at best for me anyway. (looking at you MK11)
and that’s also awesome. as I said, do love all the versions of riptor for different reasons. You also have your preference and thats okay. Even if riptor is also not at all hulking she is still dangerous. Also yes a snake human raptor hybrid would also be dangerous. Because your combining humans which are very dangerous. Snakes which many people unfortunately fear, and a raptor. Granted not all snakes spit venom except for the spitting cobra but thats a topic for another day.
I’m nto quite sure how they would do that. I’m not at all familiar with genetics sense the one thing that is clearly consistent is that both riptors where born the exact same way. Raised from an egg into a killing machine.
Well if they do work on a version of KI I hope do succeed. I just hope they don’t give a full body of feathers unless they were accessories. Sense this is a work of fiction after all.
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Indeed.
True.
It would be pretty easy. I mean, Sabrewulf as a character has a genetic disorder that allows him to have half human, half animal traits. They could easily explain it as being the result of some form of unknown retrovirus that steals genes from other species. Plus, it would make sense that if Ultratech learned of Sabrewulf’s condition and tried to weaponize it that they would use his genes for more cross species experiments, perhaps even replace the wolf genes with those of other species, infecting them with animal genes like in “Relic” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This in itself has the potential of opening up more possibilities in terms of characters and creatures, including the much-requested Shark Man.
Whether she has feathers or not, I just want her to look brutal and menacing and not like a chicken. Like, one look at her and you just go “$hit, I’m screwed/that’s terrifying”, etc.
I honestly gave up because you seemed to be talking past everyone else. You come across as everyone else that looked at the DH season with rose-tinted glasses. I’m sorry you didn’t like Riptor’s theme, but that is on Mick and the time constraints. He even stated it is the weakest theme he composted for the game. But you are the only person who has had that complaint about Riptor not feeling like Riptor so… shrug.
The Ultimates are a limitation based on both finances and having to maintain the game’s rating. To be honest, they probably shouldn’t have bothered if it weren’t for people constantly wanting them.
And TJ Combo look like a generic version of Balrog? Dude, do you even play this game? I’m not telling you to worship at the altar of IG, but get real.
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