New Killer Instinct game in active development

General Discussion
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Thing is, for me at least, if they’re going to retcon everything that happened in the last game, from the arcade mode to the season two story vignettes to the shadowlords vignettes and story missions to the novella and the comics, then don’t even bother telling a story in the next game. It’s pointless.

I know that might sound like an extreme reaction, but KI 2013 was your reboot, and you invested four years in to creating a main storyline and several minor plot threads through a wide variety of means. Now if you want to say, make Sabrewulf adhere to his animal nature less and make him more of a noble beast that’s fighting the animal rage inside of him, then fine, but you can write around his past or lead a straight line from what he was to what he could be in a new game. It doesn’t have to be an outright retcon.

I dunno, I’m not one of those people that tore their hair out when Sindel was retconned in Mortal Kombat 11. I thought it was an interesting take on her that, while maybe shoe-horned in a little too hard, was still consistent enough, even if the main excuse given was “it’s just one of the timelines” or whatever.

But for me, if KI were to blow up all the work they did in the last four years of crafting this world and these characters and just said “nah, we’re telling a different story, the characters will have different personalities, different origins, we’re making it all new” then I’d honestly tune out the story at that point. You can’t just do that one game later, at least not in my opinion. I know I probably care about the story more than many, but rebooting the story every game just hits me wrong.

Eh, this is one of those things where I eventually like the information. I was listening to older episodes of Mortal Podkast recently and Ben was interviewing John Tobias, who had more of an opinion toward letting players fill in a lot of information. They were limited in what they could do when telling story in MK1, MK2 and MK3, so they just sort of ran with a template main story, filled in a few details for the characters, and let players assume the rest.

IMO, that works… To a point. For me, when I was a kid, I loved imagining who this or that character was and making up my own head-canon etc. Now? I want a story. You can absolutely start someone off as mysterious or masked or whatever, but at the end of the day, I still want to know who this character is, what they’re about, where they came from and how it made them who they are now. Peel back that onion. Maybe quickly for some and more slowly for others, but still. Make me care about them.

Orchid can be a cool looking spy and that’s great and all, but what does she want, who is she after, why is she after them, what made her who she is? You might want the answers to these questions to remain vague or mysterious, but for me, at some point this ambiguity stops adding to their aura and it just becomes unexplored territory for the sake of being unexplored. That’s not really my thing, but if you prefer it, then more power to you. No problem. :slight_smile:

Agree 100%. Ideally, I’d want them to forego any guests for the simple reason that they don’t really have much to offer the story, but overall, I think it’s important to have some new blood in the game that players can connect with. It allows the devs to really flex their creative muscles while giving the players something completely new and unexpected while adding some nice variety. As much as I love the original KI/KI2 cast, I loved the additions of Sadira, Kan Ra, Hisako, Aganos, Eagle, ARIA, Mira, etc. Both of my mains (Sadira and Mira, plus my former main Kan Ra) were all newbies. So I love testing out the new ideas to see how they work and what fun I can find with them.

Just curious, but how would you tie KI1 in to KI 2013 without creating any retcons or timeline issues? What about KI1 do you think needs to be carried forward in a KI 2013 sequel to improve the overall continuity for you? I’m not sure they cared much for the continuity between the old games and new in terms of the main story told, and they basically retconned KI2 completely. But what do you think they missed that they could’ve brought forward without messing things up?

As for the story mode part, I agree completely. There should be a central hub where the story takes place. I’d still love to see it set around a tournament. I’d like hidden characters and surprise twists and turns, the view point from every individual character and how they see things, alliances, betrayals, etc. Tell me a story.

Now, I also think that they can use an arcade mode to supplement the story mode. You can give more background on characters initially, you can show endings where they either lost in the tournament and what happened as a result or they defeat their rival and what happens next or you can tell the story of some other event that occurs during the main story that helps flesh out the character and what happened to them through the course of the main storyline or in various subplots.

All of that is a very roundabout way of saying yes, more story, but try and keep it focused to as few places as possible.

Yeah I think there were moments where they were trying a bit too much to be funny or ham it up a bit and that’s not overly necessary. I also think that the story elements were rather limited in scope.

In an ideal world, where the new team has more money to work with, plus more developers working and more time to work on it, we’d get s ShadowLords mode that wasn’t from a team biting off more than they could chew.

I think we can certainly fault it for being an idea that wasn’t fully realized to its potential, absolutely. But I don’t think that this in and of itself makes the idea bad or not worthy of further exploration and expansion. If they hadn’t stopped working on this mode after saying all the stuff they could do with it, I think it would’ve been great and I still think the sky’s the limit.

Okay, maybe the copious item collecting to buff your characters and the ally cards and the more roguelike aspects of building and building and building just to beat the boss or lose to the boss and do it all over again might not have hit for everyone and I get that, but I do think that the mode provided a substantial canvas for which they could’ve painted some amazing things on, and I honestly enjoyed collecting all of this stuff and using it. I thought it was a fun and unique idea that worked in a space that doesn’t really have anything else like it.

That’s just me though. Like I said, I know it’s a hot take.

Even the guests? I’m just not used to guests returning from one game to the next. You can make an argument for Gargos, Eyedol, etc but the game’s still going to have a limited number of roster slots. You wouldn’t rather see some new guests instead?

If you’re building a roster where the main villain and his minions return you’re either trapping yourself in to repeating the story or pushing them to the side to make way for something bigger, which could possibly leave you having to one up your main villain every time. It’s not a sorcerer it’s an interstellar warlord, it’s not an intersteller warlord its a fallen elder god, it’s not a fallen elder god it’s the original ruler of outworld who has an undefeatable army, it’s an elemental it’s a reboot it’s a titan its etc etc.

You can absolutely bring Gargos and Omen back in the following game. I don’t think it has to be as absolute as “story or characters, you can pick only one.” You can recognize that your villain can sit out to make way for another villain without saying its only story over characters. In certain situations, yes, maybe you go by what makes sense for the story. But in other situations, maybe you say certain characters should be in no matter what.

Either way, the roster space is eventually limited. There’s a final number for any game, regardless of whether it’s seven in MK1 or 80+ in Smash Ultimate. Eventually you have to stop making characters. So if I’m going to assume that a new KI stops at maybe 35 after DLC is done, I’d like to use those eight new spots plus additional spots to get both new guests as well as new characters. That’s just me though.

Ouch. That hurts lol. But yeah I know some feel this way and that’s fine. I just think that as a delivery system for continuous storytelling, it has a ton of potential if handled the right way. To Evolution’s point, better writing in the pre-match dialog would be great. I also think there are better ways of communicating and storying the story elements that occur and making something that provides a more cohesive narrative.

I also consider this a great story location with tons of potential not just because it can be iterated upon, but because even a KI with more money behind still isn’t going to look like an NRS storymode or have nearly the amount of cutscene time to simply “tell us a story.” I just don’t think that’s possible.

So if we’re going to find some method to get as much storytelling conveyed to the character as possible, it’s not going to happen solely through arcade mode endings like season one and it’s not going to happen solely through Twisted Metal style opening, middle and ending vignettes like in season 2.

I believe it should come from an arcade mode providing supplemental info that’s canon, but also through a central hug mode where players can play missions or go through a tournament or both and keep learning more about the characters, the world, the storylines happening (main plot, sub plots) etc. If they can do that for us and give them to us in chunks both at the beginning when the game is released and then even more over time, well to me that sounds great. It’s likely cheaper than a full-on NRS story mode and it also keeps me playing and hopefully learning more over time, which gives this story-focused mode far more longevity than a five to six hour story mode playthrough that you get from an NRS game.

I’ll concede that this potential was NOT realized in ShadowLords, but you can still see the intention behind and thus see its ultimate potential IMO. It could be a great mode for conveying story, again, if handled correctly.

Just my 2 cents.

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So, I’d personally would want the tournament to play a bigger a role in the story - that’s a HUGE must imo. I mean, yeah, the tournament is a trope, but by the same token, though, the title of the game itself is after the tournament - it wouldn’t be KI without it. One of the things that bugs me with current fighters like MK, SF etc is that the tournament has been ignored entirely. I mean, it was featured in 9, but from X onwards, it was no longer relevant.
Now, to be fair to MK, that series had created a terrific foundation with a lot of the 3d era games, which provided a rich lore, but by the same token, though, part of me wants to see the tournament aspect stay relevant.
For KI, Ultratech uses the tournament as a testing ground for its weapons and products, but I think it would be interesting where perhaps the other corporations are to some extent involved with the KI tournament, testing with their products against UT’s. I mean, the whole idea of it was that it’s this horrible ba#stard child of the UFC meets Make-A-Wish Foundation - that’s an interesting idea. What would such a society look like? How would it function in connection with social media and the Internet? Are there corporations that make Ultratech seem like the good guys in comparison?
You could still have slight supernatural elements in the mix - like, perhaps the tournament becomes hijacked by supernatural forces and is made into something else for sinister purposes outside of Ultratech’s.
For my story “Zahn Und Klaue”, I very much attempted to reconcile KI1 with 2013’s by taking the things I loved about the former along with the latter while paying homage to certain elements in both in order to make a prequel story to KI1 so that everything came together in a way that not only justified all of these crazy disparate elements, but also that one would be able to see how one thing led to the other, how things came to be and it makes sense based on what’s there.
For Cinder, I didn’t mind his being a mercenary, but I can’t help feeling the inherent tragedy of his character has been glossed over, if not ignored entirely, along with Glacius’, Sabrewulf’s and to a certain extent Riptor’s characters as well. With Glacius, he wasn’t a space cop - he was a pacifist who was forced against his will into committing violence, pretty much embodying that concept of innocence lost. I’d actually argue that Glacius would be KI’s most tragic character because of his species being inherently pacifistic.
In terms of Sabrewulf, he wasn’t either bitten or scratched - it was a genetic disorder, which is an interesting departure from the typical werewolf story. I mean, even though Konrad is essentially a hyper-masculine version of Lawrence Talbot, the fact that it was a genetic disorder is a very interesting and novel take that makes Konrad’s story all the more tragic, because he wasn’t responsible for what happened to him. With this being a genetic disorder, this was something passed down to him by his family, which makes it all the sadder to think about.
I’m kind of puzzled as to why Limbo was ignored altogether tbh, if not renamed as the Astral plains.
I think my biggest gripe with the story as it is that…it doesn’t give much depth to the characters that we know. Even worse, certain characters aren’t given the time to create emotionally-charged and memorable experiences and stories. Jago’s journey of the soul, for example - brilliant idea! I love that idea.
That said, however, the 2013 game doesn’t give either him or the player the opportunity to truly engage with the story and with the character. A lot of the stories in themselves feel as if the characters never make any form of progress, like everyone and everything is in stasis, if that makes any sense. It doesn’t allow players to feel for the characters, it completely glosses over some of the sadder aspects of various characters. There’s no character development or sense of progression (with perhaps the exception of Fulgore, but when taken with Eagle, it’s meaningless). I could make a list of things wrong with the story, but that’s a loooooong rant.
To answer the question, I’d want KI1’s dark atmosphere and presentation to return along with some of those elements that added a certain measure of pathos and tragedy to some of the characters. I kind of can’t help feeling that those aspects, while kind of present in 2013, have been watered down somewhat. One BIG hope as a Riptor fan is that her snake look comes back - even though I’m not a fan of snakes whatsoever, her look in KI1 made her standout from a lot of other raptor-esque characters and was visually distinctive.

Definitely, but by the same token, though, you don’t want to give too much away, otherwise you’d be taking away some of the inherent intrigue. It’s sort of like giving the Man With No Name a backstory - you could give him one and say that his name’s Bob, that he’s the son of an alcoholic mother/father/camel/whatever, but sometimes it’s so much more effective and tantalizing to have that inherent sense of mystery where you can’t help wonder “what’s this guy’s/girl’s story?” Sometimes, it’s the smallest little things that tells you something about a character without them saying or doing anything. In the movie “Pale Rider”, Clint Eastwood’s preacher character doesn’t really have a name, and yet there are little hints here and there about who or what he is, and it’s fun letting your imagination run with the possibilities in terms of what he could be.

Well, tbh they already kind of had. Spinal, for example, was suggested to be this dark Lovecraftian entity that’s millions of years old in S1 during an interview Mick Gordon had with TotalMK (his shield is a mammoth shield and his prehistoric set was supposed to indicate this), but then come S3 he was made into this Babylonian bandit.

Definitely. Like, perhaps audio tapes, short videos, documents, proverbs, relevant myths or stories in connection with certain characters. There are tons of ways to play with the narrative that wouldn’t necessarily involve an NRS-style story mode, although admittedly it would be cool to see something like that.

I would LOVE to see something like a Create-A-Fighter, or, since this is in a dystopian $ hithole where corporations go to war with one another, maybe have something where players can create their own syndicates/organizations/cult/corporations or whatever, allowing you to create your own fighters and traits.

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See that’s just my thing, I don’t think the final space should be limited to 35. Ideally I would want something like 50 or 60.

I also think that having a character on your games roster who isn’t involved in the plot at all is a totally viable option.

Like, don’t get me wrong. I want to see as many new characters as can be done. But I’m frankly tired of the limitations imposed by cutting characters to make room for others. Imagine if we get further down the line and we end up with like 100+ characters existing in KI canon but only a few of them can show up in any game at a given time. That’s what makes Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter hell to be a fan of because of all the needless arguments and wars about which characters are important or cool enough to bring back or revamp. Not to mention knowing that certain characters you are an ardent and passionate fan of will never come back because they’re not as popular with others as they are with you. That doesn’t feel good and I don’t want that from KI.

Also, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. I want KI and Battletoads to have the same relationship as Street Fighter and Final Fight or Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive.

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100% facts but personally it’d be great if they did actually retcon the comics out. I could point out about a 100 things wrong about it, for instance, how out of character everyone was. Moreover, the comic did jump forward two years and just started out of nowhere. The whole thing felt too forced and abrupt. There were no clarifications or anything like, “Okay so the Tiger spirit is a separate entity and it wasn’t just Gargos? When did that happen?”
This isn’t what we deserve as fans. The story is just as important as anything else in the game and it’s a pretty big problem if it’s not taken seriously.
Probably the only thing good in those comics is that they got a good idea from where they should proceed. Gargos is gone and here we are in a post-apocalyptic world.

Definitely.

Totally agree. I want them to focus more on the problems on their own planet for now, which is what they’re planning to do anyway.

This needs to be said more! If I’m not wrong, the last we got to see of him was Hisako yeeting him through a portal after he was defeated by the Dragon spirit. This is definitely the one thing I hate about the entire story line. We gotta bring back the blue Pinocchio.

And there is so much ground to do that, even if we’re going by the comic’s ending where they hinted at the Coven and UT sort of teaming up. That’s actually a pretty great idea. The Coven’s literally a real big bunch of vampires. Nothing said only vampires could get corporate. They could build up more on the Night Guard and who they fought against. “Creatures of the night” is too broad a term if you ask me. There could be so many other families affiliated with the Night Guard just like the Sabrewulfs.
We’ve only gotten good guardian spirits and good spirit bearers until now and I’d honestly love more but where are the evil ones?
Supernatural or otherworldly doesn’t mean Gargos or the Astral Plane. The way everything’s set up makes it feel like Gargos is the real deal. What if there are bigger real deals? Some more influential than Gargos. Really, there’s a whole lot of scope.

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THIS.

Indeed. Also, I’m not crazy about the Night Guard being this international organization - I was kind of given the impression that they’re this small Incan-based group, just because it’s hard imagining Sabrewulf’s family being involved with them. Like, what, his N azi grandfather became besties with them while fleeing Germany? It just doesn’t make sense and is waaaaaaay too convenient.

I like the idea of something being much more dangerous than Gargos, or even Eyedol. That’s a cool idea. I kind of want KI to focus a little more on the other corporations in this setting, just because it kind of feels like 2013 is placing a little too much attention on the supernatural imo. I mean, there could still be supernatural elements, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want it to be such that it takes away that dystopian vision of KI1 where you have corporations creating bioweapons and going to literal war with one another.

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Well you’re right but I feel like it isn’t thaaat bad. Mira did go looking for a book that’s supposed to allow interdimensional travel in his library. I hope we get to know more about their family histories. Hope it all makes sense.

Couldn’t have said it better myself!

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I’m not sure I’d say it’s a “must,” but I do agree whole heartedly in that I’d love to see this aspect return. Having the tournament be the main fulcrum around which all the other subplots revolve is just flat out fun IMO. It provides this compelling setting that’s ample ground for everything from alliances and betrayals to mysteries, romances and the good old good triumphing over evil (or evil winning and seeing where that takes the story).

I personally love this. Give me a KI sequel set a few years after the comic series. Gargos’ destruction nearly destroyed the world, and what’s left is still trying to pick up the pieces. No governments, just corporations vying for control against each other and an underground rebellion. Start it off grim. Put a few bad guys on the good guys side and vice versa. Let people know that time has passed and things are different.

I won’t go too much in to that last part, but I’d love to see Cinder betrayed by Ultratech and reverted back to his human mercenary (Ben Farris) form because they see him as too much of a wild card. Unbeknownst to him, Ultratech has been perfecting the technology behind his back and uses a new test subject that they can more easily manipulate than Cinder, who to them is too much of a wildcard.

So Ultratech creates Meltdown and Farris joins the good guys as a mercenary for hire, but his real motive is to steal back the technology that had been taken from him in hopes that he can find doctors willing to perform the proceedure to turn him back in to living flame.

Sorry, don’t mean to go all fan fic here. I know some dislike this idea, but I think it’d be a cool way to add a military / mercenary type of character while not losing the “Cinder” character and having some interesting story between the two.

I love “power behind the power” possibilities that this could provide. Plus, going from an Shadowlord that devastated the entire planet to corporations vying for control does feel like a sizeable step down in scope. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, as it does lay the ground work for a new tournament in a new world, but it would make more sense and help add a little gravitas to the story if there were another layer underneath the surface.

Yeah, I think it’s a tough pitch to any developers to really dig deep in to the characters and pull some compelling, complex emotions and motives and what not out and say “this is what you should be focusing on” because I think many of them will say “well, it’s a robot fighting a werewolf, so we’re gonna stick to the surface stuff.”

To me, like I get that approach, so maybe if there’s a story mode, you focus on certain themes like alliances, betrayal, revenge, maybe use the post-apocalyptic stuff as more of a backdrop, but I’d say for fans that want to dig deeper in to the story and in to the characters, you give them a way to do that. I’m not going to keep pushing Shadowlords mode, but I do think that having these sort of bite-sized mission mode type things, where it’s a side mode away from the main story would allow someone that wanted to write these characters in a serious and compelling way the freedom to do so.

If Shadowlords leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths, think of something more along the lines of SoulCalibur’s Edge Master Mode or the story chapters in SoulCalibur VI. You can still have a main throughline story mode where players play through the tournament and you get some story and what not, but then you can have this other mode on the side that really lets the lore folks dive deep in to it.

I’d love that, personally.

I think some of the humor maybe dampened the atmosphere a bit, which is unfortunate. I still think they did a good job with the budget they had. Hopefully a bigger budget in a potential sequel would allow them to do more, say more, tell more, etc.

I agree to an extent. I think if you just never give any answers ever, people are more likely to lose interest, or at least focus on stuff that’s more tangible. The challenge is making a character interesting and finding ways to keep them interesting. Give them a cool background, but peel the onion over time, answer some questions, but be sure to ask more. Keep people engaged not just because the character looks cool or does cool stuff, but because they consistently want to know more and see more of this character’s story.

I think that when you’re telling a story of a Pale Rider or some other nameless hero, it’s great to have that singular experience and no you don’t have to dig deep on them to make them better. Less can absolutely be more.

But video games tend to lend themselves to sequels and reboots and sequels to those reboots and if you’re always going to have a character that’s just “Pale Rider” and they say little and do stuff and that’s all that ever happens with them, after a while, they’re going to start losing that mystery or aura and they’ll just be that guy that no one knows anything about because he’s some cool edgelord or whatever.

So yeah, I get the idea of letting fans imaginations run wild and fill in the blanks and all that, but I also think that if you just keep giving people nothing, game after game, that approach might start to get stale or backfire a little.

Agree 110% on this. There are tons of ways to convey the story. Provided they can all be accessed in a single location and consumed in some sort of cohesive order or in a way that still paints a complete, consistent picture and doesn’t leave people wondering “wait what’s this part about?” or “what does this plot point have to do with that other plot point” etc. I think the skies the limit. Obviously you can add mystery and intrigue and what not, I’m just saying that you don’t want to be giving fans tons of stuff out of order and disjointed and what not.

I honestly thought the way they doled out the story portions, not the cutscenes, but the text bits that each character had (I can’t recall their name, but each character had ten or twelve or something along those lines) in Shadowlords wasn’t the best call they could’ve made. You’d play a bit and you’d unlock Jago Chapter VII and be like “well okay I don’t have parts I through VI and when I read this, it barely makes sense.” You literally had to complete the entire mode and get every one of those text chapter bits for anything to make sense or to get the complete story and I did that and honestly? The juice wasn’t worth the squeeze.

So yeah, do more of those, but give them to players in order. Tell a big, long story through these text card… Thingies, if you want. But make it compelling and make it something fans will both want to hunt for and also understand what’s happening when they get them.

That said, I’d hope they’d give us a lot more story than just those cards. They gave each character a cut scene or two and that’s nice, but for being sort of the main story hub for season 3, there should’ve been a lot more and some sort of main / golden path should’ve been far more easily identifiable and accessible.

I like this. I like this a LOT. If you replaced Shadowlords with this type of mode, where you essentially create your own syndicate and build out its forces by creating characters, I’d love to see that. Give people templates for character archetypes, a ton of special moves to choose from, animates for light, medium and heavy autos and enders, etc. Give us a bunch of unique character traits to play with…

I know this might not be something a TON of people would be in to as well, but being able to snap still images of your characters and using them as templates to create your own story intros and endings for them would be awesome as well. Maybe even let fans share their own, though obviously that would have to be heavily policed. But yeah, provided everyone didn’t create Swastika Man or whatever, I think it could be a great place to see some fun characters, fight against them, get their story, etc.

I’m kinda confused here though. So you want 50-60 characters per game and you don’t want any characters cut out to make room for others. How does that work exactly when you get to 100 characters or more, because at that rate, you’ll get there pretty quickly.

How do you tell a story with 100 characters? How do you balance a fighting game with 100 characters? How do you make every character unique and compelling to the level that we grew accustomed to in this last KI that had 27 characters and still had some level of overlap? How do you make all the characters from the last game fresh and compelling for the new game while you work on the 30+ brand new characters you’ll need to add? How do you make a fighting game with modern graphics that has 100 characters? Do you want 100 stages for these 100 characters?

We’re not talking about Smash here, and even that game took years to get up to where they’re at, but let’s not kid ourselves in to thinking that Ultimate is some graphical powerhouse where every character is super unique with tons of depth. Yes, Smash can be a very deep and compelling fighter, but it’s a still a completely different beast than KI, MK, Tekken, SF, etc.

Either way, all of this development you want costs money and takes time. Most fighting games take 2-3 years to make, and that’s just the base roster that usually numbers in the mid-20s. Now double that work to get to your number of 50. Oh wait, here comes the next sequel clocking in at 75 or 80 or 90 characters.

Let’s say its next gen and the devs have to learn a whole new system. You’re talking about a game that almost assuredly wouldn’t recoup even a small percentage of the work cost that would need to go in to it because a dev team would have to take 5-7 years making it. If this was a Bioware game or something along those lines, or GTA 6, I might say that’s possible or even probable. But no fighting game sits in development that long and turns a profit. Not MK, not Tekken, not Street Fighter.

How do you propose to get this massive game or its even more massive sequel without losing characters and adding that many more? Not a rhetorical question, I’m legitimately curious.

Battletoads? Why though? Like Ninja Gaiden and DOA both look like they’re from the same universe. Same goes for SF and Final Fight. Battletoads can be adjusted to fit KI’s aesthetic, but I don’t get why you think they should be linked the way these other properties are. Just curious to know what you’re seeing that I might be missinghere.

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J esus, that’s a writer’s nightmare. That said, it might be possible in that one can create this sprawling world where some characters are relevant to the main story while every other character has their own arc, that they’re just pieces added for the purposes of world-building and adding dimension to it, but by the same token though, that’s something that I kind of hate about “Tekken”, where they include more and more characters and make things kind of convoluted. One of the things I loved about the first “Mortal Kombat” movie and “Mortal Kombat 9” was that, even if they weren’t 100 percent faithful to the original game, they were focused and unified; all the characters were where they needed to be for the purpose of telling a cohesive narrative that made them all feel relevant someway somehow. As a “Tekken” fan, I wanted something like THAT for King, Paul and various other characters, only they keep adding more and more, including some useless characters like Lars (blech). In terms of KI, I don’t think it is at that state where it should have a hundred characters, let alone fifty. I want to see a good, if not a great KI game with great gameplay, art design and a compelling story that does justice to its characters, that can make players go “WOW, this story and these characters are really interesting - I want to learn more about them!” while also bringing in the disparate elements altogether in a cohesive whole.

I love the idea of fans creating their own narratives/stories! :smiley: THAT’S awesome. I would LOVE to see that.

Indeed. I’m not opposed to KI having humor…but if it’s badly done, it can sour an experience. It’s sort of like with “Battletoads”, the reboot especially.

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Yeah that’s kinda my point. How do you do accomplish this level of polish on gameplay, character design / uniqueness (in both appearance and in gameplay), and story? If you have 60, 80 or 100 characters, you’re almost assuredly going to dilute the pool in all of those categories and even then, you’re still looking at a TON of work on the development side to fit all of those characters, all of those moves, etc etc.

Like I get it. I’d love for the game to have a thousand characters and for them to all be amazing and perfect and well suited to this top notch, award worthy story. But if we’re talking about a dev team that will likely have limited genre experience, limited budget, limited time, etc… Unfortunately you’re based hope is for a level of quality that exceeds expectations like we had with the last KI game.

So repeating guest characters, 20 or 30 more new characters, stuff like that… I don’t know how they can possibly do that to any fans satisfaction. I hate to be all “low expectations” about it. I want a great game. I just don’t see how a new dev steps in and gets ALL of that done from a quantity perspective AND nails on the quality side as well.

Honestly think this would be an absolute blast, but that’s just me. Or hey, that’s just us! There’s two of us now! lol :slight_smile:

Agreed.

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I maintain that the reboot has caused people to take KI waaaaay more seriously then it was ever intended to be by Rare’s original developers. Like just look at the original games cutscenes and movesets and character archetypes and try to convince me it’s this grim and gritty thing. You can’t.

Not to mention a lot of people forget that in the lore of battletoads, the roads are humans who were sucked into a video game they created. Both of those things make me think the two would work.

I don’t know. But I really don’t care because I’m not the developer. All I know is I’m tired of this constant “speculation” and disappointment that comes with being a fan of fighting games. It’s like constantly opening loot boxes. And then to top it off you can’t help but fight with other people about who should and shouldn’t come back online. I’m just sick of it and I don’t want a new KI to come out and for it to be tainted by the experience of the constant buildup and anticlimax that is fighting game reveals.

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Well, we see that differently then. In 1995, with those graphics, the announcer, the music, etc… That game was dark, post-apocalyptic, and almost Blade Runner-esque with it’s use of neon on dark tones.

Yeah obviously there was some camp in there as well and some of the influences in general were light-hearted, like Spinal coming from Clash of the Titans or whichever old movie it was. I’m not going to sit here and pretend it was this deep, brooding epic by any means, but yeah it was pretty grim and gritty for its time, or do you remember it differently?

What does getting sucked in to a video game have to do with Killer Instinct?

That’s fighting games though. That’s how it’s been since day one. Street Fighter 2 dropped characters nine of its 12 characters from Street Fighter 1 and then a ton of them got dropped going to Street Fighter 3. Mortal Kombat 2 dropped Kano and Sonya and didn’t bring back Goro. Killer Instinct 2 dropped Riptor, Thunder, Cinder and Eyedol while adding Kim Wu, Tusk, Maya and Gargos.

At some point they have to stop making the game and ship it. Luckily now they can add DLC but they can only keep adding for so long before it stops being profitable or they need to utilize that team for another project in heavy development or the team decides they want to work on something else.

Just saying “I don’t know. But I don’t really care because I’m not a developer” doesn’t change these realities. Most of the time in fighting games you’re subtracting some stuff from the last game and adding stuff in the hopes that the new package is superior to the old one. It doesn’t replace the old one. The old package doesn’t grow in to the new one and then keep growing and growing and growing.

KI had a 4 year dev cycle from beginning to end. Tekken has had somewhere around 7 or 8 years. Tekken obviously has a ton of characters now but it also has a mediocre story, characters still missing (if I recall correctly) and it’s also a WAY bigger budget game that’s multiplatform. Expecting that big of a cycle for that many characters from a game like KI isn’t realistic.

I’m sure you know that already and you’re just saying what you want regardless and that’s fine. Like I said, give me a KI game that’s supported for an entire generation, then carry it over to the next generation with souped up graphics and effects and keep adding to it. Sounds great to me. Only problem is that well… All the stuff I said above. Dimishing return on investment, studio attrition, difficulty of keeping things unique and compelling plus fandom fatigue, etc.

Yeah, there’s always a mixture of happiness and sadness when a new game’s final roster is announced. I’ve been dealing with that in MK since MK2. My favorites in that franchise are Sareena, Human Smoke, Baraka, Kabal, Skarlet, Kung Lao, Mavado, Kira, Nitara and Erron Black. That’s probably my top 10. As you can see, MK11 was pretty good to me! Got fiveof them, which was better than MKX.

So yeah, sometimes you get lucky and you get a good group of characters that appeal to you and sometimes you roll snake eyes. Personally, when that happens for me, if I know I love the franchise and I care about the characters and lore and all that good stuff, I try and concentrate on finding new characters. I absolutely loved Erron Black in MKX. Same goes for Takeda, Kung Jin, and I reacquainted myself with others like Bo Rai Cho, Mileena, etc that I hadn’t used in a while.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when it comes to these games, but I guess my point is that while it can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow as far as not getting stuff that you want, maybe try and focus on the stuff you do get and trying to enjoy that?

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You don’t think that’s something Ultratech would want to weaponizevor exploit? Also I was pointing it out as to possibly ease you mind to the goofy character designs (though I don’t see that as an issue).

I mean, I wasn’t like… alive back then. But I look at it now and then I look at it in the context of this company also having made Battletoads and Conker and Banjo-Kazooie (and Perfect Dark to be fair) and I look at all the developer interviews and think about the kinds of people the old rate devs were and I just can’t think they intended it to be this super serious blade runner thing.

It’s not just the cuts. It’s all the online poo flinging that goes on around those cuts. And leak culture. And how long it takes them to reveal characters. And it’s just,… forgive my language. But I don’t ■■■■■■■ care how things are. The way things are ■■■■■■■ sucks. I want thinks to be different. Zekrom over Reshiram. I don’t know how to get there. And I don’t have the time or energy with my job to figure out how. But I think about a “hype” with the most sarcasm I could put in my voice for KI that’s as potentially horrible as Smash Ultimate or MK11 and it almost makes me not want a new KI.

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No, I don’t. I think we just look at the story differently. I’m not saying that this story with robots fighting aliens and ghosts and what not needs to be Shakespeare, but a corporation weaponizing the ability to suck people in to a TV is a little too Saturday morning cartoons for me, and not the good kind. To each his own though. If that’s your jam, then more power to you. I also don’t think that everything has to be super grimdark and what not either, but this is just a bit too zany for my taste. Again, that’s just me.

Thing is, when you look at it now and only trying to see it through that prism, you might be missing out on how people would’ve seen the game at the time. When KI came out, its graphics in the arcade were exceptional. The music, the characters, the sound effects, all of it was used to create a specific mood and yeah it looks rudimentary now 25 years later, but the same goes for Mortal Kombat, and that game sparked public outcry to the extent that congress held hearings on it that resulted in the creation of the ESRB.

I’m not quite sure what Battletoads, Conker and Banjo have to do with KI. Studios create all kinds of games, especially a studio as big as Rare. Midway at the time had Mortal Kombat, Mace: The Dark Age, Psi Ops and The Suffering, but they also had NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing and Wrestlemania: The Arcade game, which were all campy AF.

That’s all to say that I wouldn’t put too much stock in to what games a company makes or putting them in a specific box of “this company makes that type of game.”

Honestly, I can’t even tell what you’re angry about here. What is it that you want? What do you think would be realistic for a game that would actually make you happy? I get that you want to offer problems and you don’t care about finding solutions that no one else seems to be able to find (I think the only one I’ve seen is massive amounts of crunch, but that’s kinda frowned upon now). So when you say “hype” about KI, what do you want? What was horrible about Smash or MK11?

You sound exhausted and that’s fine, but I’m not sure what would even please you at this point or how any dev would even get there.

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The thing that would please me would honestly be if the next KI shipped with everyone from the last game included at base with no newcomers. And then the seasonal additions were all new additions. That way we don’t have to constantly hear people whining about their favorites being missing like in MK11 and in Smash. Heck that’s never not going to bd a part of smash because of the nature of its roster. And sure. It’s not a very future proofed method. I don’t know how to future proof it. I just don’t want to constantly hear people online and on hear ■■■■■■■■ about how (pulling a name at random) Hisako isn’t in the game yet even though Kilgore came back and he’s “way less important” and I don’t want to have to wait for months and months and months with no news on the game at all only to get some lackluster reveal like in Smash with Byleth or Pyra/Mythra or SFV with Luke or Tekken with Lidia.

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I can understand that that’s how you might have seen the game at the time. But I can’t believe that’s what the devs were trying to make. Sure, that might not matter, death of the author and all that, but I think KI works better when it’s more exaggerated, silly, and over the top. That might just be me. I’ll always prefer the silver age to the new 52, to compare it to DC comics. But it’s a game where a robot Knight with arm blades and Mike Tyson can air juggle a velociraptor and a t-1000 made of ice while an over the top British dad shouts “ULTRA COMBO” in a bad American accent. I can’t take it that seriously. And I can’t see it through any other lense than the lense of my own experience. I can pretend to and I can say that I do but I’d basically be lying because I can only use the lense of experience that I have. Like… all I’m saying is that maybe the old game isn’t as serious as you’re taking it, was never intended to be that serious, and maybe it would be better if people stopped trying to take it that seriously. Cause like… I don’t want a serious grimdark gritty and boring Zack Snyder version of KI.

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Just out of curiosity… Why do you care that other people are complaining about characters missing from a game? Like why does that take any hype or enjoyment that you may have? That’s them, doing their thing, pleading their case with the wind or whatever. Why does that effect you? If you don’t like that topic, especially when a game is in active development, then there are usually plenty of other topics to discuss.

Also, when a new game comes out, there will absolutely be people that loved this one that will hate changes in the next one, whether it’s characters missing, or the stages or the music or some change in game mechanics or the tone of the game or the color of TJ Combo’s boots or whatever. They’ll never be able to please everyone. So why is the character issue this problem you think needs solving? Just curious.

From a financial standpoint, wouldn’t it make sense for a KI game to bring back at least some returning characters that fans love and want sprinkled in with new characters so that fans have stuff they know they’re going to like or be interested in on the horizon? Season 2 had TJ, Maya, Riptor and Cinder mixed in with newcomers like Kan Ra, ARIA, Hisako, etc. If players get everyone they want, isn’t it possible that they’d be less like to try stuff that’s unfamiliar to them? Not really a blanket statement for everyone, sure, but it’s still a risk if you’re not doing whatever you can to keep fans engaged and anticipating your next drop.

Well, lackluster is in the eyes of the beholder though, isn’t it? I’m sure there were some people what were psyched for Byleth or Pyra/Mythra or Luke, etc. Granted, I’d have been more hyped for Sub Zero in Smash, Gouken in SFV and Christie in Tekken, but that’s just me. Christie gets a ton of hate from parts of the Tekken community, so I think I’m probably in the minority there. But that’s kinda my point. One person’s hype character is another’s anti-hype.

I didn’t give a single, solitary ■■■■ when SFV announced Negan or Noctis or Akuma and there are regular characters I go nowhere near if given the choice. That doesn’t mean those characters suck or are anti-hype or whatever. Just my own personal preference.

Waiting months and months and months is unfortunately part of the whole “being a gamer / being a fan of something,” given and take. I’m hyped for Elden Ring, but I have to wait for it. I’m hyped to see what NRS might announce soon now that MK11 is getting further and further in the rearview mirror. It might be MK12, which I’d LOVE. It might be a Batman-centric fighting game which I’d really like. It might be Shaolin Monks 2, which I’d be happy about. It might be Injustice 3, which I’d have zero interest in. It might be some Marvel game which I’d want no part of.

So yeah, to each his own. Me being hyped for not hyped or annoyed or let down by something has nothing to do with you or what you want, so you don’t need to bother caring about what I’m interested in. I’m just some avatar on the internet that talks too much lol. But hopefully when the next KI rolls around, whenever that happens, you’ll find enough to keep you hyped and the reveals will be worth the wait. Nothing to worry about until then, I suppose.

Why though? I mean, the game was essentially a bunch of dudes at Rare that said “we have this cool technology, let’s make a Mortal Kombat type game” and the music is brooding and the announcer is bombastic and the color scheme is largely dark hues with neon on them and there’s blood and violence and a tournament held by a shadowy corporation to test out its killing machines on people. I mean, none of that is silly IMO, especially when you look at through the sort of edgy / grimdark / “Spawn” on HBO sense of what was cool in the mid to late 90’s.

I’m not saying they were making this super deep, intellectual look at society and all this other stuff, but at that time, stuff like Mortal Kombat, The Crow, grunge music, etc… There was a seriousness or an edginess to the tone of many things in the cultural zeitgeist at the time. If something carried the kind of tone that KI had, there’s a good chance they weren’t going for silly. Now, they might put easter eggs in to give the players or viewers or whatever a laugh here and there because it can’t rain all the time and all that, but by and large, going for “cool” back then, which KI definitely was, did not come in the form of silly stuff.

Why? I get that there’s an inherent absurdity to trying to turn certain characters in to tragic figures and what not, but if KI was never meant to be silly in its past (and again, I assure, it wasn’t) and the only way it was meant to be exaggerated or over the top was in how bombastic it was and how much it wanted to grab your attention and take your quarters, but I’m not entirely sure the game has ever really been what you’re trying to say it was at its best as, but again, I think that’s more because you’re looking at something really old and I’m looking at it as someone that lived through it.

So you can’t adjust your own lens because that’s all you have to go off of, but I should adjust my lens because maybe I didn’t see it correctly when I was there, actually living it at the time?

You see a grainy old game with cute little characters that a weird variety of appearances and it’s somehow unfathomable to you that someone could ever look at that game and see something that was intended to be cool at the time when its graphics were considered top of the line. Again, I’m not saying they were doing the darkest thing ever or the best written story or whatever, but your inability to see something from the past as having been modern at one point and what that could’ve meant at that time is your issue, not mine.

I’m not saying I want a boring Zack Snyder version of anything. I don’t think I’ve liked a single thing he’s ever made. You can have something with a darker, more post-apocalyptic look and tone and you can have characters with actual depth and plot devices that someone older than a 6th grader can come up with and still have a game worth playing and a story worth digging in to. I’m really not sure why Zack Snyder and grimdark is where your mind immediately rushes as soon as someone decides they don’t want KI to be a exaggerated and silly. You don’t have to rush to the opposite end of the spectrum and if you do, at least do me the favor of not assuming Zack Snyder is at that end cuz yeah, no thanks. I don’t want that any more than you would lol.

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We interrupt this positive and productive KI thread to bring you a special message from Halo Infinite:

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-Zenek :fire:

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I hate to have to ask you for proof… but I’m gonna have to ask you for proof. Because mortal Kombat never had goofy skeletons and over the top combos and an announcer that is goofy you just can’t tell me he isn’t. The modern one is more serious but the original guy is a ham. It’s an over the top 80s action movie blended with a Saturday morning cartoon.

I’m sorry. I’m being rude. I shouldn’t expect you to change your views just as you shouldn’t expect me to change mine. It’s just…

I never said it wasn’t supposed to be cool. Silly and goofy can be cool. When I hear you say serious I automatically imagine Zack Snyder level grimdark “and the wounds! They do not he-al!” stuff and MKX Cassie/Jacque/Takaeda/Kung Jin levels of boring as hell character designs and archetypes. I imagine DC’s new 52 where all the color and life is sucked out of the world and the plot feels like it was written by an edgy fanfic writer. And I imagine boring as hell realistic action in the movesets to keep the world “grounded”. When I say silly and goofy I also mean cool. I mean an over the top action movie/cartoon/anime. I just also mean I want the character archetypes for the newcomers to be bizarre and interesting (my go to example is that one of my OCs is Santa as a badass immortal knight).

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I think it’s wrong to say that it isn’t. I mean, even though KI1 did have moments of humor, the presentation and style was pretty dark, with a chiaroscuro style that made it distinctly sinister. Even some of the FMVs had some pretty dark subject matter like Fulgore holding a guy’s flayed head, Sabrewulf hunched over some bloodied meal, or the FMV victory screens like Riptor eating a flayed bloody rib, etc. Even the music or the fact you hear a heart beat during the victory results screen or when it goes “Continue” gave the sense of something dark.

Yeah, “Blade Runner” is definitely the perfect analogy in that KI1 had a strong noir-ish feel.

That’s the correct title.

It wasn’t admittedly. That said, depending on how it’s handled, KI has potential to tell a darker and interesting story.

Yeah, I agree. I’m actually getting strong fanfiction vibes from that.

The MK influence was definitely there, especially in the fatalities/Ultimates/No Mercies. Fulgore’s Turret is an obvious play off of MK’s Scorpion, for example. I wouldn’t say KI was an over-the-top 80s action movie/cartoon as it was more of a time capsule of sorts representing stuff that was popular in the 80s and 90s, but with its own distinctive stylistic flourish.

The problem with Zack Snyder isn’t that his stuff is “grimdark”, the problem is that the guy’s conception of “mature”/grimdark is that of a 14-year-old’s and that he applied that view to characters that don’t fit that particular conception. Like, Batman, okay, fine. The guy is inherently dark as a character, but Superman? “Man of Steel” in particular felt as if Snyder saw the original Richard Donner Superman and said, “I like some parts of this, buuuuuuut this is how I would do things! Now, let me fix it!” Now, I suppose an argument could be made that Snyder would work as a director for a potential KI movie because of that, but by the same token, though, I would want more for KI in terms of story. Ideally, I would want a KI story to be done kind of like “Wolfenstein: New Order”, where you have this inherently silly premise of WW2 super soldiers, ghosts, ghouls and monsters, etc, but to have it all grounded and gritty with some really good writing that adds depth to the characters. I loved the Wolfenstein games, but when I heard BJ’s narration in the early sections of that title and heard more of his inner thoughts, I was immediately taken with his character. I already liked the character to begin with, but there were so many moments in that game that made me go “wow, I love this character and what’s been done with him!” I want something like that for KI’s characters, where you are given a chance to go deeper with them.

The New 52 had some good stuff, but a lot of the problems with that initiative had to do with the fact that there was no sense of editorial oversight or cohesion - a lot of the stuff that happens in one comic series would often contradict what would happen in others. There were definitely some parts that needed improvement, though.

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Alright, I probably oversimplified that. I don’t think the intention was to outright copy Mortal Kombat. They absolutely had their own design ideas and intentions. As Ken Lobb describes in the Fight On documentary, the ideas that first began the concept behind KI was opener/auto/ender and combo breaker.

However, if you listen to how people in that documentary describe the game when it’s in the arcade (Max for example uses terms like “loud,” “audacious,” and “visceral.” And you combine that with the fact that the game has blood and finishing moves, you get something that certainly travels the path that MK once walked, while doing its own thing.

Again, these people that both designed the game and played it back then are not describing a game where the announcer is goofy and the aesthetic is Saturday morning cartoon. This was a game that lured you in with a booming voice, big combos, blood and violence. I’m honestly not sure how you arrive at the aesthetic you see in in the original KI given the music, tone, color palette, characters, graphics, violence etc.

As Max notes around the 12 minute mark of the documentary, the violence is practically nothing by todays standards, but back then, it was certainly a drawing point. I don’t know how else to convince you that this was a rather dark game in its time and that this is how a lot of people saw it. Not just me.

While I agree that cool can have more than one definition, as it certainly doesn’t have to be grimdark, no color, lifeless and edgy fan fiction or whatever, it’s a tough sell to put something goofy in KI and convince me it’s cool. Rash is goofy, and he’s funny and his facial expressions are hilarious and all the cartoon antics are silly and what not, but none of what he says or does is “cool” to me.

I’m still not quite understanding why not being goofy and Saturday morning cartoon automatically means I want to put KI in this box of “grimdark” no color, etc. That’s not it at all. MK11, for whatever issues you may have with it, has a lively color palette, much more so than MKX, but it still has its serious plot, even though there’s some comic relief. It also has themes and depth to the characters and conflicts that aren’t overly simple. Jax has PTSD from being dead. Baraka’s people are actually humanized in MK11. Johnny and Cassie both have to deal with Sonya dying before the timeline gets messed up.

So yeah, you can tell a story and you can have some depth to the characters and you can take on serious issues and you can do it without going all grimdark. Stop equating serious with grimdark and definitely stop equating it with Zack Snyder lol.

I know we want different things for this series and that’s fine. I don’t want Santa Clause in KI, regardless of whether he’s big, jolly Father Christmas or a badass immortal knight. You want to give me a character that actually looks like a knight and is a badass, then fine. I’m intrigued. But KI has never been about “what wacky characters can we fit in to this Saturday morning cartoon game for some hijinks and lolz.” Rash is basically the only exception at this point. If you want them to keep going down that road, that’s fine. But I’d rather the humor come from a nicely written one-liner than some cartoon slapstick or something along those lines.

We don’t have to agree, but I at least want you to understand where I’m coming from. KI wasn’t a Rash type game in the 90’s. I don’t want Snyder KI, but I don’t want goofy and silly either. I want a fun, compelling game with cool characters, great gameplay and a story that doesn’t insult my intelligence or make gods invading our planet and destroying it seem zany or funny or whatever.

Exactly. I know these things don’t seem super dark and foreboding now with modern graphics and what not, but this WAS modern in its time and the stuff they did was dark and edgy looking back then. A robot holding a skull, the heartbeat on continue with that foreboding music in the background… This was all a definite mood at the time. It wasn’t meant to be funny or silly.

Yeah I mean, neon on dark tones, usually black or purple in the original KI… Add in rain and it’s 100% Blade Runner or Tokyo noir. That was the aesthetic, and I defy anyone to find any media where this style is used in earnest in something whose tone is meant to be funny or silly or an old Saturday morning cartoon, cuz I don’t think that exists.

I agree 100%, and I really want to see that played out in a story that’s presented in a sincere manner in the next game. Give me this epic rivalry between Maya and Mira, give me a world destroyed, where the heroes return from the comics showdown and have to help put things back together in a world controlled by corporations. Deal with actual themes for the characters and give them story arcs that make me both care about the characters as well as find out what happens next.

Again, this doesn’t have to be Snyder grimdark, which I honestly find almost laughably melodramatic at this point, but there are ways to create something serious and something darker in tone and more complex without taking it in that direction, and I’d like to see a new dev team try and do that.

Yeah, this makes sense. You have these ideas that when taken at face value seem silly, however they’re presented in a sincere manner by a story and a setting that takes all of these things seriously and feels comfortable in doing so. It’s not Snyder melodrama and it’s not tongue in cheek with “isn’t this ridiculous” nods to the camera. It’s a world that’s presented to the player in a believable way that allows to the player to come in and inhabit that place and understand the tone being conveyed.

I’d like this for KI as well. I mean honestly, you can boil a lot of things down to “guy in a rubber suit with pointy ears fights a crazy clown and a guy in a question mark suit that makes up riddles” and think yeah that’s pretty silly. But when you have the right presentation of it, like say Nolan’s Dark Knight or The Long Halloween, and you have the right level of storytelling and depth of chaaracters, you can create something really compelling and fun.

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