Mortal Kombat 1 - Is The Series Having A Identity Crisis? Retcons, Changes, Reboots

RIP first timeline of MK. You will be missed.

I just don’t understand how Mortal Kombat went from a tournament to stop Outworld conquering Earthrealm to a game about multiverses

I legit think that onaga being the main villain would have worked. This multiverse crap has ruined the game.

I still can't accept the changes to Scorpion & Sub-Zero. I was very happy with Bi-Han & Kuai Liang being descended from Cryomancers. Them being brothers with completely opposite powers in the new era, just doesn't sit well with me.

Imagine a story about Rain, Taven, and Daegon. And one about Order vd Chaos Realm.

The whole scorpion thing alone is so bad on so many levels and it’s great disservice to both Hanzo Hasashi and Kuai Liang. And it also makes ZERO SENSE if you think even just a little bit about it.

The multiverse crap turned me off for being invested into the storytelling in the new timeline.

In the past 2 MK timelines, there was a build in tension and stakes. 1st timeline went from Shang to Shao to Shao + Sindel to Shinnok to Onaga to literal Armageddon. 2nd timeline went the same except almost all the heroes died and became evil zombies, which makes the threat of Shinnok much higher because there are less heroes overall, and then leading to the time-manipulating Kronika as the biggest challenge (even though the story was done poorly). MK1 feels like you’re watching season 1, but then it skipped to the season 3 finale in the last chapter. It’s kinda similar to the Battle Of The Realms movie where it went from the tournament with Shao and then immediately going into the ONE BEING a.k.a the strongest thing in MK.

Granted, the whole thing of time travel in Mortal Kombat is and has just been done to death, just let that die, but I did actually like the whole different universes thing that "COULD'VE" been a good replacement and actually have been a decent storyline, but it's like they just said "Fuck it, we're just gonna clean up all and everything or rather take all the multiversal MK stuff and cram it all into a too loud, too long battle royal up a pyramid to stop the big bad(s) question mark?". Kinda like how in one series of Gundam, they tried to take all the timelines and universal threads from each separate Gundam universe and franchise in that universe and just squish them into one universal timeline so that everything would be canon that they called the "Correct Century". It.. didn't work out.

I genuinely wish that some of the Outworld characters would win. Like Ashra or Li Mei, or Reptile - Make one of Them the main character, bring a different perspective on things, rather than always "earth's defenders".

I don’t really like the new Scorpion kinda wish he was still hanzo 😐 (Just My opinion)

The multiverse aspect really made MK1 feel less impactful, and it honestly makes the next game weaker since it raises the stakes so much.

The only things that really made the new era happen were the ceiling you spoke of and and the 25 year timeskip before MKX. There aren't many directions you can go after putting every character into their 50's. Besides that, Kuai Liang and Harumi ending up together is a problem that comes from the writing losing all of its subtlety. Of course, they had to take that her from a vague backstory character to put her in front of our faces. Exactly like Jerrod being inside Ermac, Cris breaking up with Johnny to show us his fall from glory etc.

Smoke has been my favourite character since mk9 (as you can tell) and I’m somewhat disappointed to see him not really develop as a character in the story, as much as I love his bond with kuai liang I want him to grow as a person, not as a ‘one fight in chapter one-littlest lin kuei’ ninja. This could be said for kitana aswell.

While I am looking forward to where this new era with Mortal Kombat 1 onwards will go, I also think this Hourglass and alternate timelines stuff needs to go. I enjoyed MK1's story and "most" of the new ideas with the characters, but the series' lore and consistency are all over the dang place. MK1's story goes pretty smoothly but then goes off the rails by the last 3 or so chapters. The aforementioned McGuffins takes away the impact and any uniqueness from Liu Kang's efforts. Like, why make such a big deal about it when there are other realities/timelines with infinite possibilities? They're just not needed and the idea of Realms did that far better. In fact, the Hourglass(es) and timelines nonsense ruins that too. At least one thing I liked that MK1 started is that once a Titan is killed, such as Kronika, it is permanent. As well as if Hourglass Keepers also perish, their entire timeline goes with them. Sounds like good potential in future media to slowly get rid of all said McMuffins and the poorly executed Titans idea. 🙄

I hate the the timeline thing no more time travel they should have reboot it once and keep a consistent storyline like the old gen

They kinda dropped the ball on too many things. Never should’ve gone the multiverse route.

Ed Boon: Lets reboot and take the most Character Developed Character and make them Scorpion. Script Writer: Ok. What about everyone else? Ed Boon: i dont care

They’ve made us fall in love with the storyline and characters just to ruin them and this is coming from someone who’s first video game was the very first mortal kombat and it was a bday gift back in 92

13:52 I agree. I didn’t think I’d witness two reboots within 10+ yrs. I think they need to ditch the “heros always win” storytelling and let us play us villains in story mode to help flesh out the story and characters. The “jobbers” wouldn’t be jobbers anymore because we’ll actually get to play out their missions and storylines