After 3 years people realized this is T-rated game…
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Um, to prevent PTSD, perhaps? Have you ever seen charred human flesh? Trust me, it IS unsettling.
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Again, way too over dramatic. It’s a video game with cartoonish styled characters. Not an ISIS video. I’m talking about darkening the textures to give the effect.
And I doubt anyone has ever suffered from PTSD from seeing a fatality in Mortal Kombat. Get over yourself.
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I think they can get away with this, because it’s implied that it’s not a body anymore, just stone. That’s why it can blow away like that. If it were a body, I don’t think they could blow it away like that.
Why are we bringing up censorship and that here? Feel free to dislike how Ultimates are being approached, but those are issues when the artistic freedom and vision of the creators are compromised by genuinely coercive or legal force. Not when you just don’t agree with their creative decisions and the viewpoint behind them because they aren’t graphic enough for you.
It’s been clear for years that the developers don’t want KI to be very violent. That’s why they chose to aim for a T-rating, why there’s not much blood, and why all potentially gruesome actions so far have been presented with comical effects. For all we know, they’re only trying to stick around the standard they set and believed was right for their game.
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You’re focusing on the wrong thing here. The fact that the body blows away is immaterial. Whats important here is that they showed a character essentially get lasered to death and turn to dust.
IG put forth the effort in this case, why not with the ultimates?
I know it could possibly get a pass for being on Gameboy, but:
On the other hand, most of the other characters retained their original fatalities.
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I don’t know. Ask them directly.
Not exactly sure what you mean by “disenfranchising” (English is not my mother tongue) but I never said it’s the same as offending someone in general; I said “certain groups in society”. Remember all the backlash MK and GTA got upon release? A certain group in society felt offended by the amount of violence depicted in those games. Not people in general.
This is not to say that MS or IG are politically correct, just that these ultimates kinda give that impression, as they feel so restrained.
I’m not very familiar with the ESRB system to discuss it. But if it’s simply a matter of ratings, I can understand their decision. I just wish it wouldn’t feel to restrained (if they don’t want to show Tusk impaling someone or Maya decapitating someone, then don’t - do something else without censoring it or implying it off-screen).
I maintain that there is no “black or white” definition since in my country (and culture) it is much broader than the one given by the Oxford Dictionary (which we do not use). For instance, in my country most nouns and adjectives are listed in the dictionary in their male form (in English they are mostly genderless) but recently it has become “politically incorrect” to state only one form (no one ever bothered until someone got offended and then made it norm). So you see, these groups of offended people can appear at any given time and regarding any given topic, which makes political correctness incredibly broad (given the vast number of sensitive areas) but not general (given that the various offended groups are usually a minority).
To me, people who are offended by cultural caricatures, people who are offended by the mysoginistic portrayal of women and people who are offended by the depiction of violence in video games (for any given reason, be it for wrongly influencing their young or creating sociopaths) are all different groups of people with one thing in common: they feel offended by something specific. I see only difference in the subjects that generate the offense, nothing else. Political correctness applies to all, regardless of the subject.
I understand that but no need to worry or apologize. We’re just exchanging opinions in a rational manner. No one’s angry. Just remember that people from different cultures than yours tend to have different definitions as well 
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They showed a body getting turned to stone, then the stone blows away. Losers don’t get “lasered to death.” There’s no melting flesh or whatever. It’s less violent looking than Scorpion’s old MK1 fatality. Same goes with all the other stage ultras. Nothing is seen up close, no dismemberments, blood, gore, etc. Half the time, characters disappear before an explosion.
This is how they choose keep the T rating. They’re being consistent. Not sure how you don’t see that.
I mean at least that one is kind of comical. Kano’s is just…nothing. Just looks like a normal grab animation.
[quote=“Iago407, post:451, topic:18389”]
They showed a body getting turned to stone, then the stone blows away. [/quote]
You realize this makes no sense, right? Stone doesn’t blow away. They weren’t turned to stone. They were turned to ash. If they were stone, they’d be a statue, which obviously couldn’t blow away. Follow?
Really? C’mon guy. It’s pretty apparent they get lasered to death.
I see it just fine, but the teen rating isn’t this restrictive. They could get away with a lot more than what they’re doing. Again, just look at MKvsDCU and see what NRS did.
Exactly my point. Get creative and do something that doesn’t need to be off-screen, or as you put it - restrained. There’s plenty you can do without going beyond the teen rating guidelines.
No problem! Disenfranchising is essentially to deprive or discourage a group with lesser standing, influence or (mainly) power. In general terms, it can relate to voting rights, but with regards to political correctness, it pertains to the act of debasing a group with less power though any number of means large or small. How much someone is being overly PC tends to be subjective based on how much that person thinks an act debases the group with less power.
Sorry, don’t mean to over explain here, it’s just that the whole idea of disenfranchising is more or less central to the idea of political correctness, so I just wanted to make sure we’re speaking the same language here.
Which again is why political correctness has nothing to do with what you’re talking about here. If disenfranchising has nothing to do with people being offended by violence, then the conversation has nothing to do with political correctness, PC culture, anti-PC culture, etc.
Yeah, it’s a rating system and I’m sure they have the market research to backup the idea that marketing a T rated game to people offers a greater return on their investment. Who knows, maybe MS doesn’t want to have any M rated games in their games with gold. Maybe that’s part of the motivation? Tough to say.
As far as them doing something different, what would you suggest? I don’t mind the implied violence simply because I don’t know what actual violence they’d be allowed to show that would really wow people in the way that people wanting to see violence could be wowed, ya know?
Yes, that’s my point. Political correctness, regardless of where you’re from, pertains to the idea of disenfranchisement of a group with less power (for example: a minority).
Fair enough, but being offended by something specific isn’t the only litmus test here. At least it shouldn’t be. Where it pertains to culture caricatures or the misogynistic portrayal of women, there is a substantial history of this stuff and there’s disenfranchising of less powerful groups involved, so political correctness applies there.
But if you’re talking about people that are offended by video game violence, that concept in and of itself is not something that’s specific to a group with less power and therefore it’s not, by definition, an issue of political correctness. I know I probably sound like I’m splitting hairs here, but it’s just not the same thing.
It’s all good man! 
Perhaps this is just an American interpretation of PC culture that I’m interpreting here. I just think it’s odd that political correctness is now being thrown in every direction when anyone of any status is bothered by something. If that’s the case, then to me at least, it would seem as though the term loses all meaning if it’s just a 1 to 1 substitute for anyone that’s offended by anything.
Here’s a nice video of all the fatalities from MKvsDCU, a teen rated game. All, ok “most” with the exception of one of Kano’s, are all decently brutal without being gory. This is what I wanted for KI. I waited a long time for KI to return, and I waited quite a while for ultimates to make it into the game. What we’re getting is very disappointing.
We have VERY different opinions on these.
Sure, I like some of the comedic elements in some of them, but most of them would be just as bad as Kano’s if it wasn’t more obvious it was a killing blow.
The brutalities are actually more fun to watch than the fatalities.
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I think we’re moving past the point of useful discussion here. When we’re debating the definition of stone and ash, and a discussion of how dead Mira is or isn’t when TJ punches her.
Just to summarize: @fuzzd0rk and at least somewhat @TheRealSkyle want to see gorier more graphic Ultimates. That’s fine. I think it’s worth it to highlight a couple of things I think we could all reasonably agree on:
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They could put in more gore/graphic violence under a T rating. I think this is pretty easy to demonstrate. I don’t know that it’s worth it to split hairs over what they “could” do, what they “want” to do or what they “won’t” do. We are just crystal balling all that stuff. What we are looking at is what they “did” do. So it’s enough to comment on that. People shouldn’t feel compelled to make up justifications for the developers choices - they read this stuff and can come comment for themselves if they see fit.
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The developers have likely chosen this level of gore/graphic violence for the ultras. I think they had some choices to make and they made them. This is what they picked for the Ultras. I’m sure they would love for everyone to be happy with them and I’m equally sure they knew that some people would not be.
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People will draw their own lines in different places. @fuzzd0rk wants MK vs DC level finishers. But that game wasn’t super popular and certainly the finishers were not universally beloved. We can always debate where the lines should be. But trying to prove your line is in the right place is pretty futile.
So, that doesn’t leave much left for me to say. I don’t agree that showing more “video” makes the event more impactful because it’s a “video game.” It’s also “interactive entertainment” but the Ultras are not “interactive.” Would they be better if you controlled them? I can dig up all kinds of cinema, literature and art and make the case that there are many powerful depictions that are more powerful because of what they don’t directly depict. But that’s just fighting over opinions. I don’t think seeing Tusk’s sword go through Kim Wu’s body would make the Ultimate better (I think it would look silly) and I don’t think “darkened textures” to represent charred characters would make it better either. But if you do that’s fine. Your opinion is registered and we don’t need to agree.
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Sorry, you’re absolutely right. Not sure why I even thought that stone made sense there as a description for what happened. I misspoke.
Yeah okay but again, there’s nothing violent about it from a visual perspective. You don’t see anything particularly gory happen to the body. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen at all.
A lot more?
I just watched the full fatality video from MK vs DC and while there are a few moves in there that are slightly more violent… Say Kitana’s fan throw and Kano’s knife throw and Liu’s ground bicycle kick, most of what I saw was on par with KI’s ultimates thus far.
I mean, Shang Tsung’s soul suck fatalities look like they hurt less than TJ’s ultimate, all the burning fatalities had no char or anything relatively terrible looking, Jax’s gun fatality had him shooting someone with zero blood coming out… I dunno, if you want to argue that MK vs DC is more violent in their fatalities, I’d probably agree with you. But a lot more? Can’t say I see it. If MK vs DC is a 6 out of 10 on the violence scale. KI’s a 5.
At that point, to me at least, it seems as though you’re scrapping for inches and pretending its miles, but that’s just what I’m seeing here based on those fatalities. If you simply want ultimates to be more violent, that’s a perfectly valid take, even if I don’t really see that happening.
You’re forgetting to mention why MKvsDCU and it’s finishers weren’t well received. MK is a historically M-rated game by its very nature, and NRS watered it down to make the teen rating. That’s why people were upset. The game itself was fine and fun in its own rite. It wasn’t the content in the game that made it a failure. It was the radical change from Mature to Teen that ultimately was the cause for its unpopularity.
Sigh. It seems like you are bound and determine to just argue.
I’m not forgetting, but I actually don’t think we can say “that’s the single explanation of why the game was unpopular.” I think a lot of people, myself included, actually had issues with the gameplay. Certainly there were lots of people upset that the finishers were not at MK level. But I have been pretty meh on MK finishers for a while now because they aren’t all that creative or interesting - not because of the lack of gore. If anything MK X is too gory for me, so I don’t have any problem with MK vs DC based on level of gore. But I don’t think the finishers are all that good. I’m not suggesting that my feelings are the most popular, but I also know I’m not alone. So I don’t want to get into a discussion of all the reasons MKvsDC may or may not have been loved.
Anyway, to be clear, I’m not arguing that you are wrong to want MK vs DC level finishers. But I am trying to point out that just picking that particular level of violence is still going to leave some people wanting more, and may not satisfy other people (like me) who might find the finishers lame despite the added violence.