What would you like to see from a potential KI sequel?

General Discussion
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NOTE: Feel free to skip down to the TL: DR at the bottom if you don’t want to read this giant blob of text. It’s just a the question in the title of the thread.

Not to put on my conspiracy theory (tin foil) hat, but seeing Iron Galaxy come back to KI after six years to put out anniversary content has led to some speculation that they might be working with Xbox again on a sequel. Of course, it’s entirely possible this was just a one-time thing to celebrate the 10 year anniversary. We certainly can’t rule that out.

But.

BUT…

What if they ARE working on a sequel? Just curious what you would want to see in the game? Who would you want to bring back and who (if any) would you skip (either in general or because you know the roster is a finite thing that can’t go on forever)? What mechanics have to return and what can be scrapped? What new KI character types or guests would you want? What would you want from the story? What do you want to see graphically? What modes?

Not saying anyone needs to address ALL of these aspects but just curious what people want or if anything immediately jumps out.

For me:

Characters I’d skip:
Rash: I’d rather have new guests

General Raam: See above

Arbiter: See above

Omen: Appreciated him as a sort of fill-in/placeholder character content-wise, and he was a nice part of the story, but that story should probably be over and I’m not personally all that attached to his character design.

Gargos: Love Gargos and he’s fun to use, but as the main villain of the last game, it’d be nice to see him at least skip this game given the events of the comics.

Eyedol: Debating this one, but it kinda feels like the Shadowlords could both maybe skip a game. I wouldn’t be against him (or anyt of these characters) returning.

Characters I’d add:

Ben Ferris: I’d love to see ARIA take Cinder’s power away and just have a sort of cigar-chomping, wise-cracking anti-military / mercenary trope.

Meltdown: Of course, ARIA’s method of improving everything means making a better Cinder. It’d be cool to see them bring in an evolved Cinder for Ben Ferris to clash with.

A Witch: Always thought this would be a fun trope for them to explore. A sort of tattooed plant goddess or a darker, more goth Poison Ivy with some fun witch powers.

A Djinn: Another one from the season 3 survey. Imagine all the cool powers this character could have!

A lovecraftian horror: Another season 3 survey idea that I absolutely loved. Give me a large, tentacle monster god with some fun reach and some cool powers.

As far as gameplay goes, I’d want them to bring back:

Counter Breakers: This sounds obvious, but they didn’t always exist in KI’s development and they’re absolutely essential to the two-way interaction during combos.

Shadow moves: Of course.

Recapture: This was such a fun way of continuing combos and creating some really fun, stylish stuff. Hope they find ways to expand on it tbh.

The combo meter: Again another sort of obvious thing, but being able to see how close you are to a blow out, resetting the meter, etc are all great aspects of the gameplay that I hope return.

Gameplay items I hope they add:

A super move: I’m not sure how that would be implemented. A unique meter? Use a full shadow meter? Maybe an added stock on the end of a shadow meter that’s just for the super? Use the full Instinct meter? Should they be uniform for all characters in method and should they all be high-damage? I’m not sure. I’d just like to see some type of flashy, explosive move that uses up a lot of meter. Doesn’t have to be hyper-cinematic and last forever.

A unique ender: I feel like older KI games did this (maybe just KI2 / Gold?), but it’d be cool if each character could get a unique ender that they can do once they’ve done every ender type.

OTG combos: It’d be cool to be able to perform combos on grounded characters. Maybe that’s a character’s unique trait or maybe that’s just something they add universally, but I think it’d be fun.

I mentioned original characters above, but as far as guests? I don’t know that I’d want many, but I do think a few would be fun, especially from some of Xbox’s acquisitions since the last game came out:

Lilith (Diablo)
Joanna Dark (Perfect Dark)
Master Chief (Halo)
Marcus Phoenix (Gears of War)
Tracer (Overwatch)

Might not be my definitive top 5 list (I’d still love to see a Legacy of Kain character in KI but MS doesn’t own Crystal Dynamics). But this is something close to my top 5.

Lastly, the story.

Honestly? I REALLY hope they treat all the events spelled out in the last game and all the stuff from the KI novella and comics as canon and then grow and expand the story from there. I don’t need Mortal Kombat level production values, but I don’t believe you have to have them to portray an MK level of storytelling.

I’d love to see a world half destroyed by Gargos still trying to recover and pull itself out of the rubble. Perhaps a splinter faction of Ultratech’s board leaves and puts together their on conglomerate and the two are essentially at war for what’s left of the US and the world and what remains of the world’s governments and underground movements form some type of uneasy alliance / resistance to take them down. Bring back the Ultratech tournament as a sort of means of these factions settling things after a war has led to a stalemate.

I think they could do some really fun stuff with that. :slight_smile:

TL: DR

So yeah, again, no one has to write THIS much by ANY stretch of the imagination. Even if it’s just one sentence… What are some things you’d want for a potential KI sequel?

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More emphasis on atmosphere and the tournament, along with that cyberpunk dystopian aspect from the first game, maybe have other corporations involved as well? I think my biggest gripe with this game is that it places too much emphasis on the supernatural components at the expense of the dark futurism that the first KI had. Like, the supernatural aspect was there, don’t get me wrong, but generally speaking, KI was a cyberpunk fighting game, if not the quintessential punk fighting game.

Also Riptor having her snake-like look back from the first game.

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Pretty much a repeat for most of the things 2013 did with some additions here and there like you said, but what they should prioritize is not fixing what’s not broken. KI2013’s gameplay aged very well and its recent balancing reflects this well too, meaning they didn’t need to add other things for the game to work well even today (Granted it might also be because the game is old and well established , not to mention how it on itself has old coding and architecture, but nonetheless, it still holds up well on competitive play).

For a new entry, a new setting and expanded cast while maintaining all of the characters thus far (sans the cameos) would be amazing too, I personally found amazing that everyone was there up to Season 3, so I’d kinda expect them to do the same again.

I don’t know what else to think of, but I do agree that adding super moves would be neat, I don’t know how they would balance this well since Shadow Moves work really well. I know Shadow Jago’s Annihilation move might be an indicator, but this one depends on Instinct. Maybe they’d need to get rid of Instinct if they aim for Super Moves?

I think that’s it for now :d

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I really don’t want to loose anyone except Shago, Kilgore, and Shinsako. I think there’s potential ways to bring them all back, especially if it’s seasonal. And like… not every character on the roster needs to be a part of the story. Especially if it’s big.

I’m particularly interested in KI using Battletoads the way Street Fighter uses Final Fight and DoA uses Ninja Gaiden. Having the two take place in the same world and for multiple characters from toads showing up in KI. I just think they fit together so well. But I guess we could loose Arbiter and RAAM.

I like most of your other ideas, except Ben Ferris, I’d rather they created a new mercenary character. Maybe even a soldier or a cop. As for other newcomers I’d like to see, I’d love to see the Sharkman and ent concepts realized. I personally think it’s long past time KI got the Bruce Lee tribute that is fighting game tradition. I love the idea of a “Ultratech tournament championship” character who’s like a roman gladiator mixed with a rocky villain and a heel pro-wrestler. How about a female Frankenstein’s monster with electric powers who fights with a non traditional style of wrestling like sumo or Greco-Roman wrestling? And my favorite idea of all. Santa Clause as a badass knight. It just feels so KI. So Rareware. So 90s.

As for guest characters. I like Joanna Dark and I’m also partial to the Cyberdemon from Doom. And hey, since they were originally developed by the same team at Rare, how about Conker? We can also probably expect a Sea of Thieves character, my bet would be Flameheart. And I know it would never happen, but how cool would it be if Nintendo let them use Donkey Kong in return for Banjo and Steve being in Smash. It would work so well! But I guess if that won’t happen then Crash Bandicoot would be fine. He just doesn’t have the history. Banjo & Kazooie would be fun too. I’m also partial to Raiden from Metal Gear Rising. Ooo! Ooo! How about Samurai Jack! That would kick ■■■!

You can tell I don’t take KI as seriously as most people. It’s 90s kids mashing their Rambo and ninja turtle action figures against eachother. That’s the appeal.

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Alright, strap in everyone. This is gonna be a long post!

Mechanically, I’d say KI2013 is just about perfect IMO. Obviously we can tweak character’s abilities, maybe add a few bells and whistles (i.e. Supers or maybe 3rd Strike style parries), but I really feel like a sequel should keep the core mechanics of this iteration intact. Better to build off of what we know works well than to try and reinvent the wheel.

In addition to the classic characters, I feel like the new characters from 2013 deserve more time to shine. I could honestly do without guest characters personally.

Storywise, I definitely feel like exploring stuff from the comics would be a rad idea. The True Tsar and his minions would be an excellent starting point for villains. There’s a lot of interconnected lore in the character backstories that could be explored further I feel.

Speaking of story, I feel like Shadow Lords would be a great starting point for building the new main story mode. I love the idea of actually choosing where to go and what missions to tackle. Perhaps it could open up branching storylines, where depending on who you play and how well you do it unlocks different fights/endings. Maybe make it a little less reliant on gear/items, though.

As for other game modes, I would love to bring back Survival and/or a Classic Arcade ladder. Maybe have a secret boss fight vs Super Gargos from the comics just for fun. The Shadows could also be fun to bring back, depending on how well they’re implemented.

For training mode, an online option would be fun… but probably a pain in the neck to set up. More importantly, I would love to have the music from KI1, KI2, and KI2013 in the training mode. Especially KI2!

For the purely cosmetic side, I say we should build off of the current costume system. Standard, Retro, and a new category of Secret costumes, each with a little bundle of unlockable Colors and Accessories. Nothing too crazy so characters don’t lose their core visual identity, but a bit of a step up from the current number. I wouldn’t mind getting Concept Art for unlocks again, maybe even pages from the Comics.

Most importantly though, I hope all unlocks are primarily XP/Challenge based again. I 100% prefer unlocks based on Time/Skill over a battle pass that I have to constantly sink money into. :nauseated_face:

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Some stuff from the comics, but maybe not all of it. The twist with Aganos being a Light Lord for instance was crap and took away from his character’s story. The Tsar was a cool character in his design, and it was cool seeing the Wendigos, but writing-wise, the recent comics left a LOT to be desired.

Building off this idea, I think a create-a-fighter mode would work well with this imo and having players choose their body type, species, factions, playstyles, special moves, etc. “Shadow Lords” is an interesting idea for a mode, but I kind of think such a mode needs a LOT more in terms of characters, stages, animations, mission variety, etc.

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Another thing I want them to do is re-use some of the old Kevin bayliss concepts that got scrapped. Mollusca, organic Fulgore, pincushion, the prototype Timber the Tiger who was like a realistic anthro tiger, the hockey player, Roxy Rave, all of them!

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Also. Another guest character idea, especially if they keep the Battletoads. Bring in Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon to tribute the old Battletoads/Double Dragon crossover.

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Eddie Riggs from Brütal Legend! How did I forget him!?! He would rock in KI!

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Sorry, just had to highlight a few things there because this whole post was GOLD. Couldn’t agree more on all fronts. I’d love it if they picked up from after Gargos’ defeat and the world is basically half destroyed and the strongest left over are corporations at literal war with one another and the small pocket of resistance trying to help what’s left of the have-nots. Bring back the dark, brooding atmosphere mixed with neon lights. Not saying every stage should look this way, but I’d love to see stuff inspired by Blade Runner, Cyberpunk and Altered Carbon.

Yes, I agree 100%. When I was thinking about what they should bring back as far as the gameplay goes, it was hard not to mention literally everything they did. I could see them adding a few elements to it (I’d personally love to see some OTG combos) but there’s so much they did well here that I hope they don’t scrap in the name of doing something new.

Haha, yeah this goes to what we both agreed on. I love how Instinct is so different for each character so I wouldn’t want them to ditch it, but I do think maybe giving the bar two different options might be cool? Like you can use it for the kinds of stuff it’s used for now, or you can spend the whole bar instantly with a super? I dunno. Just spitballing.

Curious why you prefer this? I mean, we all have our preferences, of course, so I’m not criticizing. Just wondering what your line of thinking would be. I think it’d be cool to have ARIA betray him and take what she gave him back, and he wants it again, but to get what he wants, maybe he has to side with some people that he previously fought against. Also thought it’d be cool to have him face off against the one that replaces him (Meltdown). I think tha’td be fun, but if you’re not into it, no problem.

I’d be 100% down for this! I feel like Jago kinda fills that role right now, but there could definitely be someone that gets closer to it.

Love this idea too!

YES PLEASE.

To be clear, I’m not a fan of guests. Really don’t like them in any fighting game and never have. I just put a few ideas in because it’s an inevitability at this point, but yeah, more focus on the newer characters and no guests? Sign me up.

That would be a really fun place to start IMO. I could absolutely seeing the vampires being a powerful faction unto themselves and playing a much more important role in the story. I’d love that.

Yeah I personally loved Shadowlords and I don’t mind the gear and items and what not, but I definitely played it for the story and I’d like for there to be a lot more canon, coherent storytelling. The whole idea of unlocking story bit VIII or whatever when you currently have parts II, VI and XI wasn’t really something I enjoyed. Give me a cohesive narrative. Tell me a story. I don’t need Mortal Kombat level graphical fidelity, tons of voice acting, etc. If you want to give me re-used character art, storyboard art… Whatever. That’s fine. Just give me the words. Take me from point A to point B over the course of several hours and do it for every character. I don’t need or want “what if character X won” type endings. Tha’ts just a waste to me. If it doesn’t actually happen, I don’t need to hear about it.

That’s just me though.

Survival is my go-to mode. Love it. A few things I would like adjusted though? Make the difficulty ramp smoother. The first 10 matches are braindead and things are still pretty easy up until 20, but once you hit 20, the difficulty seemingly goes from Very Easy to Very Hard.

Also, I’d LOVE some leaderboards. KI always had these in the past and just in general, it’s nice to see what my highest win total was, my highest point total and which characters I got them with. It sounds corny, but also have me put my initials in every time I make the top 10 in case I’m playing locally with someone who also wants to put their initials in when they break the top 10. Have an overall top 10 board and give each character their own individual top 5 or 10 board.

Love both of these ideas. I enjoyed Shadow Lab and yeah, a secret fight against Super Gargos would be really cool, especially if Gargos weren’t a playable character.

Yeah, agree here as well. I’d maybe also add that I’d go a little lighter on the funny stuff like cheerleader Riptor and what not. I’d kinda like to see them go a little darker, dystopian, neo-noir etc with the next game. Kinda hard to get that vibe when you’re battling a character in a silly outfit. Not the biggest deal in the world by ANY means, but that’s just me.

From your keyboard to god’s ears, man. Agree 150%

Maybe both of them as one character? That could be pretty fun from a mechanical perspective. Agree that it’d be cool to have at least one of them in KI, for sure.

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I’d just rather have a new character fill that archetype rather than removing the appeal of Cinder to turn him into something he isn’t. Maybe you’ed argue that I want the characters to stay too static, but I’d rather have them stay in their iconic and recognizable forms and build the story around that, if not have it be kind of secondary. I think the better thing to do is build your story around your characters, not your characters around your story. Not to mention I think the idea of Meltdown is just kind of lame. Like just keep Cinder as he is and have a new character to fill that mercenary/soldier/cop archetype instead of messing up the dynamics just because. Maybe he can even be an old war buddy of Ben’s or something, idk. I just think it would be better to keep cinder as cinder. Plus I think it would be weird to have his mutations be able to be just undone like that. Like, it’s not a Mario power-up you know? He was transformed into liquid stone.

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I have to respond to this because I really disagree with this narrative in the community and think embracing it will lead to stale character design and needlessly dark storytelling. Killer Instinct has always been bombastic and over the top 90s action with crazy characters. Like I said, it’s a kid in the 90s smashing together his Rambo and TMNT action figures and letting his imagination run wild. If you take it too seriously, if you make it too dark and brooding, you’re gonna suck out all the fun and all the charm Rare intended it to have when they first created it.

I really think people need to stop asking for this because they have no idea what they’ll actually get if they went in that direction. Because it will not be KI.

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I am curious, I know a lot of characters were implied to exist thanks to the bios and items in Shadow Lords, but the wiki doesn’t have all that text transcribed and I never bothered fully unlocking everything (I played till I unlocked Astral Plane then never looked back), so does anyone have a full list of all the characters mentioned in shadow lords flavor text?

Off the top of my head I know about Sol Dakuri (the Babylonian general who betrayed the king with Kan-Ra and Spinal), the true tsar (the leader of the coven and also the Babylonian Nobel who betrayed the king with the aforementioned group), the alien Glacius was chasing to earth (he had a name but I can’t remember it), the wendigos the coven use as shock troops, and the Wyvern-X project (a combination of Riptor and Glacius dna by Ultratech that I presume from the name is dragon like). Were there any more?

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In my case, one of the things that made Cinder so interesting to me was the tragedy behind his story. In KI1, he was a criminal experimented on and made into a fire being, and while S2 tapped into that aspect and kind of preserved it, albeit with slight alterations, they kind of stripped that part away in S3 by making it voluntary and removing the tragedy entirely, something that I am NOT a supporter of whatsoever as a Cinder fan. Taking away his ability and his tragedy strips away what made him interesting as a character, which was the fact that he was one of Ultratech’s victims along with Glacius. I like the idea of a mercenary as a new character, though, especially if he were given one of the cancelled names such as “Meltdown” or something.

Not at all. KI has always been dark - it’s set in a dystopian cyberpunk s hithole where life is cheap and where corporations get richer and fatter by screwing over the little guy through torturous experiments and televised violent competition, the sort of story and setting that fits right at home with “Cyberpunk 2077”. KI is one of Rare’s darkest titles, even by Nintendo’s standards back in the 90s, and not recognizing and embracing that is detrimental to KI.
It is “KILLER Instinct”, not hugs and cute little bunnies.

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We’ve talked about this in DMs dozens of times. Of all people, you did not need to tell me why you disagreed with this take because I already knew.

KI is an over the top 90s action movie. It’s not alan moore grimdark. You’re exaggerating.

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I’m not. It’s literally grimdark. It’s in the story:
"The world has seen much progress in the centuries since the warlords were banished, not all of it for good. Pollution has weakened the environment. Governments have fallen. Chaos rules, with huge mega-corporations battling and destroying each other for shares of the world’s wealth.

In this bleak world, a single corporation, Ultratech, rises above the others. Rather than joining in direct battles with their competitors, Ultratech has profited from their suffering by selling them the very weapons they use against each other. Sales of weaponry are not the only source of profit for Ultratech, however. Their entertainment division produces the top rated television broadcast of the future, the Killer Instinct tournament, which also serves as a testing ground for Ultratech’s weapons. The winners of the tournament are promised whatever they desire. The losers suffer a significantly poorer fate."

This sort of thing fits in with the likes of “Warhammer 40K” and “Cyberpunk 2077”. Whether it’s the intro videos with the chiaroscuro lighting, the brutal animations or the continue screen with the heartbeat reinforces its presentation of a brutal grimdark world. Even the fact that the cast in the first KI game were all male gave the sense that it was a world with a pretty hard edge due to the fact that Orchid was the sole female character in that game.

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OK like… that is the flavor text of the world. But look at how the game actually presents itself. Lots of over the top movies from the 80s and 90s have summaries that would sound pretty dark if you just read them without actually watching them and seeing how the characters act and what the cinematography is like and what the music is like etc. KI is no different. It has a dark setup but the presentation in the actual game itself is over the top screen filling combat, wacky characters from every trope and genre imaginable, and head banging metal/techno dance soundtrack, and an announcer that screams playground versus debate hype.

TLDR I think you’re getting so lost in the how the flavor text is written that you’re ignoring how the game actually presents itself and how it’s similar to other media from the same era.

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But those qualities are what makes KI the quintessential punk fighting game - of course it’s loud and over-the-top! It’s loud, it’s bombastic, it’s aggressive and over-the-top, with some dark humor (not unlike 40K and “Cyberpunk”), it’s fast-moving and violent, with characters that while based off of certain tropes popular at the time are easily identifiable with their own unique flavor and features, not following the rules of traditional fighters of the time. Even by Nintendo standards, it’s the most violent game that they’ve ever produced (at least, for that time period). It put the “punk” in “cyberpunk”, and not recognizing that can lead to it being watered down, even obscuring that which made the game so successful and unique where all other MK clones have failed. The dark setup is part of the game as a whole and reinforces those aspects when you look at it as a punk fighting game.

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I think we might be operating on different basic assumptions about what comes with these tropes and what they would mean.

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It’s more the case of looking at the game as a whole and taking into consideration the details and how they contributed. Comparing the game with other titles, it is a punk fighting game in every sense of the word - it defied a lot of traditions and tropes of most fighting game of that time period by doing things that most fighters didn’t do such as seemingly endless 2.5D arenas that can be circled around, combos that cause the screen to shake and extend to unusually high numbers depending on player skill, etc. Whereas most fighters of the time had martial artists, KI’s cast were largely freaks. Whether it’s Riptor with its three additional hook-like claws, snake-like features or scorpion tail, whether it’s Sabrewulf, Cinder, Glacius, or Thunder with that mohawk (which may or may not be knives inserted into his head), T.J. with his cybernetic implants (way before Jax got his arms replaced), Orchid with her firecat abilities or Jago, a Tibetan monk playing ninja, these are all weird-a ss characters who would be at odds with the likes of Ryu and Ken, or likewise the more Shaw Brothers-inspired “Mortal Kombat” (and that’s saying something!). Even the music and announcer contributed to the punk aspect. KI’s personality as a game is that it doesn’t give a f uck, one that is utterly unapologetic in what it is and wants to be.

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