I just… no. Why? Not being human makes you evil? No. We need good guys to root for. KI is colorful, KI is over the top, KI has so much action and energy that it makes the 80’s blush, and KI should not sacrifice any of that for “depth of story”. Seeing KI go down that direction would frankly just homogenize it with the rest of the games industry.
“I just… no. Why? Not being human makes you evil?”
Not at all. I was noting that every character has some inhuman or monstrous element. KI as a whole is about duality, the human and the inhuman, but by the same token, the lines between them are blurred to the point where one becomes indistinguishable from the other.
“We need good guys to root for.”
A common misconception, but no. You don’t need “good guys” to root for - what you need are compelling characters, which KI has in spades. What it lacks and desperately needs, however, is good writing and a good compelling story. It has a bit of the latter, but it could be developed more. I remember a quote ages ago that it’s not about making people “like” characters in a story as it is getting people to understand them. “High Plains Drifter” is one example among many where everyone in the movie was a villain and despicable in their own right. Sergio Leone’s “Man With No Name” was definitely not likeable, nor a “good” guy by any means. Or the characters in “Akira” - that whole world is pretty dark. There may be one or two somewhat likeable characters in the latter, but even then, their intentions are dubious.
“KI is colorful, KI is over the top, KI has so much action and energy that it makes the 80’s blush, and KI should not sacrifice any of that for “depth of story”. Seeing KI go down that direction would frankly just homogenize it with the rest of the games industry.”
Yes, KI is colorful, over the top and energetic, but by the same token KI is also pretty hard-edged, the first game especially, which was male-dominated; that detail in itself made KI’s world seem a pretty harsh one, and while Orchid was the only female in that game, she’s not by any means a hero. She’s a spy/mercenary, and while she could have some elements of good, I like to think she is KI’s Woman With No Name, someone that straddles the line between good and evil. KI already has style and substance in terms of the look, characters and mechanics, but in terms of the writing it falls pretty flat.
Thank you for clearing that up. I’m not sure if I was supposed to assume that’s what you meant, but it does make sense now.
Post-apocalyptic can mean a lot of things at a lot of different points. Yes, there can be muted tones, there can also be destroyed beauty, the return of nature, beautiful respites from uglier locations, or in terms of Blade Runner’s Tokyo noir style, it means lots of neon amidst dark, rainy cityscapes or oversaturation of a specific color or tone.
Yes, the setting can be bleak and yes it usually involves dealing with certain themes, but it doesn’t always have to be bleak. Characters and places can still show personality, gameplay can still be over the top and yes, there can still be humor as well. Providing a setting doesn’t automatically have to attach every other preconceived notion one might carry with it.
At no point was I trying to indicate that you couldn’t do this. You mentioned having things that seem a little goofy or out of place, but the game still plays it straight. I would agree that this is part of what makes a compelling KI experience. You can have a wolfman trying to regain his humanity or a machine battling internally between its programming and it’s burgeoning human nature… You can have these things happening and you can play them 100% serious, but you’re still getting a wolfman scratching and clawing against a laser shooting robot. It’s all still there. I’m not trying to change it, I’m just trying to evolve it.
I had a ton of fun with Shadowlords. I thought it was a really fun way to change things up in the gameplay, but also play a ton of matches, earn some fun stuff, and play through these mini-stories that gave me more info on what was happening. If I had one issue with it, I’d say it was the fact that the potential wasn’t fully realized. They said it was something they could keep iterating on and adding more and more content, but that content well ran dry pretty quickly.
As for having a story planned out from the beginning and then sticking to it, I suppose that’s the ideal scenario. But things obviously changed. New developer, new methods of getting the story conveyed, trying new things they could actually fit in to the game given some logically assumed restrictions on time and money. They made due with what they had. I think for what they were likely given in those regards, they did a great job.
Mortal Kombat has a narrative campaign mode. It’s very good. It’s also likely very expensive and once you beat it, the mode is done. It’s useless. Maybe you go back and play it a year or two later, but you already know what happened. I get that there’s more cohesion in MK’s storytelling, though there are a fair number of hardcore MK fans that will disagree with that for a variety of reasons.
To me, using all of these different methods of storytelling did effect cohesion for the worse. Ideally you want all of the story accessible in the game. Hopefully if there’s a next time they do that. But I think a lot of what we got from MS, DH, and / or IG was fun and enjoyable and the fact that it was spread out all over the place and presented in different ways was kinda fun in its own right.
WTF? Did I ask for your approval of my idea? Take it down a notch. For one thing, you don’t get two “boring” characters. Farris would still have the same attitude. He’d just come in human form and he’d have more military / mercenary type moves. Meltdown, one of the original names for Cinder in the original game, would have some fun iterations on Cinder’s moveset and could also have the same humor / attitude given that he’s a clone. They’d be two sides of the same coin in some respects, while totally different in others.
You’re making assumptions on an idea that’s barely been explained. For one thing, no, I’m not choosing story over gameplay. How are you even getting that form what I’ve said so far? What liberties are you taking with the idea I’ve barely explained that would make you think I somehow want the gameplay to be worse?
Meltdown would essentially BE Cinder in nearly all aspects but one: He’d be loyal to ARIA. Ben Farris would still be the “original.” But he’d be completely new from a movelist perspective. There is no gritty, badass military / mercenary type in the game, so while you might see him as “just a guy” it’s still a unique trope we don’t have in a game with a lot of unique 80’s and 90’s tropes. By the “just a guy” litmus test, Jago, Tusk and Thunder are each just a guy. I think Farris would be could be more than that.
You don’t have to like someone’s ideas, but FFS can you at least ask for more information or provide constructive criticism before you go to this place? Not sure how many times you have to hear that feedback from people on this site, but here it is again, just for you.
I’m fairly certain I’ve heard this exact feedback on this exact idea before. I get it. The dinosaur toy and the ninja toy make sense, but not the soldier toy.
How long have you been playing Xbox systems? This generation? The one before? Did you play a lot of the original Xbox when it came out? I only ask this because I bought the original Xbox day one and while that’s not me whipping my console cred out, I’m mainly saying it because for 20 years, Xbox has had a well established history of putting out a really good game and then forgetting it ever existed.
Now maybe it didn’t make a lot of money, maybe the team that made it moved on to other projects or they closed their doors or went independent, but no matter what happened, the result is the same. Tons of franchises left withering on the vine. How long did it take Microsoft to put out a Killer Instinct title? They’ve had Rare since the days of the Grabbed by the Ghoulies on the original Xbox.
I’m not saying that KI will inevitably go back on the shelf for another twenty years, but saying it made some money makes it FAR from a lock to return at this point, especially when there are so many other franchises collecting dust that fans keep bothering MS to bring back. It doesn’t help that the main guy that got KI off the ground now works for World’s Edge. We’ll see. I hope I’m wrong. You’re just betting against twenty years of history here.
I’m not sure how much Todd McFarlane specifically I see in their original designs, but I certainly agree it skewed a bit darker and more foreboding than your average fighting game. I mean, the continue timer was a heartbeat. The music was a mixture of pulsing techno, crunching guitar riffs and low-key horror movie dirges. This combined with the Tokyo noir color palette and stage design gave off a unique vibe that went far beyond the concept of how fun it would be to pit a skeleton man from Jason and the Argonauts against an ice alien.
Yeah, I don’t mind that he cracks jokes, but it would be cooler if he was a bit more gallows humor and a little less Woody Woodpecker / Deadpool about it.
Which is why I think gallows humor fits him better. Or at least more of a sour, stoic sense of humor. I hate to use the example because I don’t overly love the character, but more Rorschach, less Mr. Freeze from Batman & Robin.
I wouldn’t go full Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal Black in terms of the darkness of his condition, but I do agree that it could absolutely be a plot element and we could really stand to get more of a sense of the price he pays to have the power that he clearly enjoys having.
I could very easily see a scenario where property rights were enforced via private armies, mutually assured destruction, or some sort of mutually agreed code of honor via detente that could be broken for plot reasons at some point, or not broken at all. If corporations would be powerful enough to have armies, I suppose the goal of the resistance could be reinstating the power of the state or a people’s army. That could make a good deal of sense.
I just think if we’re talking about a post-world ending scenario, we’d likely want to look at a situation where the normal safety nets are not available, and the new powers have fully emerged after being relatively in check in the last game. I think starting from this place gives the players a story ending to shoot for, rather than having to climb up the hill of “something’s coming” again. You’re already in the thick of the fight and you know what’s at stake. From there, the twists and turns come, and a perhaps a new enemy emerges.
I always thought it would be a cool idea to have some of the Ultratech board members, along with the CEO-type that ARIA perhaps displaced in her rise to power flee and smuggle proprietary information / secrets out of Ultratech and rather than using this information to bring down the monster, they gather investors and researchers and create a corporate monster of their own, complete with their own stable of experiments and super-soldiers. There could be a variety of reasons for why they did this beyond greed and the desire for control. They might see ARIA as a legitimate enemy of humanity and with good reason.
Then there’s also the coven in Eastern Europe. It’s been a while since I read the comic or played Shadowlords, but they always gave me the vibe of a burgeoning contender as well.
What about Jago, Thunder, Eagle, Maya and Kim Wu? You could make the argument that Tusk has his own flaws given that he can’t die and for a while he seemed to lose his desire to fight or even live, if I recall. But while Orchid and TJ in particular have their shady pasts as well as their own unique motivations, I think we can agree they’re all looking to take down the bad guys and that makes them at least the team to root for if you’re team humanity, no?
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see storylines involving Jago’s PTSD over being controlled by a demon of pure darkness or Maya and her attempt to bring Mira home or help save her or Sabrewulf trying to regain his humanity or Tusk find a purpose now that Gargos is gone and so on and so on. But flawed as they might be, and they SHOULD be flawed, they’d still be the heroes, at least IMO.
You don’t get to tell people what KI is “about.” There are multiple directions characters and stories can go in and they don’t all have to meet with your approval to be considered congruent with what the game has been and certainly not what you think it should be.
This is how a game or franchise goes stale. You don’t always have to paint within the lines of the original concept in order to “of” that original concept. Microsoft has been basically trying to capture the same magic the first Halo has had since the first game. It worked great a few times, but how’s that going now?
KI being KI is what what got enough people to decide after KI2 that going down that road a third time wasn’t necessary for 20 years. I’m not saying a deeper story changes that, but I also don’t think we have to be a slave to what the 2013 game was, especially since it wasn’t a slave to what the 90’s games were.
No one is asking for grimdark. I’m just saying that KI can tell a deeper and more compelling story and take itself seriously. KI has always had a dark, somewhat gritty tone. It doesn’t need to be a Christopher Nolan movie or Spawn by any stretch of the imagination. I also don’t think anyone’s asking for that. But I think they can add depth and meaning without the original “soul of the game” or some such nonsense getting lost.
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Man. Some of this stuff just confuses me. Like, I believe you if you say you didn’t actually mean what I took from a lot of what you wrote. But I also have trouble understanding how you expected anything else to be taken from what you wrote. Like, @Evolution specifically called out wanting a bleak tone. Which to me signaled grimdark.
Except the Ben Ferris one. I admit I hastily wrote most of that before I even read the part about Meltdown and tried to retrofit it and failed. That was just jumping the gun. Although I do think that if we’re “replacing” Cinder with a clone that’s exactly like him so that Ben Ferris can be the character you describe, why not just leave him as is and make a NEW soldier character? But overall, I do apologize for putting words in your mouth and pitching a fit. That was uncalled for and I should have let it sit before posting.
I don’t know. Is it wrong to be kind of… sick of depth? Like, EVERYTHING is Deep now with a few notable exceptions. And it just kind of became exhausting for me, and probably others. I kind of just… crave simplicity now. And any hint at depth starts to turn me off. Which is why I always say the entertainment products that are put out should be balanced among each other so that no one can get tired of any one type of thing. I kind of just, want KI to stay simple, you know? I don’t know though. I don’t know anything anymore. Except maybe that I need some sleep.
“What about Jago, Thunder, Eagle, Maya and Kim Wu?”
Jago is probably one of the more tragic cases. On one hand, he is a Tibetan monk, someone that advocates for nonviolence (shouldn’t be confused with Shaolin monks). On the other hand, though, he is someone that worshipped a “Tiger Spirit”, which ended up being Gargos in disguise. The story made specific mention of him struggling with maintaining his sanity the moment Gargos bestowed him his powers/abilities, which explains why in the KIs of old his Endokuken was green. (Fun little fact - “Tibet shares many tiger images with India, although most ignominiously as flayed tiger skins tied around the waists or loins of wrathful demons in paintings and sculptures. Tigers that have managed to escape such fates are used as the powerful vehicles of wrathful demons. In their subdued state, tigers in Tibetan culture represent the triumph of the mind over anger into wisdom and insight.”)
http://www.nlb.gov.sg/biblioasia/2016/09/12/the-tiger-within/#:~:text=Tibet%20shares%20many%20tiger%20images,demons%20in%20paintings%20and%20sculptures.&text=In%20their%20subdued%20state%2C%20tigers,anger%20into%20wisdom%20and%20insight.
Thunder was quintessentially the Warrior stereotype, but he’s pretty much motivated by his brother’s disappearance. A little bit selfish, but I think he ‘s a decent enough guy at heart, although the kind of punk image of the original version of Thunder suggested he was an outlaw of some sort.
Eagle? Before Ultratech I would say that he was good, but with his subsequent release…uncertain. One thing annoys me about Eagle’s presence is that it kind of negates Fulgore - I was given a very strong impression that Ultratech used Eagle’s remains and brain for their latest model due to one of the accessory packs has an exposed skull. Maybe the Eagle we’re seeing is a clone body with a chip containing his memories inserted into the brain while the real Eagle remains trapped inside of Fulgore.
I think generally speaking that while some character are good, because the characters are human, there’s that anticipation that they will resort to violence. Jago may be a Tibetan monk, but by the same token, he does tend to lash out at evil, which is contrary to how it’s actually done in Buddhism, which is more about appeasement. They all may have good intentions, but by the same token, they aren’t afraid to use violence as a resort, which is an indicator of an underlying darkness. They all have the capacity to do evil regardless of Gargos’ influence. In Glacius’ case, though, he truly is the embodiment of that whole idea of innocence lost on the basis that his species has no concept of violence. If it hadn’t been for his exposure to humanity and/or Gargos, he wouldn’t be what he has become.
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I’d say the guest characters. While I welcomed the Arbiter with open arms, I’d like to see theme explore new concepts for characters we didn’t get to see.
I’m not against them adding at least 1 guest character though, but I’ll leave that idea of who to add to everyone else.
Like many here, I’d love tos ee animated cutscenes for 100% of the story, But I’m also fine with how they did it in the previous game as well. Though I’d love to see the voice actors of the characters actually do more for the story as well.
Seasonal, I think it’s what played a factor in making the gameplay solid at the time.
Colors for Accessories, and parts of the characters.
I’d love to be able to customize Riptor and Glacius with a color that can be like my own personal team.
Characters, Retro Stages and Music. I think we can get away with adding almost all the songs as DLC. Also if any characters do not return we can make them return as DLC too.
I would love it if there was more of a create a character option. Like you start off with a base character for a specific body-type, be it Jago, Orchid, Sabrewulf, Spinal, Riptor, etc, but from there you get more of a free reign in terms of how your character looks and plays, from the color and texture of their skin, hair, facial features/head designs, clothing etc to the effects of their projectiles.
Yes I’d love that too. But I think that will need to be worked on for the future or when they get the budget for it.
Indeed. I think it would also be cool if for the customized characters we were allowed to give them a backstory, kind of like how in Bloodborne you can define the origins of your character, if not have a sort of storymode based on choices you made, characters you fought for/against, etc.
If I did, I’d make a stalker unit and he would have connections with the Stalker story. I think it’d be great if we could choose how many characters we could make.
Maybe have different types of heads/skin/stance options that allow for more variation, whether you want a more crocodialian look, something more avian, mammalian, etc. Perhaps a Godzilla-like skin?
I remember in an interview with Chris Tilston, he wanted more of MMORPG sort of route.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-13-ex-rare-devs-talk-killer-instinct-perfect-dark-interview?page=3
I think it would be interesting if players were allowed to create their own evil megacorporation or faction in the game itself.
There’s nothing really wrong with giving something depth. Certainly, sometimes simpler is better, but by the same token, though, sometimes simple isn’t enough. It depends, but there’s nothing wrong with adding more dimension, especially to KI’s story, settings and/or its characters. I mean, look at BJ in “Wolfenstein: The New Order” and compare him to the older games as an example of how to make him into a wonderfully developed character. That said, however, your concern isn’t without merit; after all, Orchid’s backstory is one such example of being overcomplicated and not really necessary. But again, it depends on the character, story and quality of writing, and if anything, an attempt at complexity shouldn’t be frowned upon, not when it is done well.
I just want a new KI to focus on fun and over the top combos and action above anything else. Anything else they want to do should not compromise that in any way.
Nobody is saying those elements shouldn’t be included. By the same token, though, it shouldn’t stop developers from making a compelling story with some great writing. There’s a terrific cast of characters and a potentially compelling synopsis already (at least, within the first KI), so why not make a cool package even cooler by providing a good comprehensive story? Part of a fighting game’s appeal, aside from the gameplay and visuals, is in its fighters and story, after all. It also shouldn’t justify bad writing.
Because I worry that in an effort to “deepen the characters” they’ll strip back the gameplay and it’s over the top nature. Like what happened with God of War.
Just to clarify, you mean the reboot that was set in Norse mythology? If so, it’s a little silly. The game was still full of over the top moments, plus it made Kratos a much more nuanced and interesting character rather than an albino Greek version of the Hulk.
Not really. Sure you still fight a dragon and such. But the gameplay is so much more stripped back. It’s a soulslike and not a hack n slash anymore.
It was still a hack n slash. Just because it’s not one hundred percent like how the games of old were doesn’t make it the end of the world.
Except it wasn’t. There was no combo system, heck you couldn’t even jump on command. It was basically just spamming your neutral combo and using friggin triggers to make attacks happen instead of button sequences. There was no memorization component. Not to mention the camera. It’s not a hack and slash, it’s a souls like. I’d be fine with the new story and setting and the deeper characters, but they compromised the game play to “make it work” (and I will argue endlessly that they could have “made it work” while still delivering an actual god of war game but whatever). And I don’t want that to happen to KI too under the guise of telling a better story. Especially when so few games these days try to go for the over the top action levels that KI delivered on. I don’t want that compromised because “over the top combos mess with the tone of our serious story about a wolf man and a skeleton fighting a raptor”.
The system had to be reinvented due to the camera system along with the fact that the devs wanted to keep the game relatively grounded while also being visceral and brutal. It retains the original games’ DNA, but goes about things differently. Everything is bound to change, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Are the Tim Burton Batman movies awful for not being one hundred percent like the comics?
Whether that happens to KI or not, I could care less. What I want by the end of it is a good KI game with an intelligently done and well-written story that does justice to the game and its characters.
What are you talking about? TONS of games go for over the top action, some of them even exceeding KI. “Call of Duty”, “Gears of War”, “Doom Eternal”, Mortal Kombat - there’s a very long list of games.