Butt Cheek Orchid (From KI2) 
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- Vlad
- Tag team
- Allow mods
I officially second this. Hopefully by that day, we can grow the game way better than the last.
I’m kinda confused on why so many people want tag team. I see it all over the place.
Nevertheless…I would like.
More costumes
Amazing Music (needed!)
Alternate Instincts
More Character Variety
Online Dojo
Interactive Intros/Dialogues/In game character-specific dialogues.
Ultimates
Humiliations
Stage ultras
Stage transitions (that would be cool, but not needed)
Stable lobbies
Easy crossplay
Just more combo variety
Hopefully we even get a new KI in our lifetime. It would be awesome…
Oh a bring Eagle back…pretty please 
2 Likes
ewww, I don’t like tag team for KI per se
But I like the idea of a team like 2 vs 2 just to have fun with friends for instance. But not sure about if this will affect the combo system much or how it will be. But not for 1 v 1 using 2 chars
In regards to a tag team option I think this should be reserved for “KI Tag Team edition” and the main game is unaffected. Similar to Tekken Tag in that respect.
I’d like to see Omen return but have his design overhauled, I must admit along with Kan-Ra Omen was one of those characters I really hated at first but with time he grew on me. Maybe he could have the “copy the opponent” trick that Spinal had in the original game to end his combos (saying that I’d like to see Spinal have this ability return)
Kan-Ra must return and the guy that voiced him must voice him again please, he’s probably the best character voice in the game. Could we maybe have him say “you will make a fine specimen” In Sumerian? (although looking at the text you’d have to mess around a little)
I’d like several different ways of unlocking the same content too, maybe experts could unlock everything via online play but casuals could have timed unlocks perhaps
Unpopular opinion incoming. Fully intergrating the worlds of Battletoads and KI. Battletoads becoming akin to Final Fight and Street Fighter. That game has ALOT of cool character designs and bosses that I think could definitely work in KI. Like, you’re automatically thinking of Dark Queen, and she’s fine. But imagine if KI had these guys.
Also, as an aside. If you think this wouldn’t work because KI is too “serious” then you think KI is more serious than it actually is.
A connection rate bar would be lovely. Can’t even begin to tell you how many laggy matches I get into on a fairly regular basis. Also practice fights while waiting for a fight on multiplayer. Stage ultras for every stage. Several different ultras and ultimates per character. All new original characters added little to no guest characters. A way to end long unnecessary ultras if you don’t want to watch someone do 100+ hit combos every match. Armor/clothing /weapons have minor uses such as.( new openers, linkers, , moves and etc.) Not effects like in shadow lords though.
My list:
.Spinal
.Kim Wu
.Story Mode
.Tag Team Mode
. Interactive Intro Dialogues
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I would love to see the chiaroscuro noir style and atmosphere of the originals make their way back into the next game, maybe more of a horror atmosphere in general with a cleaner presentation. If you look at the first KI, it had a very distinctive, kind of noirish look with dark muted colors. Also a more cohesive story with the tournament aspect playing a much more prominent, centralized role. One of the things that kind of annoys me about this game, and to a certain extent other games such as “Street Fighter” and “Mortal Kombat”, is that the tournaments themselves no longer have any sort of relevancy. For those of you unfamiliar with the originals, the KI tournament was a sort of weird “UFC” meets the Make A Wish Foundation where Ultratech tests its weaponry. I can’t help feeling dissatisfied as a fan about the tournament’s explanation that it was all simply designed to “test” humanity’s capabilities, just because it is kind of overplayed and too limiting. I mean, granted, it could have that purpose, at least one small part of it, but I like to think more can be done with the tournament aspect outside of the whole social Darwinism crap that would be valorized by the likes of Ayn Rand, Francis Galton and other like-minded thinkers that believe in the whole idea of the “exceptional few”. I mean, how would it work in connection with social media? What would make it legal, if not plausible?
I realize that the tournament trope is in itself pretty cliched and common among other fighting games, but that doesn’t mean interesting things can’t be done with the concept. Like, what if the tournament itself were a ritual for invoking final bosses like Gargos or Eyedol? What would the KI tournament look like in a modern setting and how would it be done legally? In Thailand, there is a very real (and controversial) program where convicts participate in Mua Thai fights in order to get early release, so maybe some inspiration can be taken from there.
In terms of cohesive story, one REALLY big problem I have with the current KI is that, generally speaking, while there are nuggets of gold and brilliance, there are a lot of inconsistent elements, with some parts that are either underdeveloped or awful (no disrespect intended to the developers).
Contrary to what a lot of people think with regards to KI’s story, I think more can be done with it. For example, what if the reason why Riptor has human DNA is because she was derived from Sabrewulf’s? What if ARIA attempted to weaponize Konrad’s condition by taking his cells and replacing the wolf genes with other species? Or, Jago’s journey of the soul - THAT should have been an emotionally wrought and engaging experience than what was delivered. I mean, he was betrayed by the thing he worshiped, spiritually (and I suppose physically) raped by Gargos - think of the possibilities in terms of storylines and how much of an emotional rollercoaster such a thing could be!
I like to think KI is sort of the “Warhammer 40k” of fighting games in terms of how bleak it is and its potential for compelling stories, characters, creatures, and so on.
In terms of the 2013 game, while it does get some stuff right, the general attitude I can’t help feeling with regards to its story, and to a certain extent its development by IG, is that the game was being developed with the “good enough” approach. To be fair, the game was a low budget title with limited resources. Yet, by the same token, though, I think more could have been done in the story-telling department. I wonder if part of the reason for the way it was developed was as a sort of safety net for Microsoft in the event that it failed.
This leads me to the subject of the free-to-play aspect. As a method of payment, I think it’s a wonderful idea, provided that payment options are fair and affordable. There have been examples where it had been used to exploit purchasers and has potential for abuse, though. I’m actually kind of surprised there hadn’t been any attempt made at creating a sort of KI marketplace like “Fortnite” or something in the game that allows for more variety in character costumes/skins. For example, a Spinal skin for every character, where everyone appears as a skeleton or Spinal-themed accessories for a given character, or TJ Combo-themed accessories/costumes/skins that gives characters more of a dirty urban look, or a Fulgore skin that makes the characters into cyborgs (Cyber Jago). But I’m digressing.
As a method of payment, great idea, so long as it’s fairly done and doesn’t exploit buyers. As a method of development, however…I find it problematic, especially where moribund titles such as KI are concerned. KI’s position is rather precarious as far as other fighting game titles are concerned; it’s sort of akin to a coma patient that needs a transfusion every so often to help keep it awake, but to me that’s not a stable means of ensuring a long, healthy, successful and sustainable future. I would love to see the title and this community grow, but I don’t think the what I would like to call “develop as you go gaming”/good enough method of development is something that can be either self-sustaining or healthy, especially for a series that is just barely getting back onto its feet once more (although it seems like it’s back in a coma again for the moment).
Those are my thoughts, anyway.
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I agree with a lot of this stuff except for the bleak tone and horror elements. While more can, and should be done with the story, the original KI games were originally explained to me as a kid playing with their toys, mashing together different action figures from different sets that didn’t belong together, but making them belong together with their imagination. The over the top “COMBO BREAKER” nature of the combat in the game supports that theming. We are in this hyperactive child’s imagination. And I think that tone and spirit needs to be carried through the series.
I also think a problem with the 2013 game was that the direction clearly changed when Iron Galaxy took over. The lore bits we got in the first season and character dialogue clearly indicated that this was supposed to be a continuation of the original game’s plot. A true KI3. But then Iron Galaxy made it into a reboot. Which, OK. Good for them. More creativity. But it was inconsistent as all hell. Even if they do the free to play model for the sequel, they need to have a cohesive plan from the start that they stick through for the entire development cycle.
Also, the devs at IG said multiple times that they wanted to do more costumes but that the way DH programed season 1 didn’t really allow for it and they didn’t have the resources to rework the whole game’s architecture.
Agree on the style and atmosphere, where light and shadow played off one another so well in the original game, especially as it pertained to things found in the attract mode, but also in more subtle aspects like the texture bloom from the projectiles on darker backgrounds.
Not to state the obvious, but the original game had a very Blade Runner-esque style in terms of of its use of neon layered over post-apocalyptic darkness. All they needed to complete the look was near constant levels of rain in each stage.
I think this is a difficult style to maintain throughout, as it can look rather homogenous or repetitive after a while, but the original game did a solid job of adding variety in their stages, where some came off like bright neon cityscapes, others were more tech oriented and some, like Spinal’s stage, just looked flat out dystopian. They all mixed rather well together and provided a solid variety.
I think the new game has a fantastic amount of level variety, though it does come at the expense of creating a fluid world concept. Now personally, I don’t think that has to be a bad thing provided we get that post-apocalyptic future in the aftermath of Gargos’ attack in the current story. I think now would be the perfect time to show the type of breakdown of conventional society and government that could result in dystopian future where the world is more or less ruled by corporations.
Agree 100%. I think a sequel, set in the post-Gargos invasion, where he was ultimately driven off and destroyed (in the comics), would be the perfect setting for a rise in Ultratech and perhaps a few rival corporations, and the tournament becomes more of a faction-based solution after years of war producing a sort of stalemate.
You add in a group of underdog good guys that form the resistance and a good deal of corporate espionage and sabotage, shifting alliances and allegiances, surprises, twists, maybe a unique final boss reveal and I could absolutely see a story here that’s both compelling from an entertainment perspective but also interesting within the context of modern society (provided it’s not too heavy-handed in its approach or “message”).
Yeah it worked in the 90’s, but I think there’s a more interesting and perhaps even nuanced story to be told here. I know it can be easy to dismiss that idea when you have a fire guy fighting a snake dinosaur or skeleton man or whatever, but the setting and story doesn’t have to be a thinly veiled method to get a bunch of cool characters to beat each other up, and the characters themselves can absolutely have more depth and purpose than we saw way back then.
I think the new game did a good job at moving past the sort of “make your action figures from different playsets duke it out” concept and tried to provide a story where the characters did more than simply exist to fight. The novella chapters in particular provided a nice amount of depth for several characters, and I think it’d be awesome to both include that level of storytelling as well as elaborate on it and expand on it in the future.
Honestly, in this kind of a world, I don’t think social media would exist in the way it exists today. Sure, there could be secure networks for corporations or the resistance or whatever, but this wouldn’t be a world of tweeting and instagram filters. We’d likely need to look much further down on the hierarchy of needs. I think that’s also an idea worth exploring from a thematic perspective, though it’s certainly not a main focus.
As far as the legality is concerned, again I think this would need to be a post-governmental society. A place where the many leading world governments were crippled beyond repair. There wouldn’t necessarily be a legal issue because law enforcement wouldn’t be what we consider it to be today. More than likely, it would look like corporation controlled private armies that enforce law and order when and where they deem necessary and appropriate to both further their own ends as well as quell any potential uprisings.
It is a cliche, but it was popularized for a reason. Enter the Dragon was an awesome movie, and it’s had tons of tributes and copycats ever since. I also agree that there’s a wide variety of creative uses for such a setting. I think it provides a VERY interesting backdrop for a story and it also helps naturally move the story along while providing the most logical reasoning for individual characters fighting one another.
Honestly, in terms of the story, I’d like to see them have a specific tournament bracket at some point so its not all fights along the lines of Mortal Kombat’s “hey, you’re trying to do something and I’m here to stop you” type of preamble.
I like the idea of the final boss pertaining to the tournament as far as there being an underlying reason for the tournament that most, including the player, didn’t know about going in. That make sense. Perhaps one of the corporations is a front for a religious cult that believes Gargos was the savior mankind drove him off, so they’ve been trying find ways to open the portal again via Ultratech’s proprietary information. Perhaps Ultratech hosts the event and this rival corporation simply uses it as cover to steal Kan Ra’s book, but when they succeed, something entirely different comes out of the portal this time.
Not a perfect solution, I know, but something that could work in terms of introducing a final boss as well as provide a bit of a twist on what looks to be more of a straight war by proxy on the surface.
I think there are definitely new and unique themes that could be explored as well as existing themes that a writer could delve in to further. Jago’s PTSD, Tusk’s desire for purpose, whether it be an end or a new beginning, Maya’s desire to have her sister back and Mira’s willingness to use that against her, Sabrewulf’s desperation for a cure and what its doing to him, Fulgore’s internal struggle with the Eagle aspects of his programming, and that’s just stuff that’s happened. There’s obviously plenty of new characters, stories, themes etc that can come about in a sequel.
I always liked the idea of Cinder having his powers taken from him by ARIA. She’s done the experiments and created the monster, but he’s too arrogant, too much of a freelancer and too much of a wildcard. In needing something she can control, she creates a clone, codename Meltdown. Cinder, back to being Ben Farris, is something more along the lines of an elite mercenary / soldier type, and his story would involve a level of rage and grief over losing such power, seeking revenge on ARIA, but also defeating the thing she created to prove to her that he’s worthy of what she gave him before.
Meanwhile, Meltdown being a clone of Farris could have unintended consequences of their own. In this sense, Meltdown could be more of a foil to Fulgore with the key difference coming in the form of Meltdown’s ambition he gained via Farris, and Fulgore’s humanity he gained from Eagle.
While it’s possible that they were developing the story with the idea that a new season was never a sure thing, I think budget was also an issue, as they used a variety of cost-efficient means to convey their ideas on the characters and what happens to them.
I mean, it’s obvious with the first season that the endings were added at the last minute, even if they were meant to mirror the storytelling methods of the original games. The second season brought about a more cinematic approach, but obviously many of those “cinematics” were merely camera shifted views of in-game taunts and movements with a voiceover. The final season definitely went all in on the rogue-like approach and through that, we got much more written out, with the occasional story cutscenes and mini-subplots.
Still, as someone that got the highest percentage available in this mode and didn’t read a single story clip until I got ALL of them, the story info that we got was extremely limited and not nearly as linear as I would’ve liked. I was expecting a cohesive narrative and these were NOT that. So yeah, a new story for me would involve some better cutscenes, more cutscenes (provided the budget was there) and a lot more cohesive writing.
There’s a LOT of good writing in the novella and the comics and here and there in the game itself, but the fact that it’s so scattered and so lacking in cohesion really made the story… Well, as much as it was a reward for doing stuff, the actual movements of the plotlines weren’t so much in the backseat as they were in the trunk, which was unfortunate.
From what I recall, this was something they wanted to do, but they simply didn’t have the time to create the level of content that would’ve necessitated such a marketplace. I mean, they had multiple currencies and plenty of in-game stuff to buy for the purposes of the roguelike portion of season 3, I just don’t think they ever got there in terms of the full monetization (skins, colors, accessories, etc). I think once the post-season 3 characters came out, IG was just done content-wise and there was no one left on the MS side to do anything beyond bug-fixing. It was just sort of “okay, the game’s done.”
To me, KI 2013 began as a VERY low risk, low budget concept. They decided to put the idea out there to indy studios and let them pitch ideas. They’d start small and see how it goes, but this model would also give them freedom to keep growing the game over time and hopefully and audience as well.
I mean, KI had its older fans, but back in the 90’s, it was never an “FGC” type of title by any stretch of the imagination. This game was always going to have to scratch and claw for each new fan it got, especially given the console it was coming out on, and this release model, where you had a fairly steady stream of new content that players could very easily try out at a low cost while the developers iterated on its ideas was a concept that wound up working VERY well in the long run.
I think they DID build a community around this game. It sold well by all accounts, they grew a nice local and national tourney scene, and while no one was going to mistaken it for Smash or Street Fighter at EVO in terms of player base, they took something with minimal name recognition and budget and crafted something over time that really got a solid number of players on board.
The issue I’m having right now is the fact that there’s almost assuredly no sequel in development. MS and DH took a concept that was basically boo’d out of EVO in the summer prior to launch in 2013 (prior to the counter breaker mechanic getting added in) and turned it in to one of the best fighting games I’ve ever played. So… You got me on board. I put well over a thousand hours in to this game and I barely played anything else for FOUR YEARS. I had a backlog a mile long when I finally came up for air in late 2017.
But where is KI now?
Next gen is a month away and the only fighting games I see on the horizon is Guilty Gear Strive and the whisperings of a Virtua Fighter reboot. Why is Killer Instinct not a part of the launch? Why have we not heard anything about this series in three years? A game that many would consider to be one of the best games Xbox released this generation is persona non grata now. Max got KI trending number 2 worldwide with the BringBackKI hashtag. This game had something like 5 million to 7 million downloads. There’s no way a title that MS put such a low level of commitment in to didn’t get enough of a return to warrant a follow up with a larger budget.
My guess is that with Adam Isgreen now at Worlds Edge, there’s simply no one internally at MS to advocate for a sequel. I’m sure Iron Galaxy is likely off doing new stuff, and perhaps there isn’t much stomach internally for MS to go and find a third developer to try and hand this franchise off to.
That’s my guess, anyway. I hope I’m wrong. I hope that MS isn’t taking a franchise that for one console generation was their big genre exclusive and putting it back on the shelf so they can allocate funds to other shelf games or new studios or new projects. MS has a long history of being obsessed with moving on to what’s next while leaving the franchises that fans love in the past to collect dust. I really hope they don’t leave KI in that place again, especially given how well it was received.
I think the character designs were compiled with the idea of “lets take all of these concepts that are cool right now or in the recent past and pit them against each other.” Whether it’s Mike Tyson fighting a dinosaur from Jurassic Park or an evil future robot from Terminator fighting a cool ninja etc. I don’t think it was meant to be a kid-oriented concept though. It was meant to be cool to kids and teens, so I don’t think that really fits the “kid playing with their toys” idea.
The bleak tone was always there. I agree the horror elements are really a thing, and if that’s the way @Evolution prefers to go, I respectfully disagree, or at least need more clarification on what they mean. But nah, the tone was always darker and post-apocalyptic IMO.
Honestly, I don’t know how much input DH had on the story itself versus IG. I could be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure Adam Isgreen wrote the story. Sure, IG did a lot of the dialog pre and post-match back and forth in Shadowlords, but I was under the impression that the larger brush strokes as well as the novella were all Adam. Can anyone correct me on this if I’m wrong?
Thing is, I loved that they found multiple ways to convey the story. Given the budget, they almost had to. I also love the thousand years of dreams in Lost Odyssey, which are text-based story vignettes, so I don’t mind getting story that way. But I agree 100%, there needs to be consistency in the storytelling itself. Sure, give me full, unique cutscenes as well as those lower budget camera shift cutscenes and a written story in chunks of varying sizes, but don’t break everything up to such an extent that following what’s going on becomes impossible from season to season.
This is true from what I recall. Good point. I think it was also a time and money thing, but yeah, the game architecture was seemingly an issue for a variety of reasons.
OK. When i said what I said I did not mean “kid friendly”. I meant imaginative and bizarre. Not the kind of thing that a parent wants to show their kid. The kind of thing a kid would come up with. The bizarre mashup of concepts. The over the top action. The cheesy 90s one liners. The goofiness of it all that is still taken 100% seriously by the characters and the audience. That’s what I meant by “a kid playing with their toys”. And sure, the original story was very post-apocalyptic. And I think that’s a great place to go for the next game. But bleak? That, to me, says depressign and boring. It says muted/lacking colors. It says serious tone with no humor or goofiness. And it says a lacking combat system that is no where near as over the top as KI tends to be. All of that is fine in it’s own right. But it isn’t what KI should be. Do the post apocalypse. Sure. But like the original games, do it as a KI apocalypse where a dinosaur can uppercut Mike Tyson into the outer atmosphere and the Arbiter from Halo can just show up for no reason and kill both of them. KI is and has always been a little goofy. And I think we need to preserve that.
And as for the story, a lot of the pre-IG developed stuff spoke about the game like it was a sequel to the original. Thunder saying “now I go along with the law” was a reference to how Ultratech was still ruling the planet and how Thunder was working with THEM now when he was against them in the past. Which was corroborated by… something. I remember reading that from something else back then. Same with Orchid needing to flush out Ultratech. That was because they were beaten back in KI2. As Cinder said in his twitter takeover, why does she need to flush them out? They’re in a building down the block.
I don’t… get what you’re trying to say in that third paragraph. I’m just saying they need to have it planned out from the beginning and stick to that plan. However they want to do it. Not saying that they can’t do the variety of methods that they did in 13. Although I would prefer a narrative campaign mode and didn’t like Shadow Lords at all.
Absolutely not. We’d loose an amazing character in the process and get frankly two rather boring one in it’s place. I LOVE story in games. And I think more should be done with KI’s. But what you’re talking about here is story over gameplay. And gameplay always comes first. No question. You’re talking about turning Cinder into just… a guy, meaning his gameplay would be rather boring, and taking Cinder’s gameplay and giving it to someone with none of the personality, taking away the fun spice that is playing as Cinder. And honestly, the story that tells wouldn’t be anything we haven’t seen plenty of times before in other franchises. It’s just a bad idea.
Phill Spener has been turning the company around a lot as of late. And I think in the next generation we’ll really see the results of that. Plus, KI’13 made a hefty consistent profit for the company. Even a greedy suit would want to continue the franchise for that reason alone. I’m sure a new one is coming. Things take time. And it is frankly baffling to me the idea that everyone just kind of assumes it’s dead again because we haven’t seen anything about it in a while. Like… well… like how a lot of video game franchises work.
“I agree with a lot of this stuff except for the bleak tone and horror elements.”
Well, in the first game, there was a great deal of atmosphere that had that kind of noir/horror movie vibe. As a kid, Fulgore’s face used to scare me on the SNES box. Every time you won or lost, the stats screen had a heart beat playing in the background, creating this ominous feeling.
“While more can, and should be done with the story, the original KI games were originally explained to me as a kid playing with their toys, mashing together different action figures from different sets that didn’t belong together, but making them belong together with their imagination.”
I don’t know about that. I like to think it’s more like Rare was attempting to create a kind of time capsule or dark Todd McFarlane comic book of their own that draws from things that were popular in the 80s and 90s while at the same time making them their own unique and somewhat identifiably distinct thing. I mean, take Riptor, for example - given the fact that she was from the 90s, the “Jurassic Park” influence was undeniable, but by the same token, however, she had a number of distinctive elements that made her stand out - her humanoid proportions, her developed muscles and abs that one wouldn’t even anticipate to see on a female, her size (in the original she was HUGE, like seven feet tall), her snake-like features and acid spit. Also her claws and tail - whereas a typical raptor has one scythe-like claw on each foot, she has four on each toe, including her dewclaw, while the tail itself is WAY more flexible than a real-like raptor’s and hangs over its body like a scorpion (the tail also has a sharp stinger, which makes me wonder if some element of the Xenomorph was added to her). Or Fulgore - a unique fusion of Robocop, Terminator and Predator, but with a ponytail as a sort of helmet plume, laser eyes and two wrist blades made of plasma as opposed to the one wrist blade. The toys analogy makes more sense in relation to “Smash Bros”, which is essentially this:
"I also think a problem with the 2013 game was that the direction clearly changed when Iron Galaxy took over. The lore bits we got in the first season and character dialogue clearly indicated that this was supposed to be a continuation of the original game’s plot. A true KI3. "
Definitely. I also think DH had more ambition, just because it really looks like they wanted to do more but were unable, especially here:
The start of this trailer had some pretty unique animations that would later be used as part of her story mode, whereas cutscenes in S2 were pretty much carefully edited game stuff. To be fair, though, IG were picking up the slack and were inexperienced with the engine.
“like Spinal’s stage, just looked flat out dystopian.”
Spinal’s wasn’t really “dystopian” imo. Did you mean Cinder’s?
“I think now would be the perfect time to show the type of breakdown of conventional society and government that could result in dystopian future where the world is more or less ruled by corporations.”
Oh definitely!
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Arg. Smash. The clean toy story approach to this concept. I’m talking about what it was actually like to be a kid playing with their toys. The sense of chaos and energy that that kind of thing has. Not the child friendly nature Nintendo and Disney want you to associate with it. I mean, just look at the original roster for pete sake!
Ah, I see.
Cinder is an interesting one. I had been really hoping that they kept the pathos of the original rather than made him a loud-mouth cartoon (or essentially Deadpool on fire). I mean, I like his in-game personality where he goes “I wouldn’t want to be you today!” or “That was too much FUN!”, that sort of tough guy attitude he has, but some of his stuff in SL and the comics made me kind of cringe. I really had been hoping we get to see more humanity and sadness to the character. I mean, he could still be a piece of crap, a bad person, but at the same time, though, his condition is an absolutely hellish one to contemplate. He can’t eat, he’s perpetually being burnt alive, he can’t really pick something up or touch someone without burning or setting it on fire - that’s a miserable existence.
“As far as the legality is concerned, again I think this would need to be a post-governmental society. A place where the many leading world governments were crippled beyond repair. There wouldn’t necessarily be a legal issue because law enforcement wouldn’t be what we consider it to be today. More than likely, it would look like corporation controlled private armies that enforce law and order when and where they deem necessary and appropriate to both further their own ends as well as quell any potential uprisings.”
Probably. Still, some form of government would be needed, especially if one is going to be regulating property rights. By the same token, though, such things kind of exist even in today. I did mention the Mua Thai fighting program.
“Perhaps one of the corporations is a front for a religious cult that believes Gargos was the savior mankind drove him off, so they’ve been trying find ways to open the portal again via Ultratech’s proprietary information.”
I like that idea. I wouldn’t mind seeing more corporations enter the picture. We’ve only seen Ultratech’s side of things, so why not some of its competitors?
“You add in a group of underdog good guys that form the resistance and a good deal of corporate espionage and sabotage, shifting alliances and allegiances, surprises, twists, maybe a unique final boss reveal and I could absolutely see a story here that’s both compelling from an entertainment perspective but also interesting within the context of modern society (provided it’s not too heavy-handed in its approach or “message”).”
I don’t know about “good guys” per se. I like to think KI is sort of like Warhammer 40k where everyone is a bad guy and there are some shades of grey in places. I mean, Black Orchid herself wouldn’t really count as one in the first game since she’s a spy working for an unknown party, who, for all we know are even worse than Ultratech. The only really “good” guy would probably be Glacius in the first game, just because he was an innocent that had no concept of violence. I didn’t like the fact that IG made him into a Space Martial, just because it took away the inherent tragedy of the character imo.
I only played Shadow Lords enough so I could unlock Astral Plane and then abandoned it. Didn’t like it at all. So I guess I can’t comment. Same with the comic, my local comic store didn’t carry it. Heck, it was so poorly advertised that by the time I realized it had actually released every issue was already long gone. But also, the kind of thing you’re asking for with Cinder, frankly of all the characters, is just not what KI is about. Nor should it become that. Frankly it’s the kind of “grittiness and seriousness = depth and meaning” attitude that’s been ruining entertainment since the 90s ended (I was born in 99 so don’t try to tell me I’m juts being nostalgic. I wasn’t alive to be nostalgic for the 90s). Just go let Warhammer be Warhammer and let KI be KI. No need to make it into something it’s not. Just make it a better version of what it is. That’s a lesson frankly the entire game industry needs to learn.
“But also, the kind of thing you’re asking for with Cinder, frankly of all the characters, is just not what KI is about.”
Certainly it is. Well, it was in relation to the first KI where in his backstory he was just some poor loser who had been unfortunate enough to be experimented on with some “chemical weapon”. Granted, he was a convict, but even the crimes he committed at the time suggested he was just a small-time crook rather than anything egregious (although it’s possible his criminal record merely recorded his known crimes). Modern-day Cinder is a great deal shadier than his 1994 counterpart, which is fine, but at the same time, though, even a shady character like Deadpool has moments of poignancy, of humanity and vulnerability.
“grittiness and seriousness = depth and meaning”
That wasn’t my position at all, nor do I believe such a thing. In terms of 40k comparison, it somewhat is appropriate on the basis that very few of the characters are considered “good”, if at all. Interestingly, none of the characters are purely “good”, let alone human - they all possess some inhuman/monstrous aspect. Whether it’s Jago and Kim and their animal spirits, TJ’s cybernetics, Orchid or Maya, there’s always some element of the monstrous to be found amongst the characters. The latter two are especially problematic as far as good guys are concerned, the former because she is a spy/mercenary, the latter an Incan-based monster hunter. And that’s not even bringing up Tusk, a Viking of all things, someone who is in every sense of the word a barbarian.