The two things that have always defined KI to me. Over the top action (not brutal violence, over the top action) and it’s strange lineup of unconventional characters who aren’t just people with weapons a lot of the time. I have never seen blade runner, but I have played a lot of MK. And if making KI more like what you want means making it more like that then it will be loosing the two things that define it most to me.
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But that isn’t just KI alone. “Tekken” is actually one of the closest, and wildest, with characters that very much could potentially fit into KI as well. That game has mystical jaguar-headed dudes, robots, monsters, demons/devils, bears, kangaroos, space ninjas, cyborgs and various others. It even had a dinosaur (Alex) (technically there’s also Rex who appeared in the “Tekken” anime movie and was pretty cool, but that was just in the anime movie rather than in the games unfortunately. 
)
I highly recommend watching it. It’s an awesome movie. You should watch that along with “Blade Runner 2049”.
But KI isn’t just the over-the-top action and the strange lineup - it’s also about its sense of style, its dark and ominous atmosphere, its brutality, music, the fact it takes all these disparate elements from pop culture to make them into their own recognizably distinct thing. There’s tons of robot characters in fighting games (the list is enormous), but Fulgore is such a unique combination of Predator, Robocop and the Terminator all distilled into a cool character, but by the same token, he has features that helps him stand out on his own such as his knight-like appearance, the ponytail, the face pipes and the dual wrist-blades as opposed to one like in “Predator’87” (granted, later movies gave the Yautja dual wrist blades, but still, points for Fulgore). Riptor, undoubtedly inspired by JP, but also has bits of the Xenomorph from Aliens like the scorpion tail and the acid spit, with some distinguishing characteristics like four scythe claws on each foot rather than one like a typical raptor along with the snake-like features, etc.
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Sure. It isn’t just what I’m saying. But I don’t want to loose what I’m saying. To me, the mood and the style (as you put it) is the spice. And I don’t want a meal that’s all spice. I want mostly meat and vegetables and cheese. That’s the gameplay and roster. And since I’m dining at chez Killer Instinct I expect a certain menu to be available.
Like, look at the reboot. The newcomers aren’t just dudes with weapons. They didn’t just do an assassin. She has spider powers. They mixed the grudge girl with Japanese folklore and gave her a naginata. They put a mummy in ancient Babylon and made him a sand bender and gave him a roadrunner/wile e coyote relationship with what appears to be a mindless stone golem but what is actually an all powerful light god. I don’t want the sequel to introduce “guy with twin swords and lore”, “girl who punches with lore”, and “gruff but loveable military commander who pretends to have lore”.
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Just to correct you, the girl in “The Grudge” was an onryo and is very much based on Japanese mythology/folklore. Hisako is undoubtedly a reference to movies like “The Grudge” and “The Ring”, but by the same token, however, she has her own distinguishing elements that make her distinct from Sadako and Kayako.
Technically speaking, Kan-Ra is more of a ghoul since he is based in Babylon.
God I hated that “twist” with Aganos. Talk about being forced and bad writing. I’d rather that part was axed altogether since it took away from the character and his motivations/rivalry with Kan-Ra.
Ideally I’d want to have a KI that has a nice balance of human and creatures/monsters. In terms of those things you mentioned, it depends on some factors such as how they look, how they play, how they move, how they utilize their weapon, their story, specials, etc. Just because a guy is going to have a sword doesn’t mean that he’s going to play like either Tusk or Jago - there are TONS of different sword styles and types. Same with martial arts in general.
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I was just pulling ideas out of my ■■■. Like… I’ll spoiler tag my ideas for KI newcomers and you can see the kind of thing I’d want in a new ki. Then we might be able to reach more of an understanding.
Summary
Overall Context : So I imagine the next KI going down the post apocalyptic world ruled by Ultratech rout the original series was in because it kind of just makes sense. Gargos ruined the world and it’s in a perfect state for ARIA and Ultratech to seize control of it. There are still functional cities, but only in places where Ultratech has chosen to revitelize so they can have a better control over the population. She has also reinstated the Killer Instinct tournament and it’s now a massive yearly event. I imagine the tournament having this really shady Mad Max vibe to it. And it attracts all sorts of new fighters.
Rasputin : The True Tsar vampire from the comics. I just want to see him become playable. I call him Rasputin just because Cinder jokingly called him that in the comic and we have no other name for him. I only bring him up because A: He’s on my list, and B: A handful of other characters I created tie into his story.
Arianna : ARIA’s clone human body from the Novella. She can freely switch between it and her standard body and tends to use it as her disguise while interacting with humans. In this form, she puts on a very cold and serious yet exaggeratedly funny CEO persona, but she’s not actually like that. It’s literally just a persona she’s constructed from movies to make her human form seam more human. It’s all fake. When she fights in this form she wields a special mech battle suit ala Lex Luthor with everything from lasers, guns, and rocket boosters to missiles, sonic pulse blasts, and a kind of energy sword.
Werowance : This is the Algonquian word for leader or king. The Algonquian people are the native tribes where Wendigo legends primarily originate from. And this guy is the leader of Rasputin’s Wendigo armies. He is more intelligent then most Wendigo, but he’s also far more vicious. He’s a result of Rasputin’s Wendigo “breeding” program (wendigos don’t breed like other creatures do) to bend the curse into creating strong warriors for him. And as such he has a handful of other animal parts like small rabbit ears and bat wings.
Marcus Andriy : The champion of the Killer Instinct Tournament and entirely a puppet of Ultratech. I want him to be like a Rocky villain crossed with a Spartan Gladiator crossed with a wrestling heel. He primarily fights with a mix of boxing and wrestling, but when he goes into his instinct mode he pulls out an energy short-sword and shield (in Instinct he’s theoretically about to loose so he’s gonna start to cheat).
Jack Matthews : This guy is my spoof on the Dirty Harry trope. Before the Gargos war, he was a renegade cop who doesn’t play by the rules. And now he makes the rules because he RUNS Ultratech’s police force. And his violence first and kill on sight approach to policing has brought both order and terror to the streets of Ultratech’s cities. He’s got all the advanced military grade weapons you’d expect to see a policeman weilding, but amped up by Ultratech’s science.
Roxxy Rave : The concept version of Orchid. Red suit, blond hair, bo staff. However she is a spy for Ultratech and not the Disavowed and her cover is as the MC of the Killer Instinct tournament (like Michael Buffer). She’s grandiose and over the top and really knows how to work a crowd. And she weilds the bo staff with deadly precision.
Hatya : The Indian word for murder. Dr. Erin Gupte (the scientist behind the Riptor project) created this monster as the ultimate weapon for Ultratech. It’s one of the biggest monsters you can play as in KI. And it looks like a kind of monster fusion of a Spinosaurus, a Utahraptor, a triceratops, a stegosaurus, and a quetzocoatelus (yes, it does look a lot like Ridley from Metroid). Unfortunately, when Gupta was using her mind synch training on the beast, it ate her. Unfortunately for everyone else, in death the mind synch transferred her mind into Hatya’s body. She has been lurking in one of Ultratech’s jungle-esque Riptor habitats for years now, loosing it even more then she already had. And now… she’s out.
Blackwater : My take on the Sharkman idea, basically Ultratech wanted to create an Underwater Riptor. So they started with Shark DNA and some leftover DNA they took from TJ Combo. Then fused it with DNA from an Octopus to get this brutish shark man monster with octopus tenticles coming out of his back and a very mixed up anatomy. He has a few other Marine Predators in his genome, but it’s almost impossible to parse out which ones.
Galatea : Once a powerful global criminal, eventually she was caught and executed and then her corpse was experimented on by Ultratech. Turning her into this Frankenstein esque fighter. Her fighting style is inspired by sumo wrestling and was developed by her when she was alive. She is also Cinder’s mother.
Ditso the Clown : This is how you can tell I’m a FNaF fan lol. Back when society had not collapsed, Ultratech has briefly invested some of it’s media branch resources into creating a chain of animatronic pizza arcades for children as a source of excess revenue during the 90s (when that craze was at it’s peak). Ditso was the clown leader of the group of animatronic performers and she was a kind of Jessica Rabbit clown with very thinly veiled innuendos as most of her lines. Unfortunately, the engineer who created the robots was lazy and gutted a prototype FULGORE for parts to create her. And as such, when one of the girls she was performing for just happened to remember a known advocate against Ultratech, she came off the stage and killed her. Ultratech shut the chain down and locked the robots in storage. Unbeknownst to anyone at all (because how could they know?) the little girl’s spirit had posessed the robot in confusion and is now locked in a giant Ultratech warehouse filled with weapons. Driven mad by the isolation, she haphazardly tore up her own body and replaced pieces of it with weapons in the warehouse. One arm is now a chainsaw, the other is a chain gun. She has machine gun breast plates, a sonic blaster in her mouth, and a flaming tail pipe coming out of her head. Basically Alisa from Tekken gone very very wrong.
Kelvin : The alien criminal Glacius chased to Earth. Has a rushdown playstyle. Is a bit of a mad scientist.
Sol Dakurai : One of the three people who attempted a coupe against the Babylonian king with Kan-Ra and Spinal. Since he was heralded in battle as an invincible warrior, the king cursed him to never heal from any injury. He managed to get the deranged Kan-Ra to put him into a deep “suspended animation”-esque sleep for centuries until he could find a cure. But Kan-Ra never tried to find a cure and just left him in his tomb. Eventually he was woken during the Gargos war. And began wandering the earth with his trusty hammer in search of a cure. Eventually, he managed to break into an Ultratech data center and learned much. Including of Glacius, the arctic alien who was able to completely heal and restore Eagle. He journied North to find him and force him to heal him, only to find Kelvin instead. Kelvin injected him with nanotechnology to basically heal his body for him, but they also cause his body to amalgamate with the alien tech in the wreckage of Glacius’s ship and some Fulgore parts. Basically my take on this “Organic Fulgore” concept Kevin Baylis once made.
PinCushion : Another Kevin Baylis concept. Basically is what the picture says he is. Though I have given him the extra context of being a creation of the cult of G’tharka. Who is that? Find out further down.
Sinterklaas : I mentioned this guy in the main post. Basically, he’s an immortal Knight who was blessed by the Ichorians to become the “God of Charity”. His deeds inspired the Santa Clause stories, and like Vandal Savege from DC (weirdly enough) he has had many names and aliases over the years. He has taken up the sword in the modern era to defend people from Ultratech and the upcoming supernatural crisis. He also has kind of embraced the Santa Clause mythos by giving toys he steals from Ultratech’s cities to children at night when he visits the poorer towns on the outskirts of the empire, as well as performing charitable deeds. In a world like this, they need this just as much as they need a badass knight protecting them.
Sun Wukong : Basically exactly what the Chinese story says he is, aiming to be one of the more folklore accurate takes on him. Tough with a few DBZ-esque quirks. He has been sleeping for centuries because of the lack of worthy opponents. But now, after the Gargos war and with the founding of the Killer Instinct Tournament, he has returned to stretch his legs and get into some good fights.
Ah Muzen Cab : Not much about this guy. He’s the Mayan god of bees. Yes. There is specifically a god of bees and I thank Smite for introducing me to him. I think he could be a really neat take on both the traditional god archetype and insect character archetype. Like if you somehow combined D’Vorah and Raiden.
Master Abbot : A powerful Martial Arts master who is reborn every time his body dies. Now like reincarnation or whatever. He’s literally the same guy every time, just in a younger body. At this point in his life he is once again in the body of a young teenager. But he has centuries of martial arts knowledge as well as psychic abilities to help him in battle. He has left the temple he lives in in search of an old friend who he can sense has returned.
Amat : A poor peasant woman from pre-Islamic Arabia who was tricked into swapping places with a Djinn. She has all the magical powers of a Djinn, but is also trapped in the bottle. Ultratech has freed her to use her as a combatant in the Killer Instinct Tournament. And she is the old friend Master Abbot sensed (he met her on a pilgrimage before she was tricked into becoming a Djinn), and he wants to free her. She wields a scimitar in addition to her Djinn powers.
To be named : Not much on this one. I wanted to create an entwife character. Like, typical plant powers from media from someone like Swamp Thing, Groot, or even Poison Ivy, but as a bulky and strong woman.
G’tharka : One of the Shadow Lords alongside Gargos. A powerful lovecraftian god who was sealed away at the bottom of the ocean long ago. Gargos invading woke him up as well as the other imprisoned Shadow Lords. And all four (Gargos included) are the big bads of this hypothetical KI4. I imagine him invoking the Lovecraftian elements you don’t typically see in media. I don’t want just a big squid monster. I want him to take some of the lesser known aspects while still being a very clearly world ending and unknowable horror.
Moluska : Another Kevin Bayliss concept character. I have given them the context of being G’tharka’s equivalent to Dormammu’s mindless ones.
Bhalnon : A Scottish king from the middle ages who slaughtered his way into becoming a Shadow Lord. Literally killing thousands of people, whole armies by himself, and absorbing their souls until he just became powerful enough to become a Shadow Lord. I imagine him looking like a Dark Souls version of Sauron and he has this huge sword like Guts’s or Cloud’s that he holds behind his back and wields with one hand.
Hannya : The final Shadow Lord, or I guess Shadow Lady. Hannya is… well… a Hannya. A Japanese demon who was once a human women who became so overcome with a desire for vengeance that she became a powerful demon. I imagine her kind of transforming as you play as her, with her becoming more bestial and monsterous as the fight goes on depending on how you perform. With each stage having it’s own positives and negatives.
Edson : The Rare fan in me couldn’t resist. This guy was going to be the star of the game that would eventually become Banjo-Kazooie. As a young boy he sailed the seven seas battling the notorious Pirate Captain Blackeye before besting him in their final showdown and trapping him in a magic painting (bet you didn’t expect continuity with Banjo-Kazooie in these did ya?). Now he’s an adult and a swashbuckling warrior who sails the ocean as a kind of Pirate Robin Hood. How is he in modern times? He doesn’t really know. All he knows is that he sailed into a storm and he, his elderly dog Dinger, and his ship ended up in modern times. Almost like someone brought him here.
And finally, This isn’t really an OC but I just like this idea too much. Rare made Goldeneye 007. So you take that version of James Bond and put him in here as a guest (I know how much licencing that would recquire, shush) but pull an Old Man Logan with him. Like he’s still James Bond but he’s older and isolated, living in this post-apocalyptic world before being called back into action.
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It’s coming but last I heard MS wanted to make sure the right studio got hold of it. Personally as I’ve said a hundred times I think MS should just create a studio and do it in house.
Indeed, although it’s kind of sad that the idea of having KI developed by either Rare or Playtonic Games isn’t ever considered at all nowadays since those are the guys who made the title. Granted, the Rare we have now is not the same one that made the Rare games of old, but still.
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