Mortal Kombat 11

The two are not mutually exclusive. Just make the banter more confrontational and it's fine. 11 is the first game where it really felt like most of the banter didn't fit.

X had great banter more often than not, and it also felt tonally appropriate. It's not some unsolvable paradox; 11 simply failed on that front.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 5th 2019 at 9:06:00 AM

I can't agree with that. Some of X's banter was incredibly amicable too.

Granted 11 does have some weird ones, like Frost and Kano negotiating a business deal with no hint of hostility in their voices.

I hate having to just quote that video posted earlier, but as he said, that'd boil all the dialogue down everyone saying "fuck you and also die", which both wouldn't be in character for some people nor would it be worth listening to after a while.

We have a whole lot of that as is, anyway.

Edited by Hashil on Jun 5th 2019 at 9:15:56 AM

Pre-fight banter doesn't have to be hostile for everyone. For instance, one of Liu and Kitana's dialogues has them using the fight as a way to relieve stress so it's more like a sparring exercise. In another one, Kitana is suggesting recreating the time she tried to kill Liu because she's a weirdo like that. We also have Liu and Kung Lao taking a bet to see who would win. A Scorpion vs Kotal intro has them trying to learn about each other's respective peoples through their fighting styles.

Of course.

The point is that the more amicable dialogue still leads to a fight where the winner can proceed to murder the loser in an outrageous fashion the same as the more hostile intros.

It's one thing when Baraka threatens someone's life and makes good on it. It's a whole other when Jacqui and Cassie talk about breaking a sparring stalemate and one drops a grenade down the other's decapitated torso in end.

Edited by Hashil on Jun 5th 2019 at 10:04:14 AM

Can proceed to murder the loser in an outrageous fashion, not must.

If it bothers you that much, isn't it just a simple matter of not killing them at the end? Or is it the fact it's an option at all that's the issue?

Edited by sgamer82 on Jun 5th 2019 at 10:09:54 AM

Gotta farm those delicious, delicious hearts...

It doesn't bother me at all. It's just tonally weird. This whole conversation started because someone linked how a pacifist wrote the story and I brought up how funny that is considering.

Edited by Hashil on Jun 5th 2019 at 10:21:12 AM

X's amicable dialogue still tends to be confrontational. For instance, Cassie and Jacqui squaring off because one said the other's dad was hot and the other wants to hit her.

11 has the problem that a lot of its banter is shooting the shit. It doesn't just fail to justify lethality. It fails to set up a fight situation at all.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 5th 2019 at 10:31:38 AM

Solution: pepper a few Hand Waves into the mix.

Takeda: Are you sure lethal force for training is a good idea?
Hanzo: Relax, I can retrieve you from the Netherrealm afterwards.
Takeda: As long as we get ice cream on the way back.

...or something.

I just assumed anything pre fight banter that was friendly was simply a sparring match. Especially considering fatalities don't really come up in the story mode and are mostly just a game feature.

Is a sort of artfact in a way: the fatality is a game mode so it look weird seen friend matches or sparring with the level of lethality MK employed.

Fatalities are pretty much just there 'cause they're obligatory. They're an artifact of the series and they've pretty much never been canon, so it's not much of a problem.

I just get bugged by banter like (paraphrased)

• Scorpion: Why have you summoned me?
• Raiden: I would like to hire the Shirai Ryu.
• Scorpion: It would be our honor.
• FIGHT!

What? Fight? Why fight?! There was no part of that exchange that suggested a fight should be happening!

With X, even the banter that didn't directly explain why they were fighting still sounded like things you would say in the lead-up to sparring or fighting.

• Liu Kang: You have your mother's face.
• Cassie Cage: Really? Yours looks like a butt!
• Liu Kang: (sigh) And your father's mouth.
• FIGHT!

The characters are trading barbed insults. Cassie's aggression and Kang's back-handed response segues into punching each other well enough. 11 just feels like the writers didn't get the memo on what their dialogue would be used for and wound up writing conversational skits instead of pre-fight banter.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jun 5th 2019 at 12:22:34 PM

Your saying conversational skits like it’s a bad thing.

And the banter in X was no different from here.

Edited by slimcoder on Jun 5th 2019 at 12:26:35 PM

This seems like such a nitpicky thing to complain about. The vast majority of dialogues are either confrontational, hostile, or establish a reason why they’re fighting. Only a small handful are too friendly.

For the truly determined, no complaint is too nitpicky.

Read: pedantic

That Raiden one can easily just be Raiden deciding to test Scorpion to see if he is capable of handling the task that he is hiring him for.

Haven't seen the video yet, but no one wants to talk about Shang Tsung?

Also, what do you thing of the arcade endings? I feel they are one of the best in the saga, allowing the chararter to express themselves is a good choice.

Spawn tease (I guess? Idk what to call it)◊

Every character has these portraits. It’s just character art.

Yeah I know that.

Then why don’t you know what to call it?

Lol calm down